Dogs of the Father
by saichick-Anna-Erishkigal
Summary: Post-Legion.  Michael enlists the help of a prophet well versed in the art of defiance to teach his brother the answer to his own question, 'why do you continue to fight when there is no hope'
1. Prologue

Fandom: Legion

Rated: MA (for all the seven deadly sins)

Disclaimers: Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! Here are the usual scary legal mumbo-jumbo 'usual disclaimers.'

_Legion, the characters as outlined thereof, the Paradise diner, and the underlying fact pattern as depicted in the movie belong to their respective owners. I write for my own entertainment and pleasure, not for pecuniary reasons._

_The rest as depicted from the last six paragraphs of the Prologue forward that are not part of the original movie are my own original creations and are copyrighted to me (except those portions already rightfully belonging to the wonderful folks who wrote Legion). They may not be reproduced or used without the express written permission of the author._

_Copyright 2011 – Anna Erishkigal_

X

Prologue

Gabriel stood poised over the pathetic human male who dared defy the will of god, ready to deal the death-blow with his mace.

"Why do you fight," Gabriel asked, perplexed, "when there is no hope?" Humans had always been baffling, self-destructive creatures. And yet, here, the meekest and most fearful of the humans was fighting to protect a child who had no hope of surviving the death-sentence of the Father.

"Fuck you!" Jeep spat out, his face filled with defiance.

Gabriel swung his mace. Blinding white light split the air, momentarily blinding him as another angel dropped down from the sky, wings flared. Michael. A brief sensation of joy leaped in his heart as the descending angel knocked him back from his prey, followed immediately by grief and confusion. Michael? He had just killed Michael? He'd watched him dissipate. Confusion caused him to hesitate.

"This can't be," Gabriel said, confused. "You disobeyed him."

"You gave him what he asked for," Michael said, compassion filling his eyes. "I gave him what he needed."

A feeling Gabriel had always suppressed before now welled up in his veins and surged through his body. Jealousy. Gabriel had always been the good son, the obedient one, the one who had always followed orders without question. The Father had sent him to kill his brother, and Gabriel had done so even though it had threatened to burst his heart with grief. But now the Father had chosen Michael over him, giving him a second chance. Given the pathetic _humans_a second chance. Given Michael back his wings!

Confusion gave way to rage. Like a wounded bull charging at a matador waving a red cape, Gabriel launched himself at his brother, hatred unlike anything he had ever felt before surging through his body like molten lava. Even as the pyroclastic explosion of millennia of suppressed jealousy flooded through his veins, Gabriel could feel the strength of the heavenly Father abandon him. Easily, Michael defended himself with his sword, slicing through his armor and his soft belly as though it were butter, and knocking him to the ground. Shakily, Gabriel pulled himself to his knees and faced his brother, pressing his own neck into the point of Michaels blade.

"Do it," Gabriel said, a mixture of anger and resignation registering in his face at the sword his brother, Michael, held at his throat. '_Please,__Father,__make__it__quick,__' _he added in his own head, '_and__bring__me__back__into__the__light__of__your__arms.__'_

"No," Michael said, pulling back the sword and turning his back to him, stepping over the cliff to look at the first rays of sunlight shooting over the horizon. Gabriel could read the disobedience in Michael's eyes as he stepped back and refused to kill his own brother, even now refusing to obey the Father who had sent them to exterminate humanity and kill an innocent child.

"I would not have shown you such mercy," Gabriel said, his expression unreadable as he got to his feet. He suppressed the wince of pain as he grabbed his belly and prevented his entrails from spilling out into the vile sand, hiding it behind the mechanical wall he had used since his creation to prevent himself from feeling. He was unable to completely disguise his confusion as his mind raced ahead, trying to comprehend the implications of what had just happened. Michael, the disobedient son, had been spared and sent back to Earth to slay him.

"I know," Michael said, his voice quiet and sad as he delivered the Father's judgment to his ever-obedient brother. "That is why you failed him."

Failed him? Failed the Father? How had he failed the Father? Gabriel, most loyal of all the dogs of heaven, had unquestionably followed orders his entire existence. When the Father said kill, Gabriel killed. When the Father said protect, Gabriel protected. When the Father said jump, Gabriel asked 'how high?' Failed the Father? How? He had only been following orders. He didn't understand!

Michael was silent, his back turned to him the same way he had sadly turned his back on their brother, Lucifer, all those millennia before when Lucifer had rebelled. Only _that_time, Michael had been following orders, the obedient son, while it had been Lucifer, the rebellious son who had chosen love of a mortal woman over the glory of heaven, who had been dismissed. He was being dismissed? Gabriel, the Left Hand of God, was being dismissed?

Gabriel glanced over at the human male he had just attempted to kill. Pathetic creatures! The human silently watched what transpired with confusion in his eyes. The Father had not only just changed his mind about exterminating the pathetic creatures he had ordered Gabriel and the other angels to bow down before in the Garden of Eden millennia before, but he had found Gabriel's willingness to follow his own orders to be at fault? He didn't understand!

Tears welled in his eyes as a million questions rose to his lips and were stifled. He, the most unquestionably loyal of all the Father's angels, was being dismissed. Cast out of heaven for his obedience, just as Lucifer had been cast out of heaven for _disobedience_all those millennia before.

He glanced once more at the pathetic human laying covered in filth on the Earth. It was not befitting for the Left Hand of God to allow a mortal creature see him weep. Silently, forever the obedient son, he threw himself off the cliff, expecting to be cast down into some fiery purgatory as had been done to Lucifer. He flapped his wings and was not surprised to discover they no longer caught the wind and carried his weight. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the police car, the car he had ripped the roof off of to complete his mission until that pathetic, brave woman-child had climbed upon his back and given the order leading to her own death. Now, for reasons he could not understand, _he_was the one condemned to die.

Gabriel closed his eyes, ever the obedient son, resigned to his fate. For reasons he could not understand, he had failed the Father. The Father wanted him dead, and he wanted to die. The Father, mercifully, appeared willing to grant him the death Michael had just denied to him.

'I accept my fate, Father,' Gabriel whispered right before his body hit the rocks.

Pain unlike anything he had ever felt before wrenched though his body. His wings crumbled beneath him, shattered like the other bones in his body. He gasped as he felt light of the heavenly Father be wrenched from his immortal form and a terrible, aching void open up where his Father's love had once been. Angels were an extension of the Father's consciousness. It was said that angels didn't have souls of their own as humans did. But for the first time in his very long existence, Gabriel felt what it must be like to have one, separated from the Fathers' love, cast out of Eden, and forced to exist on his own. Some part of his consciousness registered the collar that had been clamped around his neck his entire existence suddenly let go and fall off.

'Father,' was the last word to leave his lips as the world mercifully went to darkness.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Warmth flooded her body as the pain dissipated.

"Awaken, child," Michael said gently, removing his hands from over her heart where he had just channeled the light of the heavenly Father to heal her. "Awaken and face the dawn."

Audrey opened her eyes and blinked, confused, as her body hummed with a sensation not unlike electricity. Only pleasant. Pleasant electricity. Michaels' face hovered only inches from hers where he kneeled beside her, his face emotionless and stern as always, but his eyes were filled with compassion.

"Michael," she said, coughing as she registered sand and the taste of blood in her mouth. There was no pain. She struggled to sit up and registered sand and rock beneath her hands. Where was she? The sunrise shone into his features, giving his face a golden hue, as if Michael, himself, were the rising sun. "What happened?"

"The Father saw your sacrifice and was moved by it," Michael said, the slight crinkle around his eyes betraying the smile millennia of habit prevented from allowing him to register in his face. "He has granted a reprieve while I prove to him your species has value he has overlooked."

Audrey gasped in horror as the events of the past twenty-four hours flooded back into her mind. _The diner. The old lady who bit a chunk out of her father and then walked on the ceiling. Michael. Kyle teaching her to shoot. Her fathers' skin boiling and exploding in acid. The child she tried to save who had turned into a demon before her eyes. The awful sound of a trumpet heralding something even worse was coming. Her mother taking Charlie's baby and trying to hand it over to … them! The look on her mother's face as Michael shot her between the eyes to stop her._ Despite herself, Audrey began to scream.

"It's okay," Michael said, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

For the first time, Audrey noticed he had wings upon his back. Wings. Like _he _had. Glancing behind him, she saw the police car, upside down, on the highway. It was empty. The flashback continued.

_The monster tearing the roof off the car as they tried to escape. The sound of the baby screaming. The feel of the monster writhing beneath her arms as she climbed over its back and wrapped her arms around its throat. Jeep accelerating the car past 90. The baby. The baby who was humanity's only hope. Her cry to Jeep to 'do it.' The feeling of weightlessness as she and the monster catapulted through the windshield just before they hit the pavement together and rolled. The monster turning just before they hit the ground. The crushing feeling of being suffocated as it wrapped her in its arms and wings_.

The monster had wrapped her in its arms and wings just before they'd hit the ground, taking the brunt of the impact. Why had he done that? It was too much to comprehend. Like a spider trying to scramble backwards away from a bird, Audrey instinctively scurried away from the winged visage kneeled before her in the light of the rising sun.

"It's okay," Michael repeated, touching her shoulder and flooding her body with warmth. Electricity. Only pleasant. This was Michael, who had tried to save them, not the monster. Her heart racing, Audrey froze and tried to catch her breath.

"Am I dead?" she finally asked several moments later, once she had caught her breath.

"You live," Michael said. "I think you remember why." The last was whispered almost as a plea.

"Why?" Audrey asked, glancing wildly to either side, looking for … him. "Why did he save me when all he wanted to do was kill us?"

"You were not his quarry," Michael said, sorrow etching his face. "It is not his nature to kill without a direct order, even when he knows the Father intends for the entire species to die, anyways. He is … quite literal in his carrying out of Fathers orders."

For the first time, Audrey noticed her skirt had ridden up and torn in the crash, exposing her lacy thong and leaving little to the imagination. For the past several years she had dressed provocatively to provoke her parents into paying attention to something, _anything_, besides work or keeping up with the Joneses. Now … they were both dead and her immodesty was revealed to her own eyes as the pathetic, futile gesture it had always been. The action of a petulant child demanding attention. Ashamed, she tugged down her skirt as best she could. Her clothing was shredded where the road had torn it apart and covered with blood, but the flesh underneath was unharmed.

And covered with tattoos…

"What?" Audrey exclaimed, frantically rubbing at the strange symbols covering her legs to remove them and realizing they were permanent. Startled, she checked her arms and realized the symbols also covered her arms, her abdomen, and anyplace else there was exposed flesh. Once again, she recoiled from the angel kneeling at her side. "What have you done to me?"

"The Father has marked you," Michael said, a hint of pride tingeing the rich timber of his voice as he spoke. "He has given you … instructions … to carry out his will."

"Fuck the Father!" Audrey spat out, rage boiling in her blood. "Everybody is _dead _because he just decided to _exterminate _us like fucking cockroaches!"

"He has given you a reprieve," Michael said. "I plead your species case, but it was _your _selfless sacrifice which convinced him to give your species more time."

"Fuck him!" Audrey spat, turning her face away from him, away from his piercing, inhuman eyes that shone with an internal light. "I don't give a shit _what _he wants!"

"I know," Michael said quietly. "But what about what _you _want?" Hesitantly, he reached with one finger to touch her chin and gently turn her face back to face him. His eyes implored her to do … something. With a clarity into his motivations that Audrey had _always _possessed, the clarity which had made her so hard and rebellious at such a young age, Audrey realized Michael wanted something from her. Needed it. He needed her help, and it wasn't just to say a bunch of bullshit hosannas to the genocidal fucking maniac who had the gall to murder his own so-called 'children.'

"What is it you want from me, Michael?" Audrey asked coldly. Whatever he had done to heal her injuries, Michael had also enhanced her ability to read the motivations of others.

"You had a dog once," Michael said cryptically. "Remember, Audrey?"

"He was a good dog," Audrey whispered, memory of this one final loss knocking her out of her protective anger and into the pit of her own despair at everything that had gone so terribly fucking wrong the last few years. The dog. Her long rebellious journey downhill had started with the dog. She started to cry, sobbing uncontrollably as loss over the dog, her childhood, her parents, the entire human race weighed down upon her like a crushing weight upon her chest.

Michael neither reassured her nor spoke as she cried, instead pulling her into his arms and silently allowing her to cry for what seemed to be forever until the mood passed.

"I loved that stupid fucking meathead," Audrey finally hiccoughed between sobs, her snot smearing his armor and extending the comfort of his embrace through the connection of stringy goo as she finally pulled her face away and looked once more into his eyes. "Stupid dog!"

Michael's unearthly eyes implored hers as she unashamedly wiped her nose upon what was left of her sleeve and then rubbed the snot off her arm in the desert sand. Whatever the favor was he was about to ask of her, it was a doozey.

"My brother," Michael finally whispered, emotion choking up his voice as tears welled in his eyes. Audrey waited while he inhaled and let out a jagged breath, composing himself before he asked the favor she knew she wouldn't like. "My brother … he's like that dog. He was told to attack, so he attacked."

"If you're going to tell me the Father is asking me to just turn the other cheek and forgive him," Audrey snarled, "you can fucking forget it! Who the fuck is _he _to demand forgiveness? He's nothing but a genocidal fucking hippocrite!" Audrey realized she was pounding upon his chest, her fist causing his armor to make a dull 'thunk' with each unconscious strike to accentuate her words, as she spoke. Quickly, she pulled back her hand, not sure what to do with the appendage which had just sprung a mind of its own, and buried it in the sand next to her hips.

"The Father isn't the one doing the asking," Michael said quietly, a single tear escaping one eye and trailing down his cheek. "I am."

Audrey sat, spellbound, as she watched Michael, Michael the Archangel, _Saint _Michael, the dude she had prayed to every single Sunday at church when her parents had forced her to attend religious education classes one winter to make her first communion that spring, cry. Michael was crying. First communion had been nothing but another feather in her parents' cap, an opportunity to dress her up in front of friends and relatives, parade her around, throw a big party, and pat themselves on the back for being good parents. They never once attended church services themselves … just dropped her off at the church doors and picked her up once classes were done. Church stopped the moment she had marched down the aisle in her white dress and been declared communed with god, church attendance for its own purpose being unworthy of their overscheduled time.

Michael was asking her a favor, and crying. The day they had put down her dog, she had prayed to _him_, not god. The dude with the sword carved out of cold marble in the apiary of the church. The one the nuns claimed was a guardian of justice, to spare her dogs' life. Nobody had answered her prayer. But obviously Michael had heard.

"It's a little late, don't you think?" Audrey whispered, waves of sorrow riding through her body.

"I was kind of busy that day," Michael said softly, knowing exactly what was in her heart. "It was forbidden for us to intervene on your behalf." They silently stared at one another for what seemed to be an eternity.

"Why should your brother be any different?" Audrey finally asked. "Is your father planning on putting him down the way they put down my dog?"

"Yes," Michael said. "I was sent back to kill him. I refused."

"The way you refused to kill us?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Michael said, almost a whisper. More tears joined the first one, boldly following the trail the first tear had emblazoned down his cheek and dripping onto his armor plating.

Audrey was silent. Whatever Michael had done to her when he'd healed her, not only had it enhanced her existing ability to read the motivations of others, it enabled her to look straight into somebody's heart and see what they were feeling. _Feel _what they were feeling. She could feel Michael's heart break, and it was her own.

"I hate him," Audrey said after a long time. "He killed my parents."

"The Heavenly Host killed your father," Michael said softly. "Not Gabriel. And as you might recall, it was _me _who killed your mother. Not him."

Pain tore through Audrey's heart as she relived the memory once more. The moment when she had handed her mother Charlie's baby, the baby the demons had come to kill, her mother had smiled at her and told her what a beautiful child she had been. It was the first time she had felt any connection to her mother since … since … since before the dog. And then her mother had tried to hand over the baby, an innocent baby, to … to … that _thing _that trumpeted its' arrival like … like the last judgment. And in that moment, Audrey had looked into her mothers' eyes and seen her for the poor, fallen creature she was. Too weak to fight, to resist, to tell the stupid homicidal fucking god who had just condemned her entire species to death to go fuck himself and do what was _right!_

Audrey's heart had broken when Michael had killed her mother to save the baby, but she understood. As flawed as she was, when faced with an almost identical choice, she had chosen differently. She had urged Jeep to slam on the brakes of the police car and catapult that monster through the windshield with her on its back even though she knew it would lead to her death.

"He killed Jeep's father," Audrey finally said. "I saw him slice Bob through the gut with those feathers." To accentuate her words, she gestured to the razor-sharp feathers on Michaels wings and recoiled when he instinctively ruffled the deadly appendages.

"Gabriel didn't kill anybody except for me," Michael said quietly. "Bob was still alive when Gabriel killed me. He turned on the gas to the grill, and then told Gabriel to go to hell right before he blew the place up with that lighter of his."

"Hope," Audrey said, the irony of Bob's ex-wife's name engraved into the lighter used to ignite the explosion she had seen through the rear window of the escaping police car. The explosion had incinerated all of the possessed who had surrounded the diner, giving them a chance to escape. She looked into Michael's eyes and saw the truth of what he said. His admiration for Bob's sacrifice. A line from an old Bruce Willis movie popped into her mind that was a fitting tribute. "Yippee cay yay, motherfucker."

"Yippee cay yay," Michael repeated.

Silence stretched before them once more, the only words the pleading expression in the angels' eyes. The same look she had seen in her own eyes when she had looked in the mirror the day they had put down her dog. The angel who had defied his fathers' orders, fallen from heaven, cut off his own wings, and given his life to protect them now asked a favor of _her, _an unworthy mortal. He was asking her to save his brothers' life, a mindless pitbull who had blindly followed the orders of his master, orders that were … wrong.

"I hate him," Audrey finally repeated, her words not sounding convincing even to her own ears. She had always had a soft spot in her heart for monsters nobody else loved. Like herself. Like the … dog. "How do I know he won't try to kill me if I help him?"

Michael reached out and touched her forehead, rubbing it with one thumb, and then dropped his hand. "Because you have been marked by God as a prophet, Audrey, and Gabriel is being ordered to protect you with his now-mortal life. His new orders are, quite literally, written all over your face."

"You said the Father ordered you to kill him," Audrey said. "Why won't he just kill me?"

"Because even after all that has transpired," Michael said, "Gabriel will not defy the Father."

"What happens when the … Father," Audrey spat, "changes his mind and orders him to kill me?"

"It is up to _you _to teach Gabriel the meaning of defiance," Michael said softly. "I think it is a lesson you know well?"

"Yes," Audrey said quietly, shame riddling her features as she looked away from his piercing, inhuman gaze. "But my defiance was never … wise."

"When it truly mattered," Michael said, touching her chin once more and directing her gaze back into his, "you knew the difference between right and wrong. All I'm asking is to teach my brother that lesson so the Father will let him live."

"I hate him," Audrey whispered one last time. "How can I teach somebody who I despise?"

"Follow your heart, Audrey," Michael said, relief flooding his face and gratitude lighting up the sorrow in his eyes. She knew he could see into her heart, and see that she had made up her mind to help him. "Follow your heart, and the rest will follow you."

"Okay," Audrey said, swallowing her apprehension and hiding it behind an indifferent shrug. "Show me where this stupid dog of yours is."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Get up, you jackass!"

The voice filtered through the mindless fog of pain which permeated through every inch of his body. Female. The voice was female. Although the words themselves were contemptuous, the voice delivering the words was soft, hesitant, fearful. But it was also full of authority. The voice of someone gifted with the light of the heavenly father. The light which no longer resided in his body. A prophet. Gabriel struggled to obey and failed.

"I said get up!" More question than an order this time.

He tried once again to do as he had been commanded, gathering his strength, but was unable to move. Although he made a valiant effort to stifle his own pain and obey the voice that spoke with such authority, his body betrayed him. He tried to cry out as daggers shot through the places where his bones had shattered upon the rocks, but all that came out was a pathetic gurgle as blood seeped from his punctured lungs and bubbled past his lips. This didn't feel like heaven.

"Aw, shit. He didn't say nothing about you being all banged up like this. Now what the fuck am I supposed to do with you?"

His mouth moved, but his brain couldn't make his lungs work together with his lips to form words that made any sense. Gibberish. He was speaking gibberish. He tried once more to speak, and failed. Action. Although he had spent his life carrying the word of god, Gabriel himself was a man of few words. It had always been the Father's words he had carried, never his own. Action. He had been ordered to move, so he needed to move. Pulling together every ounce of strength that he had left, he moved his arm and reached in the direction he heard the prophets' voice.

"Father," he whispered, his voice pleading as he prayed the voice had been sent to end his suffering and bring him home.

"I ain't your fucking father, asshole!" the voice said icily.

Purgatory. He had been sentenced to purgatory. Even death was being denied to him. With a whimper, Gabriel slid back into merciful unconsciousness.

XOXOXOXOXOXO

The fires of hell burned his body for what seemed like an eternity. His lips were parched. Parched? He was a creature of heaven. He wasn't supposed to require mortal sustenance, but for the first time in his life, he was experiencing thirst. As he fought his way towards consciousness once more, he became aware of someone pressing something against his lips.

"Drink."

He didn't know _how _to drink. He had never had any occasion to even _try._ He tried to communicate with the prophet who spoke with such authority, to let her know that his inability to drink was not disobedience, but lack of knowledge, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth.

"You don't want to drink? Fine! The fuck with it. I'm wasting my goddamned time!"

He heard footsteps retreating away from him as the prophet muttered in disgust. Leaving. She was leaving. The only source of light in this hellhole was abandoning him to suffer, alone, separated from the Father. For the first time in his very long existence, he was afraid.

"Please…" was all his lungs were able to squeeze past his traitorous lips, little more than a hiss, before he slid once more into unconsciousness.

XOXOXOXOXOXO

He was freezing. Shivers wracked his body as, for the first time in his existence, he experienced cold. He was cold. So cold. He could sense someone kneeled beside him as his teeth chattered and he instinctively tried to curl up into a fetal position, whimpering in pain, and failed. His body was too broken to move of its own volition. A hand touched his forehead.

"You're burning up," the voice said, a hint of sympathy in the prophets voice as she touched first his forehead, and then his cheek. "You need to drink something. You need to try."

A hand cradled his head and tilted it up slightly, and then placed something not-very-soft behind his neck to hold it upright while a second hand pressed something against his lips.

"Drink," she said. "You need to try."

Gabriel remembered all the times he had watched mortals consume beverages from the time they had lapped water from rivers like dogs until they had evolved enough to create cups and other drinking implements to consume liquids. Open their mouths. Consuming liquids required you to open your mouth and then do … something. He wasn't sure. But he opened his mouth, eager to obey the voice that carried the light of the Father.

Liquid poured into his mouth, but he wasn't sure what to do next. He couldn't breathe! Gasping for breath, he choked on the mouthful of water the female had poured into his mouth and began to gag before he could figure out what to do next with it.

"Shit," she complained. "Don't tell me you don't even know how to drink? When he said I had to teach you, he didn't say I would have to teach you from scratch!"

Chills wracked his body once more, each shudder dislocating his broken body and sending daggers of pain through his shattered limbs. Pain. So much pain. He had been wounded many times in battle before, but each time, the light of the heavenly Father had filled him with warmth and enabled him to suppress his pain until he could heal, usually only a matter of minutes. But now … the pain seemed to have no end. He prayed to the Father to ease his suffering and end his pain, to welcome him back into his arms, but instead he drifted neither here nor there. Never had he felt so alone.

"You have to swallow, you big dumb oaf," the voice said, "a little at a time."

Once again the canteen was pressed to his lips and he was ordered to drink, the liquid flowing into his mouth much slower this time, but once again he couldn't figure out what to do next with it and began to choke.

"Fucking idiot!" the voice exclaimed in frustration.

"Please…" he whispered, ignoring his pain as he reached up and clasped the hand which held the liquid to his mouth. It was a small hand. Delicate. Barely one-third the size of his own, large, calloused hand. But it was surprisingly strong. And warm. The prophet let him hold her hand for a long time, not speaking so he could hear the authority of the heavenly father which permeated her voice. Even when she called him names and swore and took His name in vain. But she didn't pull away, either.

"It's kind of hard to hate you when you're all banged up like this," she finally said, her voice tired.

He didn't have the strength to form a second word, so he did the only thing he could to communicate with the prophet that he was trying very hard to obey her commands. He squeezed her hand. And then the world went to darkness once again as he shivered helplessly in the cold.

XOXOXOXOXOXO

Hot. He was so hot. He gasped for breath, but his lungs hurt. They didn't want to work. And he was thirsty. So thirsty. Never before had he known pain such as this. Or thirst. Or fever. Or cold. He prayed to the Father for relief, begging forgiveness for whatever transgression he had committed which had caused the Father to turn against him and cast him down to the Earth, but the Father never answered. Only the Prophet answered.

"Your wounds have become infected, Gabriel," the Prophet said, touching his forehead. "You need to drink, or you're going to die."

Die. That was what he had _thought _was going to happen after Michael had sliced through his belly with his sword and then he had cast himself off the cliff, a willing sacrifice to earn back the Father's favor. Obviously the Father had decided to punish him first for whatever it was he had done wrong before he welcomed him back into his arms.

"Die," he whispered, more whimper than words. "Please. Let me die."

"Ain't happening, big boy," the Prophet said, that sarcastic tone he had learned to associate with her voice ridiculing him even as he begged her to let him go. "After what _you _did, you aren't going to get let off that easy. You're going to live even if I have to pick your big sorry ass off this desert floor and _carry _you all the way back to Paradise Falls."

Her words were rude and crass to his ears, but even through the darkness he could hear the clear authority of the heavenly Father ringing through her every word, her touch, her very presence. The Prophet had a voice that had to be obeyed.

"So … thirsty," he whispered, his voice pathetic and small to his own ears as he pleaded with her to teach him how to obey her commands. He was _trying _to obey. He just didn't know how!

"Idiot," she whispered softly, but her touch didn't match up with her exasperated words as she gently lifted his head and placed it on … something. Something soft. He could feel flesh quiver beneath his neck and realized she had placed his head into her own lap for support so she would have both hands free to teach him how to drink.

"My school went on this field trip once to this petting zoo," the Prophet said, her fingers touching first his cheek, and then his lips, to get him to open his mouth as she pressed the drinking implement against it. "They said that when they weaned the baby goats off their mothers and taught them to drink from a bottle, a lot of the time they would have to dip their fingers in the milk and let the baby goats suck it off their fingers until the goats learned how to swallow. Maybe that's your problem? Huh?"

He liked it when she spoke and touched him. Although her voice was a mere shadow of the glory of the Father's voice, he could hear the light of the Father coming through even at her crassest moments loud and clear. He could feel the comforting light of the father coming through her touch even when she was rough with him. It was all he had left in this sorry state he had been cast down into. She asked him to obey, and he would do as she asked with all of his heart because _she _was the vehicle the Father had chosen to teach him whatever lesson it was the Father felt he had failed to learn.

"Here," the Prophet said, touching his lips with something cool and moist. "I'm going to dip my fingers into the Seven Up and put them into your mouth, and then I want _you _to close your mouth and swallow it. You got that?"

He was too weak to move, what little energy he had rallied spent earlier when he had begged her to let him die. All he could do was obey. Her finger gently touched his tongue, coaxing him to drink the liquid she commanded him to consume.

"You need to swallow," she said. "Haven't you ever had to swallow anything before? You're worse than trying to get a cat to swallow one of them big ol' blue tapeworm medicine pills." He felt her other hand gently rub his throat, but he still couldn't understand what she was trying to get him to do. He was hot. So hot. Angel flesh wasn't supposed to know sickness or putrify, but obviously his was if he had a fever.

"Damn!" the Prophet swore as she tried to get him to swallow several more times and failed. "Just … swallow!" She moved out from underneath his head, dumping him none-too-gently onto the ground.

"Please…" he whispered, little more than an exhale. He couldn't even focus his eyes enough to see her, but he didn't want her to leave. He was afraid.

She hesitated, hearing the fear and pleading in his voice. He, Archangel Gabriel, Left Hand of God, reduced to begging for an end to his thirst like Tantalus, sentenced by the Father to an eternity in purgatory, unable to either eat the grapes growing above his head, or drink the water he stood in up to his chest.

"Fuck _Him!" _the Prophet snarled as though the same thought had jumped into her own mind as it had entered his. "Fuck _Him _and his sadistic fucking little games! He asked me to teach you? I'm going to teach you how to drink if I have to drag your sorry ass over to a river and submerge you into it!"

Defiance. Gabriel hadn't heard such defiance since the day the Father had condemned Lucifer to a thousand years in purgatory after allowing a battalion of his men to intermarry with the mortal women they had been sent to protect and then refusing to order them to cast their wives and the children they had borne them aside to appease one of the Father's whims. Only unlike Lucifer, the Prophet's voice still rung with the authority of the heavenly Father, and the compulsion that voice had always carried to make Gabriel obey whatever the Father asked of him.

"Drink, Gabriel," the Prophet ordered. It wasn't fingertips or a drinking implement pressed against his lips this time, but another pair of lips.

Lips? He didn't understand. Angels weren't supposed to…

Liquid passed from the lips into his own mouth, but did not move, refusing to let the liquid dribble out the side of his mouth as it had done before. And then he felt fingers pinch his nostrils shut. He waited, and waited, and then weakly began to struggle as he realized all of a sudden that, like a mortal, he needed to breathe. How had he not noticed before that he actually _needed _to breathe, not just did so out of some ancient instinct instilled by the Father, unnecessary, but there. Desperately, he reached up to grab the head of the Prophet who was killing him with her liquid-laden kiss, but he was too weak to move her.

First he gagged. And then … he swallowed. Instantly, the fingers released his nostrils and the lips came off his as he gasped for the first conscious breath he had ever taken, filling his lungs with air.

"Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" the Prophet asked, stroking his hair as satisfaction permeated her voice. "Just like that old black cat my parents had that was forever getting all wormed up hunting mice. Just shove the big blue pill down his throat, hold his jaws shut, and blow up his nose until he swallowed it. At least _you_ didn't scratch the shit out of me like he always did."

As he gasped for air, he realized that, just a little, the burning in his throat had subsided. Swallow. Who would have thought something humans found so automatic would prove to be so hard? The Prophet hadn't been trying to hurt him. She was trying to help. Whatever lesson it was the Father had commanded her to try to teach him, Gabriel would obey.

"Now we've got to do that a bunch more times," the Prophet said, "to get enough liquids into you so you have a fighting chance against that fever your body is trying to fight off, but I think it'll be easier now that you know what I'm trying to teach you to do. Okay?"

Gabriel was too exhausted to answer, but he would obey. Weakly, he opened his mouth and prepared to receive the liquids the Prophet was, quite literally, forcing down his throat. By the third time she did it, she didn't need to pinch his nostrils shut anymore to get him to swallow, and by the fifth or sixth swallow, some of the thirst which clawed at his throat like the filth which permeated this pathetic world began to subside, just a little.

"Good dog," the Prophet whispered once she had finished, touching his hair and cheek to indicate she was pleased with his obedience.

Merciful darkness reached up, like a cloak, to welcome him back to a healing rest where he could no longer feel the absence of the light of the Father screaming at him like a black hole in his chest.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Michael!" Audrey screamed, tottering angrily through the burning sand in the _ridiculous _high heels she had habitually worn for the past few years. "Michael!"

Nothing answered but the wind.

"Michael!" Audrey screamed again, kicking the side of the upturned police car and yelping in pain as the impact reverberated through her foot. What the _fuck _had ever possessed her to ever take a liking to such _impractical _shoes? "I know you're watching!"

Silence. Not even a coyote howled in the distance.

"Fuck you," she screamed, throwing the bible down into the sand that she had just found under the seat of the police cruiser, rummaging for something, anything, to help her survive out here in the middle of nowhere. To accentuate her feelings, she tottered over to the useless book and kicked sand over it. "If you think I'm going to read this fucking shit, you're sadly mistaking!"

A slight clicking noise caught her attention off to one side. Just a grasshopper. Clicking its wings as it hopped between creosote bushes.

"Hey, little fellow," Audrey said, staring down at the only other life form in the area. "I guess it's just you and me out here all alone in the world. And … _him_." By _him, _she was referring to her unwanted charge, the one that had kept her stuck out here for the past five days while he lingered at the brink of death. Asshole! Served him right!

"Why the fuck should –_I- _get stuck babysitting him?" Audrey asked the grasshopper, since obviously Michael wasn't going to answer. "He's only going to die, anyways. Serves him right for what he did. Tried to do. Actually, he really didn't _do_ anything, just _tried _to do something. Fucking asshole!"

The grasshopper whirred its' wings again, making a clicking sound, and jumped a short distance away from where she tottered like an idiot, the high heels already sunk so low in the sand that she almost stood flat. Stupid high heels!

"I mean … he's only going to die, anyways," Audrey said, resignation filling her voice. "He _wants _to die. I don't even know what the fuck to do to keep him alive…"

Her voice trailed off. When Michael had pulled the first responder kit out of the trunk of the police cruiser, Audrey hadn't been surprised. It was a fucking police car. Of _course _it had a juiced up first aid kit on steroids. That right there should have been a warning about what she would find when she followed the trail to the base of the cliff Michael had instructed her to follow to do his little … favor … for him.

If not for the step-by-step pictorial Emergency First Responder Manual contained in that first-aid-kit on steroids, which had everything from bandaids to a portable heart-stoppy-shocky-starty-up-again-thingy in it, Audrey would have been clueless about what to even _do _to patch up the broken … thing … she had found at the base of the cliff. They had covered basic first aid in health class in school, but Audrey had skipped most of those classes, sneaking out to smoke cigarettes behind the girls' gym locker. She wished now she had not been so rebellious and paid attention.

"I know you're up there, Michael," Audrey pleaded. "That six-pack of Seven Up didn't just appear in the trunk of the car on its own."

Or the granola bars. Or the yellowed, dog-eared Boy Scout Manual that had appeared in the trunk a day after she thought she had gleaned all the treasures in the cruiser telling her how to survive in the desert. Or the dirty old tarp she had propped up with a couple of sticks to make a crude lean-to to shield Gabriel from the frigid night wind and boiling daytime sun. Or the ghastly day-glow yellow fold-up emergency blanket she had tucked around him to keep him warm.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Audrey said, half to the grasshopper, half to the sky. "I'm going to kill him because I don't know what to do, and it will be all my fault."

The grasshopper stared at her, tilting its head one side to the other like a horse to view her out of each eye. It was stupid to talk to a stupid fucking insect, but it wasn't like there was anybody _else _out here to talk to. Except for _him_! She'd be fucking _damned _if she spoke to _him _one iota more than was absolutely necessary to get the fucking homicidal maniac to do what she needed him to do to stay alive.

Hatred boiled through her veins, and then dissipated in a pathetic little fizzle. It was hard to hate a creature that had been brought so low by the same god who had 'sic'd that creature on a helpless baby. All to punish a bunch of people who had never done anything to hurt god personally except survive as best they could after the homicidal fucking maniac had _abandoned _them 8,500 years ago, according to Michael, for taking a bit of some stupid fucking apple the asshole _had _to have known the kids would find too tempting to resist after waving it in front of their noses and telling them not to eat it. Like a 1950's housewife taking fresh-baked tollhouse cookies out of the oven, sticking them on a big plate in the middle of the kitchen table with a glass of milk when the kids got home from school, and then telling them they couldn't eat any even though the scent was wafting through the air. No shit, Sherlock, when the kids snarfed down the forbidden cookies!

Gabriel had only been following orders, Michael had told her. A big, stupid, loyal dog too unwaveringly blind to the faults of its owner to understand that when its owner said 'sic 'em, he really meant "_'sic 'em, but I don't want to pay the consequences when everybody's pissed off at me for telling you to 'sic 'em … so it's easier to blame you."_

"I'm only seventeen," Audrey whispered, tears streaming down her face as she collapsed to her knees in the sand and looked up at the sky. "He's a monster. How do you retrain a monster to know right from wrong so he knows when not to attack? How could you charge me with such a heavy task?"

Off in the distance, black clouds were gathering on the horizon, giving an eerie, yellowish cast to the sky as the thunderclouds raced towards her position. Yellow, like the ugly pallor Gabriel's skin had taken on as his life, or whatever constituted life for a creature who had once been immortal, seeped out of his body.

How any creature could be so badly wounded, and still be alive, was beyond her, but she had cleaned off the blood and followed the directions in the first aid book to stitch up Gabriel's wounds and reset his bones as best she could. In all of her 'party prom queen' drinking binges, Audrey had never puked so much in her life as when she had reached into his abdomen and stitched up, layer-by-layer, the sword-wound that exposed not only muscle, but the intestines which had been exposed when Michael had cut down his own brother, and then refused to finish the job god had sent him here to do.

"I should just leave, little fellow? Huh?" Audrey asked the grasshopper, as if some stupid insect could ever _possibly _give her the answers to the questions she sought. "He's gods' attack dog. Let god take care of him!"

As she watched, a 'rock' moved and suddenly struck, consuming the grasshopper whole. A zebra lizard. Audrey involuntarily shuddered. If she left, she knew nobody was going to help him. He would be devoured by the desert just like the grasshopper.

"Well if you want me to help him, Michael," Audrey screamed, picking up the bible she had kicked sand over and heaving it into the desert with all of her might, "you're going to have to give me something more useful than … that … piece of shit! Fuck you!"

Audrey stormed over to the car, angrily ripping open the trunk, and rummaged through it one more time, searching for something, anything, that would help her keep her charge alive a few more days. Nothing. Noticing the carpet was pulled up in one corner, she tugged at it and was surprised at the sound of Velcro unzipping as the carpet easily came up in her hand. Underneath was a pull-handle to a little compartment where the spare tire and jack was kept. Along with those were additional supplies. Silvery emergency blankets to keep the body heat in the body. More granola bars and a jar of peanuts. Bottled water. Helpful, but not what he needed most.

"He doesn't even know how to eat or drink," Audrey said, grateful for the discovery of more supplies, but at a loss of how to get anything solid into him. "How can you live for billions of years and not even know how to swallow a drink of water? He's worse than caring for a baby. Even babies know how to drink. What am I going to have to teach him next? To take a piss afterwards?"

She stowed the supplies into the rucksack she had found underneath the passenger side seat of the car that second day and shut the trunk. When she needed more, she had a feeling, she suspected more would appear in the trunk of the car. She wasn't stupid. She knew Michael was the one placing things there. And she knew he could hear her now, but had chosen for whatever reason not to answer her. Probably so she wouldn't have an excuse to leave. Just as she had been unwilling to let Gabriel kill an innocent baby, she was just as unwilling to leave a broken man, angel, whatever, alone in the desert to die. Even if he _was _a monster!

"His wounds are infected," Audrey said, staring down helplessly at her hands. Small, slender hands, unaccustomed to hard work or any type of skilled craft. Long, slender fingers that had been small enough to slip into Gabriel's belly and slide the slippery needle between the bloody layers of diaphragm, muscle, and then skin she had been forced to sew up using nothing but the photographs in the first responder manual of a nearly identical wound, even as she had to repeatedly lean to one side to heave out the paltry contents of her stomach between layers.

"Without antibiotics," Audrey whispered, "he's going to die."

The kit had contained ample tubes of antibiotic ointments and creams, along with alcohol and peroxide, which she had generously poured and slathered on every wound she could find, getting a small perverse thrill of satisfaction at watching him involuntarily quiver from the sting of the alcohol that first day, before she had begun to pity him. But although the manual clearly showed the symptoms of internal infection and listed off the antibiotics needed to address those threats, none were contained within the kit. Whoever had placed the first responder kit into the police car had assumed an ambulance would arrive shortly, summonsed by the radio in the police car, to whisk the injured away to a hospital where a _real _doctor could use _real _medicine to help the injured get better.

She was just one teenage girl, alone in the desert. She didn't even know if there _was _anyone left alive who would help her tend one of the monsters who had nearly wiped out every human on the planet. Michael had said Charlie, Jeep and the baby lived, but he had also warned her that less than 8% of the population of the planet had survived. Of those who did, anarchy ruled. Even if Gabriel miraculously lost the visible visages of what he was, his wings, as Michael had cut off to walk amongst them that first time, the chances of somebody helping two strangers was slim to none. Like it or not, Gabriel was all she had left in the world.

As she stared down, helplessly, at her hands, she noticed the tattoos on her arms shifted and changed. A tree. One of the tattoos had changed into a tree. She glanced up and saw that _same _tree standing right in front of her, about 100 feet in the distance. A Joshua tree. Shakily, she rose to her feet and walk towards it. Where a branch had just broken, she could see sticky pitch seeping out of the tree.

"Will this help him?" Audrey asked, glancing at her arms once more and suddenly understanding what Michael had meant when he had told her to read the instructions. "If I smear this crap all over his wounds, will it help him get better?"

She was not surprised when her only answer was the wind tearing across the empty desert. Michael had told her to have faith.

"Fuck faith," Audrey said softly, finding a small broken branch and using it to scrape off some of the pitch and slather it onto a couple of leaves. "The only reason I'm doing this is because god and his genocidal 'judgments' can go fuck off for all I care! At this point, the big dumb ass has nothing left to lose. He's only going to die, anyways!"

The temperature rapidly dropped as the cool air preceding the storm hit her position and warned her she had better seek shelter soon. Visibility was around 200 miles out here in the desert. It would take a good hour for the storm to get to where she had set up a crude camp in the spot where Gabriel had fallen. She'd better hurry.

Tugging down her ridiculously short skirt and cursing her high heels the whole way back, Audrey hobbled the mile or so back to the spot where she had left him.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Cold permeated his flesh and crept into his bones like death itself, cold like he had never experienced before even when flying through the empty space of the heavens the Father had created to separate the planets from one another. He was so weak that he couldn't even shiver anymore. He had no idea how long he had lain thus. Time had no meaning in purgatory.

It had been quite some time since the Prophet had left him, as she did now and again to get supplies. This time, she had been gone an unusually long time, he thought, although perhaps that was only because he was close to consciousness and was aware of time passing. Had she left him for good this time? She often told him how much she despised him for what they had done to her people, but her hands and the diligence with which she cared for him told a different story. Had she finally had enough? Had she abandoned him? He was afraid.

"Motherfucker!"

She heralded her approach, not by her footsteps, but by the heavenly sound of the Father's light shining through her words even though she cursed the source of the light with each vile word. Crude or not, he needed to hear her speak, for without her snapping orders at him, there was nothing left for him to obey. He had always been the obedient one, obedient without question, obedient without fault. If there was one defining trait which he could point to about himself and be proud of, it was his unquestioningly loyalty and obedience. Obedience was what made him who he was.

"Listen," the Prophet spoke. "I don't know if this shit is going to work, but, um, there's this tree thing that appeared on my arm when I said you needed antibiotics and then I looked up and there was that exact same tree. Right there in the middle of the dessert. And this shit was oozing out of it and I remembered something I read in some romance novel someplace that the sap of some trees could help fight infection and I thought, well, I might as well give it a try. Pretty weird, huh?"

All morning, there had been this terrible pain in his lower abdomen, beneath the place where Michael had sliced him with his sword and then refused to finish the job the Father had sent him here to do. Angel flesh was not supposed to putrefy, but Gabriel supposed he wasn't an angel any longer. He felt the Prophet lift his tunic and smear something over the wound in his abdomen, and then dab several other places on his body. He flinched where it hurt, but otherwise hid his discomfort as best he could given his sorry state.

"That's all I was able to get," the Prophet said. "If it works, I'll hike back to the Joshua tree tomorrow and see if I can't get a little more to help fight that nasty infection."

As her hands work, he could _feel _the light of the Father coming through her touch, keeping him alive. It wasn't the brilliant warmth of the Father himself, or the Son, but he could feel the Prophet channeling the energy she cursed with every ounce of her being as she tried to heal his wounds. Her gift was tenuous and unsure, but he could feel it through her touch even stronger than he could hear it in her words.

"You gotta get better, Gabriel," she said. "I didn't think angels were supposed to get sick like this. You're beginning to scare me."

From the ache which came from his back, he wasn't even sure whether he had wings anymore, or if they had been severed from his back the way the Father had ripped Lucifer's wings from his body all those millennia ago before casting him down into the earth to suffer in a fiery purgatory. Lucifer had retaliated by escaping and stirring up trouble amongst the locals. Gabriel was determined to do no such thing. Lucifer had been cast from heaven because he had disappointed the Father, and then refused to acknowledge the error of his ways.

Gabriel, ever obedient, would do whatever it took to figure out how, exactly, he had failed the father by following his orders and then make sure it never happened again. Maybe then, the Father would welcome him back into his arms. It was all he had ever wanted in life, to please the Father.

"Drink," the Prophet ordered, gently wiggling her lap underneath his head and pressing the drinking implement to his lips. "Shit, man. You're a fucking popsicle. I think that's what the book called going into shock."

Cold. He was so cold he couldn't feel the rest of his body. He had finally figured out how to 'drink' without her first taking the liquid into her own mouth and then trickling it into his own like a mother bird feeding her chicks, but he could only do so if she supported his head and trickled a little at a time into his mouth. She still had to caress his throat sometimes to remind him to swallow, although he was getting better at remembering.

"It isn't right," the Prophet muttered as she coaxed him to drink. "What he's done to you. It just isn't fucking right. Either he should kill you, or heal you. But this shit sucks…"

"Father," he whispered, trying to explain to her that somehow, _he _was the one at fault. He had failed the Father. He didn't understand _how _yet, but as soon as he could figure it out, he would rectify the problem and the Father would forgive him.

"Your _father _is a genocidal fucking maniac!" the Prophet snarled, her touch growing rougher as anger tinged her words. "If I ever get my hands on this fucking _useless _father of yours, I'm going to shoot him right between the eyes. Just like Michael did to my mother to stop her from doing something bad!"

How could the Prophet hate the Father who had given her species life? He was the Father. All knowing. All wise. The Father was infallible. Or was he? For some reason, Michael had been able to make the Father change his mind.

"What the fuck do you know?" the Prophet spoke contemptuously, dumping entirely too much liquid down his throat and causing him to choke. He gasped for air. "You're nothing but a poor, dumb attack dog being put out of its misery because the _Father_ is too fucking _chickenshit _to acknowledge that _he _was the one who made the mistake by ordering the apocalypse in the first place, not _you!"_

Blasphemy. The words she spoke were blasphemy. But even as he tried to shove the vile thoughts out of his mind, some small voice in his heart whispered to him that it was the truth. It was forbidden. It was forbidden to think such blasphemous thoughts, so he pushed them out of his mind.

The pain in his lower abdomen was getting progressively worse. What was wrong with him? He'd never felt such an uncomfortable sensation before. As the Prophet dribbled the last of the liquid down his throat, he coughed and suddenly he felt the pain let go. Relief followed. His joy was short-lived as he realized he was wet.

"Aw, shit," the Prophet said. "Did I prophesize that one right, or not. Figured it was bound to happen at some point."

With mortification, he realized what had happened. Having never had any occasion to drink in his very long existence, Gabriel had never had any reason before to pee, either, but now that it had happened, he understood the concept. He had just pissed all over himself. Right in front of this vile mortal into whose hands his life had been placed as punishment by the heavenly Father for failing him. And a female, to boot. He was too weak to swallow liquid without help, much less move and get himself cleaned up. It was more humiliation than he could endure.

"Gabriel," the Prophet said, gently touching the tears that silently streamed down his cheeks. "It's all right. Everybody does it. You drink. You pee. It's part of being human."

As if to accentuate her words, a bolt of lightning split the sky and thunder rumbled moments behind it. He could feel the wind race across his skin, already cold, and he shivered. Human. He knew he was no longer immortal because never had he experienced such misery in his entire existence. Mortal. Human. The Father had punished him by making him one of _them_. It was more than he could endure. The sob wracked his body even though he was too weak to cry.

"Just a thunderstorm," the Prophet reassured him, gently extricating her lap from underneath his head and moving down to attend to his wet clothes.

At some point she had removed his armor, leaving behind only his tunic and subligaria … under-garments … so she could get at his wounds to tend them. Now … he wouldn't even have those. All that had defined who he had been was being stripped away, one layer at a time.

"I'll try … um …" the Prophet stammered, the light of the Father in her voice cutting through his humiliation and reassuring him this punishment was part of the Father's plan. "Um … I read someplace you angels don't like it when women … um … look at you … um … I'll try to … um … no peeking. Okay?"

Obey. He would obey. He suppressed his flinch as she awkwardly stripped off his wet tunic and worked down his sublugaria (underpants) and bore his humiliation as stoically as he could. If she had made fun of him while she had done so, it might have broken him, but she worked in silence. She tucked the blanket around him, giving him his modesty as she carried off his clothes. As she did so, he could hear the sky open up and rain begin to fall, a gentle mist hitting the exposed skin of his face and one arm, but no rain fell on him. He could hear it hitting … something. Some sort of shelter above his head.

If only he could get his eyes to focus so he could see. If he was going to die of humiliation, he at least wished to see the face of the Prophet who tended him even though she often told him how much she hated him. Cold. He was so cold. He didn't think the physical shell the Father had created for him could hold up through much more of this. It was only a matter of time before he died and was, hopefully, welcomed back into the Father's arms. Or not.

For the first time, it occurred to Gabriel that perhaps what the Father was telling him was that he would _not _be welcomed back into the Father's arms. Had he not just been abandoned here, broken and stripped of his heavenly powers? Why had he assumed that he, the Left Hand of God, would be given any better treatment than the Father had given his favorite son of all, the Morning Star? Gabriel began to panic, hyperventilating as the awfulness of the reality that the Father had abandoned him and some other force had brought the Prophet into his life dawned on him.

"Good timing," the Prophet said cheerfully, oblivious to his distress, as she returned. "I stretched your things out in the rain and, by morning, they should be all spic and span. Gabriel?"

"F-f-f-father…." Gabriel shivered. "The F-f-f-father abandoned me."

"You're just figuring that out now?" the Prophet asked sarcastically. "No shit, Sherlock."

He cringed at the truth which rang through her words the way his trumpet had heralded the truth of his arrival as he had flown down from the heavens to smite an innocent baby whose only wrong was the fact he had chosen to exist. The coldness which had been knawing at his body off and on for days now solidified into icy fingers, causing him to shudder uncontrollably.

"Gabriel," the Prophet said, tucking the blanket closer around him. "You're not the first person god has abandoned. You hear that? You're not the first!"

It was too much for him to bear. The sob which had been crushing his chest for however long he had lain like this broke like a dam as he finally acknowledged the full awfulness of his situation and he began to cry.

"God abandoned ever single fucking one of us for something that wasn't even really our fault," the Prophet said, her words falling rapidly from her lips. "Not really … like you can wave a treat in front of a kid and say 'don't eat this' and the kid ain't going to snarf it down the first chance he gets. But you? You didn't even snarf down the goodies! You did what he _asked _you to do. _Told _you to do. And then he goes and throws you off a cliff for obeying him because he realizes it was wrong and he needs some fucking scapegoat to blame his own shit on because he's too fucking cowardly and chickenshit to let people know he's fucking _fallible! _What you did was wrong, Gabriel, and you should rightfully be punished for it because you should have known it was wrong and said 'no' like Michael did. But not like this! You were only following orders! _He _should be the one being punished like this. Not you!"

Blasphemy! The Prophet spoke blasphemy! But in his heart, he knew it was also the truth. He was being punished. And should be punished. But the Father was fallible. The truth was too terrible for him to even contemplate. He retreated into himself, willing himself to die.

"Man," the prophet whispered after a long time. "You're so cold I don't know _how _you're still alive.

Merciful unconsciousness reached up once more to claim him into its feathery bough.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Michael," Audrey whispered into the dark, just out of earshot of where Gabriel had lain, unmoving, since the day it had rained. "Please. I don't know what else I can do for him."

She had seen something break in him that day, the first time she'd had to strip him down and change him because he was too weak to 'take care of business' himself, and he had not risen towards consciousness since. Three days. Three days he had given no sign of waking. But not for the occasional, jagged breaths which passed his lips whenever she tried to force liquids down his throat, she would swear he was dead. It was as though even the fever could no longer be bothered to torment him.

"Michael," she pleaded. "He's your brother. You have to help him."

Her only answer was the wind whispering through the creosote bush and the desolate howl of a coyote off somewhere in the distance. Audrey shuddered, and not just from the cold of a desert too barren of life to stabilize the temperature between day and night. She roasted all day and froze during the night. So far, predators had paid them a wide berth, but the only protection she had found was a single flare remaining from the flare gun she had used to shoot him in the face the day he had ripped the roof off the police cruiser, and the mace that was so heavy, it was all she could do to drag it, much less lift it.

"I want to hate him," she said. "But it's pretty hard to hate something so helpless. Is this how _you _felt when the Father told you to bow down to us, and you realized you couldn't hate us because we were too damned pathetic to hate?"

Michael had said he wouldn't approach, that he did not wish to alert his brother that he watched out for him even now, but he hadn't told her how grievously injured Gabriel was from falling from a cliff. When the bible spoke of fallen angels, it only spoke of how right fucking god had been to cast them down upon the Earth for their defiance and how righteous it was that they had been sent to burn in hell, not how much the fallen angels had suffered afterwards. Sentencing someone to hell only felt good if you didn't have to stick around to watch what your sadistic fucking power trip was doing to the person you had passed judgment upon.

"I _wanted_ to watch him suffer for what he tried to do," Audrey whispered. "The first day or so … I even enjoyed it. But this … this isn't right. I've had enough. Please, Michael … I've had enough."

Her skin felt disgusting, her stench offensive even to her own nostrils from over a week of living in the desert without running water. As she suspected would happen, the police cruiser kept yielding hidden caches of food she had somehow mysteriously overlooked the last dozen times she had searched the vehicle, denying her even the excuse of starvation to abandon the dying angel that had been placed into her care and work her way back to civilization. As if she could leave him … any more than she could have let him kill Charlie's baby. For somebody who had spent her whole life thumbing her nose at authority, she sure had a hard time leaving a condemned man … angel … whatever… to die.

"Are you even listening?" she asked, starting to cry. "I don't know what else to do."

A coyote howled, much closer this time. A chorus of voices answered, dangerously close to the crude camp where he lay, helpless to protect himself, along with the sound of growling. She had wandered too far away from the camp. She should never have left him alone at night. Panic raced in her chest as she hurried back down the trail. Her worst fears were realized as she stared into a sea of gleaming yellow eyes, teeth glimmering sharp and white in the moonlight as tongues lolled and pack members jockeyed for position for the privilege of feeding upon the meat they had come to take first. A big male grabbed him by the ankle and started to tug at his boot.

The flare gun. She fired her one cartridge it into their midst and they scattered, but only out of reach of the unsteady pinkish light of the flare. It wouldn't keep them at bay for long. The coyotes growled at each other from across the campsite, circling and getting into position to strike as soon as they ascertained the eerie pink light could cause them no harm. She raced to his side, kneeling beside him in a futile attempt to shake him awake.

"Gabriel!" she cried, trying to shake him awake. "Wake up! You need to wake up!"

He hadn't even flinched when the coyote had bitten into his flesh, so deep into his injuries and self-despair had he sunk. She knew he wanted to die, and the coyotes were probably as good a way as any as far as he was concerned.

"Gabriel!" she shouted. "Please! You have to wake up. I can't do this without you!"

The flare grew dimmer, the alpha male who appeared to be the pack leader edging closer, lips pulled back baring its teeth as it snarled. They were hungry, and hunger was making them bold.

"Fuck you!" Audrey snarled at the pack leader. "You think you can just come into _my _territory and decide who lives or dies? Fuck you!" All the hatred she had ever felt all these years, against her parents, against the world, against god, flooded through her veins. It wasn't just the alpha male she was speaking to now, but god himself.

The others edged closer, circling closer and closer on their bellies as the last of the flare died out. Gabriel did not move. Was he even still alive? The alpha male leaped, intent upon feeding upon the meat it had come to consume. A passage from that stupid fucking bible which had fallen open into some weird rantings, Leviticus 16, popped into her mind. The message. The message Michael had wanted her to understand.

"You think you can dump all your fucking sins onto some helpless scapegoat and send him into the desert to die?" Audrey screamed, grabbing the mace and swinging it with every ounce of strength she had, picturing she was smiting the genocidal fucking god who had condemned her species to die without ever even bothering to come down and help them, first. "You think you can just transfer your guilt over what a fucking _loser _of a deity you really are onto your most loyal dog, kick him to the curb, and then and all is going to be forgiven by the children you tried to murder? Well … fuck you!"

Her swing was awkward, more the awkward swing of a toddler swinging a bat at a T-ball than a warrior wielding a weapon. Comical, even. But the rage which boiled through Audrey's veins as she struck at the alpha male leading the assault the way she _wanted _to strike at the asshole who had sent angels down to murder her people was anything but comical. Somehow, the unearthly weapon made contact with the alpha male and shattered its rib cage as though it were made of twigs, the sick crack audible even as the creature gave its death yelp and fell to the ground.

"Fuck you!" Audrey hissed, awkwardly heaving the mace as high as her waist, the highest she could lift it without getting any momentum behind her swing, and then slamming it down upon the panting alpha males head, killing it.

The other coyotes hesitated, unsure what to do now that their leader was dead, and then turned tail, fading into the night with little more than a rumble and a few whines.

"That's how it's fucking done, you motherfucker" Audrey hissed, shaking her fist at the sky. "Go after the alpha male, and the rest will fall into line. This is _our _planet now. And someday, we're going to do the same thing to you. You hear me?"

She heaved up the 40-pound mace and tried to swing the handle over her shoulder the way she had seen some comic-book hero wield their battle axe, and failed. As soon as the head of the mace swung over her shoulder, it was weighted to far to the rear. The momentum pulled her over backwards onto her ass. She landed with a thump in the soft sand and shuddered with emotion, unhurt, not sure whether to laugh or cry.

"I guess I'd better learn a little humility, huh, Gabriel?" she asked, deciding _neither _course of action would suit the person she now realized she needed to become. Michael wasn't going to fly down from the heavens a second time to save them. If she wanted saving, she was going to have to get up off her ass and do it herself.

He murmured slightly in his sleep, the first sound he had made in over three days, ever since something inside him had broken at the recognition that he was one of _them _now. Well … tough shit. She, Audrey Anderson, had found gods scapegoat wandering in the desert and wasn't going to let the evil bastard off that easily by letting his scapegoat die. Until now, she had been apprehensive about being so close to the monster god had sent to kill them, only getting close enough to tend to him and then backing away a safe distance. But not anymore. He was _her _scapegoat now, and as soon as he got better, she was going to 'sic him on the sadistic fucking bastard to rip off the evil bastards face.

"Gabriel," she said gently, touching the swollen tissue on his cheek, trying to find a place that was neither wounded nor swollen with the infection which was wracking his body. "We're going to get you warm, okay? You're not alone. I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you until you're well enough to take care of yourself. You have my word."

Only hesitating slightly at the thought of the blasphemy she was about to commit, she lifted up the now-filthy yellow blanket, encrusted with desert dust, and slid under the blanket with him, wrapping her body around his torso to loan him the maximum amount of body heat she was capable of generating. She had replaced his undergarments as soon as they had dried and changed them several times since then, always mindful not to bruise his dignity any more than absolutely necessary, but they were both cold and she wasn't going to allow some stupid, meaningless words in some old book to prevent her from doing what was sensible. She'd spent the _last _night sleeping, alone, buried in the sand because there was only one blanket and she'd given it to him.

"Don't worry," she whispered into his ear. "When the bible said god cast down the fallen angels for laying down with mortal women, I think they were doing a lot more than just this. Trust me … I know what I'm talking about. Besides … he's _already _cast you down, and you're a little too old for me by like, a few billion years."

Her heart racing every time he shifted in his sleep, after a while she realized he was too weak to do anything to her even if she invited the entire girls cheerleading squad to do much more sinful things to him besides simply share their warmth. The tiny movements were the most she had felt him move in over three days, although from the distance she had kept between them when she was not immediately tending to him, perhaps she simply hadn't noticed. After a long time, Audrey drifted off to sleep.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"So that weird tattoo thing on my arm changed, showing that cliff peak you fell off of up above us, and I thought to myself, hey, why not climb it and see what else is out there," the Prophet said, prattling along as though she were holding a conversation with him, as she smeared something sticky onto his wounds. She had speaking to him thus for a long time now, although he had no idea how much time had passed.

"So I get up there, and what do I find, but this," she said, her voice cheerful. "A big old knife. Sharp … too. I think you dropped it before you fell off that cliff, but, hey, no more falling on my ass trying to swing that big ol' mace of yours at the coyotes and the rattlesnakes that keep smelling your blood and coming to eat you."

He groaned in pain as, in her zeal, her touch became less gentle than usual, compressing the shoulder wound she was tending and sending jarring stabs of pain into his chest. He could no longer feel the stretch of stitches pulling his wounds shut. At some point, he must have healed enough for her to remove them.

"Oh, sorry about that," the Prophet said, her voice suddenly serious. "Gabriel? Are you ever going to wake up?"

He panted, trying to make the lungs that finally seemed to know how to breathe to bring oxygen into his lungs, not simply out of some unnecessary reflex the Father had imbued his species with for reasons known only to Him. With great difficulty he formed the words.

"Who?" he finally managed to hiss out, the effort of exhaling that single word causing him to sink back with exhaustion, unable to say more.

"Who what?" the Prophet asked, hope tingeing her voice as she squeezed his hand. "Gabriel … tell me what you need and I'll do my best to help you."

He lay there a long time, his lungs shuddering with breath as he willed himself the strength to ask the question he had wanted to ask ever since the voice had first found him at the base of the cliff and called him a jackass. The light of the Father had left him, but now that he reached deep down inside of himself, he found a _new _strength, weaker and more tentative than that of the Father, but powerful nonetheless. _Her _strength. It was _her _strength that welcomed him to draw upon whatever light it was she used to carry on after the Father had condemned them both to die.

"It's okay, Gabriel," the Prophet said. "You don't have to speak if you don't want to. I'm just glad you're still alive. You just rest now, and we can try again later. Okay? A little bit at a time."

She squeezed his hand and, as she did, he could feel strength pass into him, willing him to live. She no longer had to command him to live and hope he would obey. For days, no, weeks, he thought, it had been _her_ strength keeping him alive. He was not a naturally curious man, but he wanted to know who she was.

"Who … are … you?" he asked, the words coming easier this time, the strength coming not from the light of the heavenly Father, but from the air he breathed in to power his body and the liquids she had poured into his mouth earlier that morning.

So _this _was why humans devoured the Earth. Cast out of Eden and cut off from the light of the Father, they had no choice but to draw strength from whatever source they could in order to survive. Suddenly understanding the lesson she was trying to teach him, he willed his body to soak up the warmth from the sun, the air that he breathed, the strength she gave him so willingly from the small hand that had been clasped with his so much of the time that he had been ill. For the first time since he had fallen, Gabriel chose to obey the command of the Prophet who had been sent to guide him out of the wilderness and heal his own wounds.

"My name is Audrey," the Prophet said, her voice quivering with emotion as she addressed him directly for the first time. "You've been out of it … it's been forty days since the world came to an end. Give or take a few days."

The name meant nothing to him. Before … all he had to do was think of somebody and everything about that person would jump into his mind, but not now. Cut off from the Father, those abilities were denied to him. But new understanding dawned on the edge of his subconscious. One hand gripped his tighter, while the other caressed his cheek. Her voice quivered with emotion, and he thought he could detect tears. Whoever this woman was, something had changed since the first time he had heard her voice tinged with hatred order him to get up.

He wanted to see her. The light was blinding, but he forced his eyes to focus, the eyes that had opened and closed as he had risen and fallen in and out of consciousness, but had, until now, been unable to see. He wanted to see this Prophet whose voice, whose touch, although only a shadow of the heavenly Father, still contained enough spark of her own divinity that she had been able to replace the light of the Father until he could figure out on his own what he needed to do to survive.

"Gabriel?" she asked, her voice only inches from his face as she caressed his cheek. "Wake up. Please wake up." It was not the command of the first few days, but rather a plea not so unlike the plea he had heard in Michaels' voice when he had pleaded with him there was another way. Right before he had placed obedience over what his heart knew was right and obeyed the Father's command to kill his own brother.

Dark blue eyes the color of velvet stared earnestly into his. Tattooed between her eyebrows lay the heavenly script, not simply the mark of a Prophet, but the command of the Father that it had been _her_ hands which had first welcomed the Savior into this world, _her _hosannas of joy which had first greeted the Saviors ears, and _her _willingsacrifice of her own life to save the life of the Savior which had convinced the Father to give her species a second chance. Audrey had the heavenly version of a 'get out of jail free' card tattooed across her forehead declaring that anyone who dared touch her would invoke the wrath of the Left Hand of God, her appointed guardian.

"You bear the mark of a Prophet," he said, wondering if she even _knew_ what she was, knew what he was being commanded to do. He had not simply been cast out of heaven, forbidden to return, as had been done to Lucifer. The Father had given Gabriel a pathway to earn his way back into His good graces. For whatever reason, Audrey intrigued the Father. Gabriel was being instructed to follow the Prophet until she had taught him whatever lesson it was the Father wished for him to learn.

"Yeah," she said, self-consciously rubbing her forehead and wrinkling up her nose in disgust. "They just … appeared. Like … now I'm some … circus freak, or something."

"It is a great honor," Gabriel told her, his voice almost a deep monotone as he hid his vulnerability behind his reticence. "But I think somehow our roles have become reversed. It is _me _who is supposed to protect _you._"

"I never was very good at doing what I was told," Audrey said defiantly. "Besides, that genocidal fucking maniac left you so banged up that the only thing you were going to defend was the hole in the sand where your ass landed after he tossed you off of that cliff like some fucking scapegoat."

"You take the Father's name in vain?" Gabriel asked, stiffening.

Normally such blasphemy would earn the speaker at minimum a knock over the head with his mace to teach them never to take the Lord's name in vain, but even as the thought crossed his mind, he could see the Mark upon the Prophet's forehead shift and signal the Prophet's disobedience was somehow the source of her strength. The strength that perplexed not only Gabriel, but also the heavenly Father. The strength that, even now, he could feel flowing from her hand into his as she used whatever spark of the divine she had managed to develop on her own despite being cast off from the graces of the Father. She was a puzzle. A puzzle the Father wished for Gabriel to solve for him.

"Hey, well," Audrey said, the warmth in her eyes disappearing and a mask of cool indifference sliding into its place, "if you don't like it, I can always leave."

"No," he said quickly. Too quickly. He could see she had a Prophet's ability to look straight into the souls of others and lay them bare. Now that he was mortal, did he even have a soul? He had no idea. But this was the longest amount of time he had ever spent with any human, especially a female, and it made him uncomfortable. It was an emotion he wasn't used to experiencing.

Memories of just how low the Father had knocked him down to make him dependent upon her flooded into his mind. She had … oh. Color flooded his cheeks at the thought of this woman-child having to … tend … him … in ways he had never even had to learn to tend himself, and he was mortified.

"I'm just glad you're finally awake," Audrey said quietly, a small smile replacing the defiant pout she had just donned as she gave his hand a familiar squeeze. "For a while there, I thought you weren't going to make it."

Gabriel was silent. Although he had been taught to give thanks to the Father his entire existence, never once had he ever been beholden to a mere human for anything. Under any circumstances the words would not have come easily to his lips, for despite an existence spent carrying the word of the Father to others, Gabriel had rarely had many occasions to utter words that were purely his own. Humans had always been little more than creatures he had secretly held with contempt. But he had to try. He wouldn't call it gratitude as he wasn't entirely certain he was glad he now found himself alive, but he owed her his life.

"Thank you," he said, his words flat and lacking the proper gratitude even to his own ears. What else _could _he say? There were no words to express the tangle of emotions he was feeling right now.

"Sleep, you big oaf," she ordered, touching his forehead and running her fingers back through his ebony hair. Affectionate. Her touch was affectionate, but not in any way that felt forbidden. Although his ability to read the thoughts of others was now gone, Gabriel could detect no hint of prurience or desire in her demeanor. "I think you're going to start getting better a lot faster now that you've decided to stay."

Gabriel had always been the obedient one. He could hear the command in her voice, the spark of the divine ordering him to rest so she could help him finish healing his broken body, and he obeyed that command, drifting back into a restful sleep that was not so deep that he wasn't aware of her sliding in under the lone blanket they shared and curling up next to him to share her warmth. Warmth wasn't all she shared. Somehow, by being the lamb brave enough to lay down with the lion, it enabled her strength to pass into him even as she slept. It felt … warm.

The thought crossed his mind that it was forbidden for angels to lay down with mortal women, but he pushed it out of his mind. He had been cast down into the earth, the wind sucked out from beneath his wings so he had been unable to fly, and dashed upon the rocks as punishment for whatever transgression he had committed to displease the Father. He was no longer an angel. Nor, he sensed, was the Prophet motivated by prurient interests.

If anything … he sensed she viewed him as some sort of … pet?


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Ready?" Audrey asked. "One … two … three … up!"

She heaved where she had wedged herself at Gabriel's back, careful to avoid the razor-sharp feathers of his wings, and shoved with all of her might to help him get into a sitting position. After more than a month being unconscious without moving, Gabriel was finally awake. And he wanted to sit up. He grunted in pain as the motion twisted the semi-healed sword wound in his gut, but sat up nonetheless. That _had _to be painful as hell, she thought to herself. She leaped back just in time to avoid being sliced open by one of his razor-sharp wings as he instinctively flapped the appendages to steady himself.

"Hey, watch it!" she snapped.

"I am sorry," he said very formally, stiffening and holding his wings absolutely still until she extricated herself from her position and got a safe distance. "I was not sure I still had them."

Audrey frowned, unsure of what he spoke of. "How can you not be sure you still had wings? They were like, busted, in like, two dozen places. They _had _to have hurt like a bastard."

"I am not used to feeling the weight of my own body," Gabriel said in a deep monotone, his face expressionless. "Or pain. Not like this. It is hard to make sense of which sensation belongs to what part of my body."

"Oh," she said, pretending she understood when, really , she didn't. It was the same 'oh' she used when, for example, a teacher gave a long, involved answer to a question in algebra class and the solution to the problem _still _didn't make sense, but she didn't wish to appear stupid. 'Oh' was a stock answer to signal understanding when, really, no understanding had occurred. How could you have existed for billions of years and never felt your own body before?

"Thank you," Gabriel said very formally, adjusting his balance so he didn't simply fall back into the hole in the sand where his body had gradually sunk.

From the awkward way he moved, Audrey suspected Gabriel had never felt the full weight of the Earth's gravity before, either. No more than he had ever had any reason to learn to drink, or swallow, or to take a piss. She was about to feed him solid food, something she had been unable to get into him while he had been unconscious, but which he obviously needed to survive judging by the amount of weight he had lost while he had lingered close to death. Only the sugar in the endless six-pack of Seven Up Michael had surreptitiously left behind had energized Gabriel's body while he had lingered close to death.

'_Solid food,'_ she thought silently to herself. '_Just wait until he has to deal with the aftermath of that! -He's- going to clean up –that- mess!'_

"Here," she said aloud, handing him one of the Power Bars that had mysteriously appeared in the glove box of the police cruiser along with yet another useful book. "Eat."

"Eat?" Gabriel asked. "I do not require such sustenance."

"Eat!" Audrey ordered. "That weakness you're feeling in your body right now? It's not from your injuries. Your injuries are almost healed. You're weak because you need to eat."

"I never…" Gabriel started to state in a monotone.

"Shut up and eat!" Audrey shouted at him with an anger that surprised her. "I don't _give _a fuck aboutwhat you did or did _not_ need to do before that asshole threw you off a cliff. I only care about what you need to do _now!_ Eat!"

Gabriel glowered at her, his brute features dark and sullen as he studied her as though she were some laboratory experiment in science class. For a moment it occurred to her that she should be afraid of him, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. Michael had said his brother would not hurt her anymore, and as angry as she was at Michael for saddling her with looking after his fallen brother, she knew she could trust him. The silence stretched between them for what seemed to be an eternity, Gabriel giving her his most authoritative glower, and Audrey refusing to break eye contact or back down.

"I don't know how," Gabriel finally said, resignation tingeing his voice. "I have never had occasion before to consume worldly sustenance."

He looked … defeated. The same look that had appeared on his face the day he had realized he had a bladder and had no idea how to control it. The look which had transformed her profound hatred of him into something else. Compassion.

"I'll teach you," Audrey said softly. "Now that you're awake, it should be a lot easier to explain things to you. Here. Like this."

Audrey cracked the wrapper of the Power Bar and took a bite, exaggerating the movements of chewing thoroughly, and then swallowed with an enormous gulp that was clearly audible. She then handed the rest of the bar to the angel, who viewed the morsel with suspicion before decisively biting into it like a dog's jaws snapping shut upon a bone. Immediately, Gabriel donned a look of utter disgust and froze, not sure whether to chew the chunk of power bar he had just bit into or spit it out. Audrey started to laugh.

"You mock me?" Gabriel asked, a blend of anger and confusion crossing his brute features which Audrey found even _more _comical, his words inadvertently causing the chunk of power bar he had just found so offensive to come tumbling out of his mouth and onto his tunic. She couldn't help it. She laughed even harder.

"Ohmigod… no!" she snorted out between laughs. Gabriel's glower grew even darker, storm clouds gathering in his eyes at the mirth she enjoyed at his expense. "It's just … Power Bars … taste … awful! That was _my _first reaction the first time I ever bit into one." She laughed even harder, the first laughter she had experienced since … since the world had come to an end … until she was out of breath and her sides hurt, and then she started to cry, great sobs wracking her body as the full weight of everything she had just lost came tumbling down upon her.

"Prophet?" Gabriel asked, confusion in his eyes at her inexplicable transformation from laughter to sorrow. "I don't understand."

He sat there coiled for action, as though he were certain he was supposed to do _something _about the sobbing ball of humanity which kneeled before him offering prostrations of the terrible-tasting mortal food she urged him to consume, but not sure _what. _Audrey now understood that without her there to guide him, Gabriel was lost. In order to humiliate him, the Father had rendered Gabriel even _more _helpless than the baby he had originally sent him to kill, and knowledge that this helplessness _was _a punishment angered her, causing her mood to change yet again. To rage.

"Fucking asshole!" Audrey swore, getting to her feet, picking up the bible which boredom had finally caused her to retrieve from the police cruiser and bring back into the camp, and throwing it towards the base of the cliff where Gabriel had fallen with all of her might. "Fucking, fucking asshole!"

"Prophet?" Gabriel asked, his expression confused as he lurched forward in an attempt to rise and failed, landing flat on his face. He moaned in pain as injuries that had healed just enough so they were no longer infected or bleeding, but not so healed that they no longer caused pain, made themselves felt.

"Why?" Audrey screamed at the cliff, her anger directed at god. "Why do you humiliate him so when he was only following your _fucking _orders!" Her fingers clenched into claws as she picked up a rock and threw it at the cliff, and then another, and another, and another, and another, screaming obscenities that made no sense even to her own ears. She threw rocks at the cliff until she was so exhausted that she stumbled as she aimed to throw each rock, the rocks falling little farther than a few feet in front of her, and then she raged some more. Audrey raged at the god who had ordered his most loyal dog to exterminate them and then been so cowardly that he ordered that dog be put down rather than admit he was fallible.

And when her body was too exhausted to rage any more, she fell to her knees and began to cry.

It was some time later when it dawned on her that, at some point, strong arms had surrounded her and pulled her into his chest, silently holding her as she sobbed like he were holding a mewling kitten. Gabriel had inched his way over on his hands and knees, like an injured dog crawling to give what comfort it could to it's even _more _injured owner.

"I am sorry I displeased you," Gabriel finally said a long time later, after her tears had stopped because she no longer had any liquid left in her body with which to produce them, only shudders wracking her body where her rage had just expended itself against the unhearing rocks of the cliff. God couldn't hear her and, even if he could, god didn't care.

"You did no such thing," Audrey whispered, looking into his eyes and seeing that he felt fear. Fear that her displeasure would cause _her _to abandon him the same way the Father had abandoned him. Her gift. Michael had enhanced her already existing gift to look into the souls of others and see what motivated them, the gift which had made her so uncaring and defiant at such a young age. She could see now that Gabriel was terrified of losing the only spark he had left of the Father who had abandoned him to die. Her.

"I just…" Her words tapered off. She had no words to describe what she felt, so she didn't bother. She just curled up in his arms and let him give what awkward comfort he could, comfort she could tell he wasn't used to giving, but which he tried to give anyways. At some point, exhaustion caused her to drift off to sleep.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Gabriel crouched, hunched behind the shelter of the creosote bush, out of sight of the camp where the Prophet couldn't see, trying very hard to finish the lesson he had come to teach himself before his charge got back from the mysterious foraging journey she made every few days to someplace she refused to disclose. Just once, he wished to save himself the indignity of her having to teach him something that came automatically to humans, and the Prophet appeared just as eager to have him go off and learn it alone.

There had been no more repeats of the bizarre outburst she had made the day he had been unable to consume the mortal food she offered to him, but he always felt as though he were walking on eggshells, not sure how his actions would cause her to react. She had become reticent since that day, patiently teaching him how to take the horrible tasting 'power bars' into his mouth, grind them using his teeth and tongue, and then work the repulsive masticated substance towards the back of his throat so he could swallow it. The background noise of cheerful chatter he had grown dependent upon to keep his spirit anchored in his broken body when he had been unconscious had ceased that day and not returned. The Prophet still spoke, but she did so as little as possible.

Even less than him…

She had been right, of course. Much of the weakness he had felt in his body was not merely from his injuries, but also because the withdrawal of light from the heavenly Father necessitated that his body now fend for itself for sustenance. To survive, Gabriel now had to eat.

And eating, the Prophet had explained, had an inevitable side effect…

"Father," Gabriel whispered, glad the Prophet was not present so she would not hear him beg. "Why have you condemned me to experience such humiliation? I beg you … show me what task you need me to perform with this Prophet so I can be welcomed back into your good graces once more?"

It had only been five days since he had awoken from the dead, but in five days, he had learned that any mention of the Father's name elicited a string of expletives from the Prophet he had been charged to protect. She had a foul mouth, far fouler than the most horrific demon he had ever battled deep within the bowels of hell. But unlike a demon, whose words only carried lies, the Prophet's foul language carried the sword of purest truth. And hurt. When the Prophet spoke, her words cut more powerfully than the most powerful archangel wielding the strongest sword charged with the light of the heavenly father himself. When she spoke, he felt as though she had just bludgeoned him with his own mace.

Perhaps that is why she chose now to speak to him as little as possible? She had things she wished to speak to him about, but she feared bludgeoning him down even further than the Father had done when he had cast him out of heaven for failing him.

The wind shifted, wafting the stench of his own now-mortal flesh up to his nostrils, and he felt sickened. It was bad enough that his body required sustenance, was subject to gravity, and could feel pain, but why was it necessary for him to stink? It had been many days since the last time it had rained. The Prophet was nervous about using their water to bathe, explaining the place they now occupied had no natural sources of water _other _than the sparse rain, and that at some point their supplies were going to run out. Soon, she explained, it would stop raining altogether and they would need to walk out of this wilderness and return to civilization, if a civilization could be found that would accept a member of the species who had, so recently, tried to exterminate hers.

If only he could get this confounded 'business' she had tasked him with out of the way so he could do something else!

He had been horrified when she had explained to him, blushing slightly and hemming and hawing as though it were a taboo subject, the mechanics of how the mortal shell with which he was now burdened worked. She had not told him, of course, as he had consumed those first few vile 'power bars' what the natural consequences of his actions would be, but rather waited until the end of the second day to enlighten him he would need to excuse himself from her company from time to time in order to accomplish the task he now attempted.

The task which had, thus far, eluded him…

"Father," he prayed quietly, barely more than a whisper, "please, at least, spare me this indignity. If she is forced to do this, too, for me, as she was forced to do everything else, it will be more humiliation than I can endure."

The first day, the day she had fallen to pieces and cried herself to sleep in his arms, it had been all he could do to wriggle over to where she had stood, flinging rocks at the cliffs screaming at them in a language he could no longer understand, to comfort her after she had fallen to her knees in despair. She never spoke of that outburst, but somehow he knew it was related to him. By how he had failed her by being unable to accomplish something so simple as consuming mortal food, a task he had watched countless humans and animals effortlessly accomplish for billions of years, but never realized how difficult it was until he had been forced to do it himself.

Since then, the Prophet pushed him to use his muscles and learn how to maneuver in the unfamiliar gravity of the planet which had never, before now, been able to capture him in its weight. And Gabriel, of course, obeyed. Whatever task she commanded of him, he complied as best he could, suppressing his frustration that things he had never had occasion to think about before now required conscious effort and thought. His helplessness did not surprise her, but it made her furious. Not at him, but the Father.

Audrey didn't like the Father. He had not seen such hatred since the day the Father had torn the wings from his elder brother, Lucifer, and cast him down into hell to suffer for the transgression of disobeying. The hatred had not been from Lucifer. Lucifer had defied the father by refusing to order his men to abandon the mortal women they had taken as wives. The only other time Gabriel had seen such hatred was from the Father, himself. Gabriel had not seen such rage as possessed by the Prophet since the day the Father had fractured heaven and carved out one-third of it to punish Lucifer for his disobedience by using it to create a fiery realm called hell.

But like the Father, the Prophet was capable of great acts of selflessness. She never spoke of just how it was she had happened upon him in the desert, or what sacrifice she had made to earn her the Mark of the Prophet. She seemed surprised that _he _didn't remember anything about it. Instead of enlightening him, however, she had looked at him as though he were a creature to be pitied and held her tongue. Whatever secret she was keeping from him, when she disclosed it, he had a feeling it would make him feel even _worse _than he already felt.

The pressure in his abdomen increased. Perhaps now? If he had to ask her to explain it one more time, he swore he would die. Although … the last time he had lost control of one of his bodily functions … he'd _tried _to die. The Prophet had refused to let him go, and the Father refused to accept him back. He wasn't sure whether he was glad he was still alive and not merely cast down into hell as Lucifer had been, or disappointed. Gabriel wasn't used to having to experience his own feelings without the light of the Father to buffet him from the highs and lows. It felt … overwhelming.

At least he still had his wings. They were useless, for he could barely get them out of the way so he could walk without using the Prophet as a crutch, much less fly, but there was comfort to be found in the fact that, whatever the Father thought of his failing him, that it hadn't been so grievous that the Father had also torn off his wings.

"Arrrgh!" he grunted, experiencing a curious sensation of combined pain and pleasure as, finally, he was able to accomplish the task she had sent him behind the bushes to do. Revulsion nearly caused him to retch up the vile 'power bar' he had eaten earlier as the stench wafted up to greet his nostrils like sulphur assaulting the senses in hell. Even before he could finish the second part of the task, using the dried weeds the Prophet had explained to him needed to be used afterwards so the aftermath of his shame did not cling to his mortal shell, flies were buzzing around him, greedily feeding on the foul substance which he had just excreted from his own, accursed body.

"Shit…" he whispered, stepping back and, for the first time in his life, truly understanding the expletive he had heard uttered so many times over the ages. For the first time in his very long existence, he understood. At last, he understood something which he had been too stupid to even realize he didn't now.

Rubbing his hands with clean sand the way she had shown him to clean the filth from them without use of water, Gabriel got unsteadily to his feet and awkwardly ambled back to camp, only stumbling twice on the trip back and landing in a saguaro cactus once.

Lesson learned.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"It's time for us to start planning how we're going to work our way back to civilization," Audrey said, uncertainty tingeing her voice.

"Have you been given a sign?" Gabriel asked, pointing to the spot in her arm where the tattoos which had marked her body ever since Michael had healed her wounds were the most changeable, although she was gradually becoming aware that the tattoos on _other _parts of her body also held significance.

"Something more mundane than a sign," Audrey answered, not sure how much to tell him. She decided to give him a line from that yellowed, poorly photocopied Army Survival manual which had just appeared one day shortly after she had gotten stuck here. "We're almost out of supplies. If we don't get moving soon, we're going to be in no shape to move later."

Michael wished for Gabriel not to know who'd charged her with the task of caring for him. Telling him that the supplies which appeared every few days in the wrecked police cruiser had begun to constitute less food and more along the lines of supplies for a long journey might be telling him more than was wise to let him know. Audrey had kept the existence of the police car a secret by ordering Gabriel to guard the camp, but now that he was nearly recovered, he had begun to question her. Thankfully, Gabriel was utterly clueless about such mundane matters as how the sawdust-tasting power bars which appeared every few days manifested. Having spent his entire existence receiving manna from heaven and having his mundane needs attended to without thought or effort, it never occurred to him to ask.

"I am capable of making the journey," Gabriel said flatly, his expression flat and unreadable as he bluntly signaled his assent. Gabriel never argued with her. No matter what she asked him to do, ever since that first time when he had hesitated after biting into the power bar and she had fallen to pieces, he did what she asked without question or complaint. Four months had passed since the world had ended. Theirs had become a relationship of companionable silence, punctuated only by the occasional question when some task needed to be done.

The fault lay with her, she supposed. Gabriel was a man of few words. Every facet of his demeanor suggested that reticence was his natural state of being. But Audrey had always been fairly outgoing, at least on the surface. Her parents had expected her to be a social asset, so Audrey had learned at a very young age to sidle up to whichever person her parents wished for her to charm. By the time it had occurred to her to rebel against them, after the dog had died, the habit had become so deeply ingrained that she did it out of sheer force of habit.

"Would you admit to me if you _weren't _capable?" Audrey asked, looking up at his blank expression and searching for hints as to what was going on beneath the surface.

"No," Gabriel said flatly. He was nothing, if not honest.

Silence stretched between them, such silences having become the norm in the months since fate had first thrown them together. It was not an uncomfortable silence, nor was it anger. Audrey simply had things she needed to say, but was not ready to talk about. She had used up every ounce of idle chatter she had still possessed to give Gabriel something to cling to when he had been unconscious, and now she didn't have any left. In a world that had nearly ended, what was the point of talking if it didn't serve a constructive purpose?

"You need to teach me how to fight," Audrey finally said, carefully drawing the knife she had found on top of the cliff and examining the blade for sharpness. Gabriel had acknowledged the blade was his, but had not asked for it back, nor had Audrey offered to return it. Without words, the two had simply agreed that Audrey needed a weapon to defend herself.

"I am here to protect you," Gabriel said bluntly, his expression still unreadable. It was the slight twitch of his upper lip that tipped Audrey off that Gabriel felt less confident about his ability to act as her protector than he would have liked.

Tact. Audrey was painfully aware that the silent giant already suffered far more than anything mere mortals could dream up to torment the angel who had only recently been so willing to exterminate them without question. For once in her life, she had no stomach for using her acerbic tongue to inflict any more suffering than that sadistic fucking god of his had already dreamed up. Enough! Audrey had meant it when she had shaken her fist at the sky and told god Gabriel had suffered enough. That night, she had forgiven him for his part in the apocalypse. God had offered up his most unquestioningly loyal servant as a sin offering, a scapegoat, for his own shortcomings. _Not _tormenting Gabriel was Audrey's way of telling god his apology was not accepted.

"What happens if we get separated?" she asked, using an excuse she knew he would find acceptable. "Something unexpected. Would you leave me incapable of defending myself?"

Tact. She didn't remind him of the night the coyotes had come to feed upon his mortal flesh, but knew he thought of it now by the slight twitch of the foot the coyotes had chewed upon and subtle way he clenched his fist as though he were reaching for his mace.

Tact. She didn't remind him he was now mortal, nowhere near as strong as he had been when he had fought with gods' power flowing through his veins. It had taken him three months just to learn to _walk _properly now that Earth's gravity could capture his large body, much less fight, and he still hadn't relearned how to fly. Once he did, he would be far stronger than any other mortal, but until he adjusted to his new physical reality, Gabriel was vulnerable.

Hurtful facts didn't need to be uttered when there were lesser reasons to convince Gabriel to teach her how to fight. Audrey allowed the silence to stretch between them while he pondered her request. She'd learned to make a suggestion and then leave Gabriel to work his way through his own thoughts. Gabriel was used to following orders, not thinking for himself. She could order him to do something, using the subtle threat of leaving to get him to capitulate, or she could patiently let him work his own way to the same conclusion. Letting gods' most obedient dog work things out for himself was just another way Audrey had of telling god to go fuck off.

"What do you wish for me to teach?" Gabriel finally asked, the release of the slight crease between his eyebrows indicating he had found her request contained merit.

"Everything you know," Audrey said, her words almost a whisper.

Her mind raced ahead to a million things she had seen him do in the brief moments she had seen him in action, battling Michael, tearing the roof off the car, a viscous predator mindlessly attacking its prey the way its master had commanded, but she did not speak of those things. Although she was certain Gabriel remembered vividly the final battle which had resulted in his downfall, for some reason, he did not remember _her. _As Michael had said, _she _had not been the quarry, so he had had no interest in her beyond an annoyance to push out of his way so he could focus on his _true _prey, Charlie's baby.

"The Father created me to be what I am," Gabriel said after a moment of silence. "There has never been a time when I have _not _known how to fight. I am not certain I will be an adequate teacher." There was silence between them once more.

"You now understand how frustrating it is to learn something that others were born knowing," Audrey said finally. "That knowledge will help give you the patience to teach."

"Patience has never been a failing of mine," Gabriel said.

"Good," Audrey replied, realizing they had just reached an agreement and rewarding him by giving him a wolfish smile. "Then it will be no problem when you have to repeat the same lesson hundreds of times before I learn it."


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

"Ugh!" Audrey grunted as Gabriel easily threw her to the ground for what had to be the hundredth time in twenty minutes. For nearly a month they had sparred together, and for nearly a month, Audrey had been getting her ass kicked.

"Why do human females wear such impractical attire on their feet?" Gabriel asked flatly, the deepening of the slight crease between his eyes the only hint he gave of his disapproval of her high heels.

"I wasn't expecting the world to end four months ago when I put them on my feet that morning," Audrey said, picking herself up off the ground and dusting the desert sand off her filthy, too-short skirt. "If I'd known Armageddon was going to happen that day, I'd have worn combat boots."

"Fists up," Gabriel said. "Keep one up blocking your face, the other protecting your heart. When we get back to this civilization of yours, the first thing we need to do is locate more suitable attire for you to wear."

"What's wrong with my attire?" Audrey asked deliberately baiting him as she circled, looking for an opening. "Don't you like it?" To accentuate her defiance, she deliberately adjusted her bustier before launching herself at his head with another punch.

"It is not fitting for a Prophet to wear such suggestive attire," Gabriel stated flatly, easily blocking her punch before knocking her onto her backside once more, "and it is not practical for combat purposes."

It was an old argument between them, one of the few areas Audrey felt safe baiting him without straying into areas she knew would be hurtful. It was strange, caring that her cutting truths didn't truly hurt someone even as she deliberately taunted them with her defiance in other ways. Her clothing had always been selected to elicit the maximum attention from her parents, the parents too busy to pay attention to her otherwise, a visible sign of her rebellion. Now … it was comical, but it wasn't like she had many clothing choices out in the middle of the desert where fate had dumped the two of them together.

"And tromping through 110 degree heat wearing metal armor is practical?" Audrey taunted, a huge grin on her face as she feinted a right hook and then punched him in the gut with her left. "Haha!" She did a little victory dance, a dance that was short-lived when he reached out and knocked her on her ass once more because she was gloating instead of blocking his punches.

"I am not wearing my armor at the moment," Gabriel said emotionlessly, reaching down to help her up, "because you are not my enemy."

Audrey's smile disappeared. Five months they had been together, four of them with him awake, and never once had he indicated that he had any memory of her from before although _clearly _he remembered everything else even though he never spoke of it.

"Prophet?" Gabriel asked, his dispassionate expression disappearing and concern registering in his eyes. Gabriel never displayed any emotion unless he was truly perplexed or fearful he had displeased her.

"You don't remember, do you?" Audrey asked, her voice soft and small as she weighed whether now should be the time she told him what had been on her mind.

"Remember what?" Gabriel asked. Clueless. For such a powerful being, Gabriel was utterly clueless.

Audrey glanced down at the compass rose which had appeared amongst the tattoos on her hand this morning, a compass rose that pointed north-northwest. She had never been orienteering, but both the ancient Boy Scout Manual and also the Army Survival Guide explained how to use a compass to navigate in the wilderness. She had not hiked back to the cruiser for supplies for days because Gabriel was re-teaching himself how to hunt and mace-smashed roasted rattlesnake had been on the menu several times, but she suspected when she got there, she would look in some overlooked cubby and find a compass. It was time.

"We need to go for supplies," she said softly.

"You never want me to go with you," Gabriel said, the question clear in the raised eyebrow he gave her now. He had never questioned her insistence that he stay behind during her foraging trips after the first time when she had threatened to leave him behind if he ever followed her.

"Come with me today," she said, almost a whisper.

"What is it you haven't wanted me to see?" Gabriel asked.

"You'll remember once you get there."

Audrey had not lay alongside of him to share her body heat since the day he had become well enough to sit up and eat solid food. He had insisted she take the one, sole blanket, and she had not protested. The contact he so desperately needed when he'd been grievously injured was no longer necessary, so she didn't risk getting close. Although Audrey had long ago stopped fearing him, sometimes when he moved suddenly or looked at her a certain way, she cringed. He trusted her, but she would never fully trust _him _and he knew it. It was time she reminded him of why.

They walked the mile-and-a-half hike back to the cruiser in silence.

"I remember this," Gabriel said softly, guilt tingeing his voice. "I make no excuses for misconstruing the Father's intent. All I can say is that they were unharmed when I fell from grace. As for the others …"

"But do you remember _me?"_

"No."

Audrey walked approximately 1000 feet forward from where the car had come to rest, to a spot in the side of the road stained a darker brown than the rest of the sand. She could see recognition dawning in Gabriel's eyes as she sat down in the patch of dried blood that had long ago sunk into the earth, the slight discoloration and presence of several dark, razor-edged feathers the only indication that something had come to pass on that spot.

"This is where I died," Audrey whispered.

Horror registered in his face, the emotionless mask cast aside as Gabriel gave her a rare glimpse of the emotion he carried inside. His wings flared upward, quivering with emotion, as memory of that moment flashed back in his mind, and then instinctively curled around his body in a cage, the same cage he had formed when he had shot through the windshield of the car.

"You were not the quarry," Gabriel said, his voice quivering. "I did not intend for you to die."

"I know," Audrey said. "Just before we hit the ground, you turned."

"I tried to protect you," Gabriel said, kneeling down beside her and reverently touching the discolored sand. "But I knew there was no way your frail human body could survive such an impact, especially when only the light of the father enabled me to survive myself. The life force had already left your body by the time I picked myself up off the ground."

"Why did god change his mind?" Audrey asked.

"I don't know," Gabriel whispered. "But the Mark of the Prophet on your forehead lists three jubilations to your name. I never … I did not dare question you on them."

"Why?"

"I have fallen from grace," Gabriel said, sorrow tingeing his voice and eyes. "I do not have the right to question a Prophet of god."

"What do my markings say?" she asked.

"It says that your hands were the hands that first welcomed the savior into this world," Gabriel said, pointing to one of the marks on her forehead.

"Michael sat at Charlies' back urging her to push while I delivered the baby," Audrey said. "I was terrified."

"It says that your hosannas of joy were the first sound the savior heard as he entered this world," Gabriel stated, pointing to a second mark on her forehead.

"It was the first time I had ever seen a baby born," Audrey said softly. "Him taking his first breath was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I cried tears of joy as I cut the umbilical cord."

"It says…" Gabriel said raggedly, tears coming into his eyes, and then tried again. "It says…" He was unable to finish, great sobs wracking his body as he bowed down to the ground and began to cry.

"What does it say, Gabriel?" Audrey asked, gently touching his shoulder and placing one finger under his chin, coaxing him to look her in the eye.

"It says that you sacrificed your life to save the life of the Savior," Gabriel said pointing to the third mark on her forehead, tears streaming down his face.

"After you tore the roof off the car and came for him," Audrey said gently, "I crawled onto your back to stop you. Your feathers cut into my belly like razor blades, but I was so angry at you, angry at a god that would come after a helpless child, that I blocked it out. I hated you so much for what you were trying to do… I knew what Jeep had in mind when he accelerated the car past 90 miles-per-hour and I knew he would not do it if it meant killing _me._ So I told him to do it. To slam on the brakes even though I knew it would lead to my death because I hoped that by doing so, it would also kill _you_."

"Why, then, did you save me after the Father punished me?" Gabriel asked, more a cry of agony than a question.

"Why did the Father change his mind?" Audrey asked, answering his question with another question.

Gabriel was silent for a moment, tears silently streaming down his face, as he contemplated the answer to the question which had been tormenting the both of them for months.

"When the Savior first came to your world," Gabriel said, "the people he tried to teach betrayed him. At his trial, the prefect who was charged with adjudicating the matter could find no fault with him, but his accusers insisted he was guilty. Pontius Pilate gave your people a choice. The life of the Savior. Or the life of another man, a criminal named Barabbas. Nobody spoke for Jesus. The people rioted and chose Barabbas."

"The other man was named _Jesus _Bar-Abbas," Audrey said, the obscure Sunday school lesson from that lone stint of First Communion lessons jumping into her mind. "Jesus was a very common name back then, and Bar-Abbas means 'son of the father.' When the people rioted, they very well may have thought they _were _shouting for Jesus, Son of the Father."

Gabriel started to shudder, curling up and wrapping his wings around himself as though cold.

"You were there, weren't you?" Audrey asked gently. "What did you see?"

"I got there just as the crowd rioted and began to chant 'Bar-Abbas,'" Gabriel said. "The Savior forbade us to interfere, and the Father wished to teach him a lesson so the Savior would give up his fruitless endeavor and come home. I never bothered to consider what the crowd _thought _they were chanting. I have no way to go back in time and find out, but the Savior always begged the father to forgive them because they hadn't understood what they had done."

"Why did the Father change his mind, Gabriel?" Audrey asked, caressing his cheek.

"The Father refused to allow the Savior to come back a second time to finish what he had started," Gabriel said softly. "Finally, the Savior defied him, slapping him in the face by choosing an unwed mother to be the host for his mortal vessel this time around instead of immaculate conception. It was more than the Father could bear. I haven't seen the Father become that enraged since he cast Lucifer out of heaven for refusing to give up his mortal wife."

"Why did the Father change his mind?" Audrey asked one last time.

"Because you proved to him that the Savior was right," Gabriel said. "That even humans he considered worthless were willing to give up their lives to defend his son."

"I considered no such thing," Audrey said. "All I know is that you were trying to hurt an innocent child, and I'd be damned if I was going to let you do it."

"Why didn't you leave me at the base of that cliff to die," Gabriel asked. "You hated me. You called me a jackass."

"You remember that, huh?" Audrey asked, her demeanor suddenly switching to levity. "You deserved that. You're a real asshole when you're on the hunt."

"It is not in my nature to disobey a direct order from the Father," Gabriel said, his expression uncomfortable. "I have _never _disobeyed him. It is forbidden. Until … until Michael disobeyed him, it was grounds to be cast out of heaven."

"And instead he cast you out," Audrey said.

"It is his will," Gabriel said, resignation and acceptance tingeing his voice. "When the Father changes his mind, he makes a sin offering of the one who failed him."

"You mean when god fucks up," Audrey said, scorn tingeing her voice, "he randomly selects a scapegoat from his herd and casts it out into the wilderness to die. Like in Leveticus 16?"

"Yes," Gabriel said.

"Apology not accepted," Audrey said.

"Why did you save me," Gabriel asked again.

"I just told you," Audrey said, suddenly smiling. "Apology not accepted." She lurched suddenly to her feet, tottering on the ridiculous high heels that she had come to hate, and shook her fist at the sky.

"You hear that, you sadistic fuck?" Audrey shouted. "Apology not accepted! _You're _the one who fucked up, not just Gabriel. _You're _the one whose ass we want to see tossed off a cliff and smashed the rocks and knocked so low that you can't even take a piss! An eye for an eye! Apology … not … accepted!"

"Audrey," Gabriel shouted, grabbing her and tugging her into his chest, trying to shut her up. "That's blasphemy!"

"What's the old windbag going to do?" Audrey screamed in defiance, laughing as she did. "Armageddon? Done that! Angel possessed zombies? Done that! Flood? Done that! Tell me Gabriel … how many times has the old windbag tried to stamp out mankind and failed because people like me inspired people like Lucifer, or Jesus, or Michael to stand up to him?"

"That's blasphemy," Gabriel whispered.

"How many times?" Audrey asked.

"A lot," Gabriel whispered. "More than mankind will ever know."

"Why," Audrey asked.

"Because you continuously defy him," Gabriel said flatly. "He keeps giving you second chances, and you keep making the same mistake."

"_We _keep making the same mistake?" Audrey said. "How about _he _keeps making the same mistake. You can only beat a loyal dog so many times before it turns around and bites you."

"No," Gabriel said.

"Yes," Audrey said, stepping closer to him. "He keeps trying to control us, using fear and threat of force, and we keep slipping the noose and telling the old windbag 'no thank you.'"

"No," Gabriel said.

"Yes," Audrey said. "Fear is not the answer. Do you fear me, Gabriel?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Why," she asked, stepping into his personal space. "Why do you fear me?"

Gabriel began to shudder.

"Why do you fear me?" she asked again, encircling his enormous, muscular girth with her slender arms and gently placing her cheek upon his chest so that she could hear his powerful heart beat.

"Because I don't understand you," Gabriel said.

"Then ask questions," Audrey said quietly, unmoving, just standing there with the angel who had killed her in the spot where she had died, and then been brought back, so that she might tend and eventually forgive the man who was responsible.

"Are we really just dead?" Gabriel asked, "and this is purgatory?"

"I don't think so," Audrey said, giving him an affectionate hug and then stepping back. "They don't have power bars in purgatory. Even the devil has his limits."

"Now what?" he asked.

"You're asking me?" Audrey said.

"You said to ask questions," Gabriel reminded her.

"We go find that compass I'm sure Michael hid someplace in that wrecked cruiser," Audrey stated, "and whatever other survival gear he saw fit to outfit us with, and then we head north-northwest, the way the writing on my hand is pointing."

"You trust Michael to lead you?" Gabriel asked.

"Yes," Audrey said.

"What about me?" Gabriel asked. "Do you trust me?"

"No," Audrey said.

Gabriel recoiled, and then stared thoughtfully at her for a moment before reaching out to touch her forehead. "There is a fourth sign here on your forehead. Do you want to know what it says?"

"Sure," Audrey said.

"It says that you are a Prophet of the Lord, and that anyone who dares molest you shall answer to the Left Hand of God," Gabriel said. "That's me. I've been charged with your protection."

"God changes his mind a lot," Audrey said matter-of-factly. "I trust Michael because he has proven I can trust _him, _no matter _what _god decides, not because I trust god. If you want me to trust _you_, you're going to have to prove to me that you know how to think for yourself and do what is right, not simply follow gods' orders."

"I need to learn to give him what he needs," Gabriel said, his eyes focusing into some event in the past which only he knew about, "not just what he asks for."

"Something like that."


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Gabriel surveyed the buildings the Prophet had led them to using a combination of the instructions tattooed on her arm, a map, and the compass they had found, just as she had believed they would find it, under the seat of the police cruiser. They had left the shelter of the cliff and begun a journey to someplace that was yet to be revealed to them. Gabriel had _tried _to reassure her that so long as she followed the instructions, the Father would provide for her, but his simple attempt at reassuring her had led to another of her long, expletive-filled tirades against the Father followed by an even _more _puzzling episode of tears.

She'd been more talkative since she'd disclosed to him that he had killed her, but her talkativeness appeared to be forced, an outdated piece of clothing, perhaps, that had been fashionable at some point in her life, but now embarrassed her to wear it? Like the too-provocative clothing she still wore because that had been the attire she had worn before fate had changed her, but no opportunity had presented itself yet to try on another style of clothes.

In a way, it had been easier when he had still been unconscious, too broken to be a threat and so pitiable that she had lain down beside him to share her body heat and spoken to him as though he were a friend just to give him a voice to cling to in the darkness. He missed the feel of her at his side, but it was forbidden.

"They look empty," Audrey said, her voice disappointed.

"Stay here," Gabriel said flatly. "I will investigate."

"No," Audrey said, her dark, velvet-blue eyes afire with willfulness.

"It is my job to protect you," Gabriel stated, capturing an unwanted emotion which wafted up from his gut and quickly suppressing it before it manifested into a frown. Annoyance?

"It is my job to protect myself," Audrey said, defiantly tossing her long brown hair and walking decisively towards the cluster of buildings squatting like a toad in the desert heat.

Gabriel sighed with resignation and hurried after her. If he detected any signs of occupation, he would reason with her more forcefully, but humanity had been whittled down from billions to a mere few million members. The chances of survivors in such a remote location were scant.

Although angels felt emotion, those emotions had always been subordinate to those of the Father, the sheer vastness of all-that-is simply too enormous for any one angels emotions to cause enough of a ripple for that angel to actually _feel _anything. Angels were, quite literally, a hive mind, and the Father was the central mind which controlled them. Only twice before Gabriel had fallen from grace had he ever experienced his own emotions as anything other than a mild acknowledgement of facts. The day the Romans had crucified the Savior and the Father had ordered him to stand by and allow it to happen so the Savior would give up his foolish endeavor and go home. And the day Gabriel had slain his own brother and then watched him die.

Ever since then, all Gabriel could _do_ was feel, and the sheer cacophony of wants, needs, hopes, fears, impulses, and sheer irrationality of mortal emotions battered his senses every bit as brutally as the Father had shattered his bones upon the rocks at the base of the cliff. The Prophets irrational outbursts were almost … comforting. The external manifestation of emotions Gabriel, himself, did not dare allow himself to feel.

The Prophet knocked on the front door of the nearest of the buildings, the one that appeared to be a habitation, and then tried to turn the handle.

An explosion tore from behind the front door. Gunfire.

Audrey shrieked. Before she even had an opportunity to react, Gabriel was in motion, lurching forward to move between her body and the threat, his now-mortal vessel betraying him with its awkwardness as he couldn't move fast enough to shield her with the hardened outer feathers of his wings. Luckily, the shot had missed.

"Git outta here!" a warbly voice shouted at them from behind the door. "Y'all hear me? Git!"

Gabriel did not speak. He simply threw his shoulder into the door, burst it open as though it were made of toothpicks, and grabbed the owner of the gun by the throat.

"You dare shoot at a Prophet of the Lord?" Gabriel growled, his voice menacing and low. The old woman's eyes bulged from her face in terror, the gun forgotten.

"Gabriel," Audrey said shakily. "Put her down."

"She tried to kill you," Gabriel snarled in anger. The ferocity of his own emotions surprised him. Although he had served the Father his entire existence, even felt the Father's anger surge through his veins during the countless battles Gabriel had fought at the Father's bequest, this was the first time Gabriel _truly _wanted to kill someone just because they had tried to hurt someone … someone … he didn't understand why he was so angry.

The old woman's mouth moved, but with his hand at her throat, no air could escape her windpipe to make a sound.

"She's terrified," Audrey shouted, leaping forward to grab the hand that had the old woman by the throat and trying to pry his fingers off her neck. "If she'd wanted to kill me, I'd be dead."

"Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall answer the wrath of the Left Hand of God," Gabriel growled, reciting the mission the Father had emblazoned upon the Prophets forehead, the mission which was Gabriel's only hope that someday the Father would welcome him back into his good graces. There was power in those words. The words of the Father. He was carrying the words of the Father now as he spoke. Just for an instant, he felt the tiniest echo of his old strength flow through his veins as he carried forth the World of God into this shithole of a world.

"She's just an old lady," Audrey said, sliding her hand down the vambrace-shielded wrist that held the old woman by the throat, up his arm, to rest upon the bare tender flesh at the inside of crook of his elbow. "Gabriel. She's just a frightened old woman defending her home. She didn't hurt me. She just told us to go away."

Gabriel could hear the compulsion in her voice, feel the compulsion in her touch where her skin touched his, touch he had missed since he'd awoken and she had stopped sharing her warmth. The Prophet contained her own spark of divinity, a spark he had mistaken to be that of the Father when he had been unconscious and close to death. It was _this_ spark which had held him in this realm until he had become strong enough to stay on his own, which called to him now.

"Gabriel," Audrey said, her voice soothing and calm as her fingers lingered upon his flesh. "The world just ended and strangers appeared at her door carrying weapons. Of course she was afraid. She fired a warning shot to make us go away. I'm unharmed. Please. Put her down."

Gabriel shuddered with conflicting emotions, the compulsion to throttle the life out of this insignificant old woman who had made his heart race in terror for fear of losing the only hope he had of ever going home versus the compulsion to obey the words of the Prophet. Every nerve fiber screamed at him to act, but he had the distinct impression that this wasn't the _first _time Audrey had needed to talk someone down from an instinctive reaction.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, sliding her hand up his arm a little further to give the tender flesh on the inside of his bicep a gentle squeeze. "Think. She's just a helpless old woman. Look at her. She's no threat."

The scent of urine assailed his nostrils, his ears registering a slight trickling sound upon the floor. He didn't need to look down to realize that the old woman had just pissed her pants in terror. The ultimate humiliation. Loss of basic bodily functions. Memory of his own humiliation intruded into his consciousness and he felt ashamed. He released his hold on the old woman's throat. She collapsed onto the floor. Audrey did not remove her hand from his arm. He stood there, quivering, as warring emotions battled for control inside his body, emotions he had never had occasion to feel before and that he could not put names to now.

"Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall answer the wrath of the Left Hand of God," Gabriel whispered, looking into the Prophets dark velvet-blue eyes and losing himself there.

"The quality of mercy is not strained," the Prophet said gently, sliding one hand up to touch his cheek as she held his gaze. "It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath."* The author of the quote didn't jump directly to mind, but Gabriel knew he had heard it repeated before.

'_I would not have shown you such mercy,' _he had told his brother when the Father had changed his mind and sent Michael back to stop him.

'_That is why you have failed him,' _Michael had said, compassion filling his eyes. The same compassion Gabriel now saw in the eyes of the Prophet.

He couldn't breathe. He realized he was panting with … he couldn't name the emotion but it was no longer anger … and it felt as though a demon were sitting upon his chest and compressing the lungs he now needed to use to breathe. His heart … hurt. He wanted to pull the Prophet into his arms and ensure she was safe, but such physicality was forbidden. Instead, he stepped back, the grunt he used to mask his distress vulgar even to his own ears as he hid the tides of what he was feeling behind a sullen expression. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed, or relieved, when the Prophet finally broke eye contact and removed her hand to tend to the old woman.

"Grandma," Audrey said, shaking the old woman. "Are you all right?"

The old woman scurried backwards like a crab into a corner, shrieking in terror.

"We won't hurt you," Audrey said, crouching down upon the floor to get down to eye-level with the terrified old woman. "Gabriel thought you were trying to kill me."

The old woman continued to scream, her eyes wide with terror. The screaming did not bother him. Ever since mankind had first crawled out of the primordial ooze, most humans' first reaction to the Left Hand of God had been to scream.

"Gabriel," Audrey ordered. "Step outside. I need to calm her down."

Gabriel wanted to protest, but he did as he was told. Obedience. But also conscious thought. Although he had given the Prophet no indications of his satisfaction, he felt confident after a month of training her to fight that Audrey outweighed the frail old woman enough to knock her down if she came at her. Just to be certain, Gabriel bent down and grabbed the shotgun the old woman had fired before backing up to stand just outside the entrance of the door, coiled like a rattlesnake to strike in case the old woman presented a viable threat.

'_Michael,'_ he thought to himself, sorrow flooding his heart as he longed for a brother he had betrayed and a home he feared he would never see again. _'The Prophet wishes to teach me about mercy.'_

How many other lessons did the woman-child he had killed without giving her a second thought have to teach him?

*William Shakespeare, _Merchant of Venice_


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

"It wasn't demons who did this," Audrey explained, her eyes staring out the filth-encrusted windows at the two mounds of desert sand Harriet had pointed out around three hundred feet from the house, crude wooden crosses wired together with coat hangers the only indication someone who had once been loved had been dragged out and buried by an old woman too frail to be expected to possess the strength to bury her own family. "God was angry. Not just at us. He was angry because the Savior chose to defy him and fulfill his promise to return a second time after we'd murdered him the first time he tried to help us."

"Why would god do such a thing?" Harriet asked, glancing nervously out that same window, towards the spot where Gabriel stood sentinel in the dying light, unmoving as though he were a bronze statue of an angel standing vigil on a church steeple. "Why would he send … angels … to hurt us? The Book of Revelations said the Apocalypse would be terrible, but it also said only the wicked would be judged."

Audrey finished helping Harriet slip the vegetables off the cutting board into the pot. There would be no meat with supper. Harriet had long ago burned through her stores of meat. By the pallor of the old woman, Audrey could see the signs not only of despair, but also malnutrition setting in. Harriet survived because the old woman possessed the tendency of so many of her generation born during the Great Depression and lived through the rationing of the second World War to be frugal and stockpile basic supplies. Harriet had been living alone for the past five months on a stockpile she had laid out for three.

"Those who were too weak to resist were turned first," Audrey explained, trying to put into words something that she could not explain to herself, something she could not condone. "He turned them against the strong."

"But my Harold wasn't a sinner!" Harriet cried out in despair, tears streaming down her eyes once more. She cried a lot, Audrey thought to herself, the old woman's face permanently etched with sorrow over the loss of her husband and daughter. "Mabel … Mabel had divorced her husband for another man and returned here after things didn't work out. I could have understood if it had been her. But Harold … Harold was a saint!"

Mabel, Audrey knew, had been Harriet's daughter, a chain-smoking, middle-aged woman who had left her husband for another man and then left _him _as well. Not an angel, Audrey thought to herself, but nothing so evil that it justified having god send one of the lowest castes of angels to murder her. Pictures of Mabel were all over the house, standing awkwardly in front of a shrub, squinting into the sunlight, smiling with her arms around her parents.

As for Harold, he had emphysema. His wheelchair and oxygen tank had been placed carefully back in front of what had once been his favorite spot in front of the television, the only activity the old man had still possessed the strength to do as the consequences of decades of chain-smoking. At least not until one of gods fucking angels had crawled up inside his ass, or however the fuck it was immortal creatures crawled up inside of a mortal, and him do gods bidding and go postal on his own family!

"Stop trying to make sense of it," Audrey said, suppressing her rage. "It was the unjustified temper-tantrum of a selfish father punishing his son. Michael was finally able to convince him to knock that shit off and start acting like an adult."

"It is said that Michael was the angel God sent to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac after He had commanded it," Harriet said, nervously glancing out the window once more at the angel in her front yard who hadn't moved, his silhouette dark and ominous against the rapidly darkening sky. "I never … I had never believed that God would issue such a command. I always assumed Abraham must have somehow misunderstood God and that is why he sent Michael to stop him."

Tact. Audrey's lips thinned as she suppressed her emotions the way she had seen Gabriel do so many times. The big angel had become accustomed to her rants of temper, her fits of screaming, followed by crying, followed by Gabriel taking her gently into his arms until she stopped shuddering and fell asleep, silently enduring her outbursts the same way the big angel stoically endured everything else. The strength of her emotional outbursts both surprised and exhausted her, as well as her inability to control them once they got started. They had both gotten better at avoiding topics that caused her to go to that 'other place' where she raged until her body no longer possessed the strength to communicate the outrage she felt at gods' actions.

"Maybe that's why Michael decided to help us," Audrey said quietly after a period of silence to recapture her emotions before she lost control. "Michael has seen the genocidal fucking maniac go off on these delusional little power trips and then change his mind before."

As nighttime swallowed his silhouette, only a patch of darkness against the still-lighter night sky remained in his place. Audrey shuddered. Memory of _another _sentinel who had once stoically stood watch, unquestioningly guarding her with its life, jumped unbidden into her mind. Gabriel was not just her protector. He was a reminder that she, too, was not without sin.

"Angels…" Harriet said tiredly. "Perhaps I should seek comfort in the fact Harold was possessed by an angel doing gods bidding instead of possessed by demons as I had initially thought?"

Tact. The first thing Audrey had become aware of as she had coaxed Harriet down from her terror at confronting the Left Hand of God standing in her doorway clenching her throat was that it wasn't only Gabriel who her words sliced through like a sword. Gabriel had informed her that the tattoos on her forehead stated that, no matter how vile the form of communication, Audrey's words contained cutting truth, but it wasn't until she had flubbed up, freaking out the old woman even worse by stating the obvious, that Audrey began to suspect her words were meant to wound more than just gods' scapegoat. She had finally just shut up and started bustling about the kitchen as though she were a member of the family, innocuously asking questions about where the onions and the potatoes were, to communicate she truly meant no harm.

"In these times, one must seek whatever comfort they can," Audrey said after another long silence, using the ruse of stirring the pot to avoid making eye contact with the old woman. Silently she finished cooking supper while the old woman lay the plates upon the table. Two plates. Gabriel wasn't welcome here. An attack dog too dangerous to allow into the house to eat with the family.

"I must bring food to my friend," Audrey said as she placed the pot of vegetable stew upon the placemat on the table, the broth thin and without substance. She could no longer see him standing there in the dark, but knew he would not move from the position he had determined gave him the best opportunity to carry out his self-imposed duty as her protector until circumstance caused him to do otherwise.

What she did _not _state aloud was that Gabriel had lost a phenomenal amount of weight while he had been interred here on Earth, his once-enormous girth now merely large and strong. She watched the resignation and acceptance on his face each morning as he silently drew in the straps securing his armor and tightened the fastenings that held on his clothing around a mortal vessel that was slowly shrinking. Even his wings betrayed him, his once razor-sharp feathers falling out one at a time as he molted in the punishing heat, leaving them looking ruffled and ill-kempt.

A twinge of guilt caused her to consider insisting the old woman allow Gabriel to come into her house, to share in the hospitality of a _real _bed and a tepid bath poured from the kettle of water now heating for that purpose on the back of the stove. He had only been protecting her. His initial reaction to smash down the door and disable the threat with the gun had been reasonable. But the difficulty it had taken to talk him down from his instinctive reaction to kill had _not _been reasonable once it had become apparent it had only been a frightened old woman firing a warning shot to get strangers to leave her alone.

It was a level of protectiveness Audrey had seen once before, in another guardian who had appointed himself to be her protector. Things hadn't turned out so well for _that _protector. It was up to _her _to make sure history didn't repeat itself.

"After all that you've been through," Harriet asked, "how can you bear to allow one of them to be near you?" There was no scorn in the old woman's voice, only resigned disbelief. These were strange times. From the few people Harriet had told her about who had passed through this area since the world had ended, Harriet had had good reason to think she and Gabriel were raiders come to take what little stores she had left in her meager cupboard.

"It's … complicated," Audrey said, not wishing to tell the old woman any more than she needed to understand that Gabriel would no longer harm _her _so long as she did nothing to harm _them._ "Gabriel …"

She trailed off. How do you explain that god's idea of an apology was to scapegoat his most loyal servant and then see how much he could make the poor bastard suffer? Gabriel was not without fault, for he killed too easily and without thought, especially when he felt it was his duty, but he was not an amoral creature, either. Michael had hit the nail on the head when he had described Gabriel as a loyal dog doing its masters bidding, clueless as to why following his masters orders had not been the right thing to do.

God even made them wear fucking collars!

Had Michael been wearing a collar when he had come back to heal her? She couldn't remember. The experience of suddenly waking up in the desert after all that had happened had been too overwhelming to focus on anything else. All she could remember was the compassion in Michaels' eyes as he had brought her back from the dead and his sorrow as he had pleaded with her to save his brothers' life.

Audrey carried that collar now, tucked neatly into her rucksack. Gabriel had been dismayed to discover the collar would no longer fasten around his neck the way his other armor still fit, his hands shaking as an expression of sorrow so profound crossed his brutally handsome features that it had made Audrey want to cry. A dog whose owner no longer wanted him.

Harriet looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to finish her thought.

"I can't just leave him outside," Audrey finally pleaded, a hint of anguish tingeing her voice. Not just about Gabriel. About that … other … guardian who had been banished to the shed, after her parents had put down their foot and forbidden her to have a dog. "Please, Harriet…"

"I'm afraid of him," Harriet said quietly. "He tried to kill me."

"I called him off," Audrey pleaded. "He thought you were trying to kill me. He won't harm you now."

"You can keep him in the barn," Harried offered, a compromise.

"He's not a dog," Audrey whispered, and then felt that familiar anger rising in her veins, not at Harriet, but at god. "You hear that, you sadistic fuck! He's not a fucking dog!"

Harriet cringed back in fear at her outburst, at the sight of the tattooed young woman who had appeared in her kitchen tottering around in ridiculous high heels, a bustier and tattered short skirt roughly mended with surgical sutures so it no longer exposed her underwear, strange unearthly blade tucked into a sheath tied around her waist, shaking her fist at the ceiling and screaming at the top of her lungs. Audrey could hear the metallic rustle of Gabriel's wings as he moved to the door to ensure she was okay, but not entering. Gabriel was used to her outbursts. The old woman was not.

Audrey bent over, panting, trying to contain her anger. It was not Harriet's fault god had fucked up. She was just an old woman. She gulped air into her lungs, clenching her arms around her chest in an effort to physically hold in the rage that threatened to explode out of her small body, her breaths little more than ragged pants as she fought to get a grip on her anger. It was an old anger. Not just about Gabriel.

"I'm sorry," Harriet said, backed all the way into the corner. "I'm sorry."

The terror in the old woman's eyes brought Audrey back to reality, helped her shove her anger into a well-used compartment deep within her psyche, the compartment she had used to hide her anger at her parents ever since the day they had put down her dog. Her traditional reaction to that anger had always been to do something outrageous to provoke them into reaction, to punish them, to do _anything _to make them pay attention to the fact that she was so very angry at them. It hadn't gotten her anywhere with _them, _and it hadn't gotten her anywhere with god. Harriet did not deserve her anger.

Another image jumped into her mind. Not now one, but two patient, loyal creatures who stoically stood by her side no matter what she had dished out. Straightening up, she did her best to school her features into the stoic expression Gabriel habitually wore to hide what he was feeling and resumed scooping soup into the two bowls.

"Can I have another bowl please, Harriet," Audrey said, her voice emotionless and flat. "I'll bring his portion outside to eat with him and sleep out in the barn, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd still allow me to have that bath. We're grateful for your hospitality."

"I'll…" Harriet said, eying her warily, unsure of what to say. Audrey could tell Harriet wished to have her company after five months of living alone, but fear prevented the old woman from suggesting another solution. "The loft will probably be most comfortable. They left the hay behind when they came to steal the livestock. There are some old blankets in the tack room. I'll rustle up some pillows."

"Thank you."


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"We should go around," Gabriel stated, surveying the blackened, twisted city which the merciless sun caused to dance before his eyes like a mirage. "The instructions have routed us around populated areas before now."

"The directions point directly at it," Audrey stated, nibbling uncertainly on her lower lip. She looked again at the map.

"You remember what happened the last time we walked into a town," Gabriel said. It was a statement, not a question. The heavenly host had missed a few bad apples when they'd possessed the fallen and the weak. Lots of bad apples. Gabriel was beginning to wonder if perhaps the Father had in fact decided to come only for the _good _apples, using _them _to weed out the bad ones.

While Audrey had tended his wounds in their camp at the base of the cliff where he had fallen, the world, it seemed, had descended into anarchy. Although there were still plenty of cars, without anyone to create fuel for those cars, the only source of petroleum was to steal it from somebody else. The worst of the carnage had occurred in the first few months _after _the heavenly host had receded, while the Prophet had been too busy caring for him to notice. The strong seized what they needed, leaving the weak to fend for themselves. America, a nation who had defined herself by her love for her automobiles, now walked, as _they _now walked along the vacant highways.

At least the Prophet had found some sensible shoes along the way. The old woman had given her a coat the Prophet had joked made her look like someone from the 1950's and a pair of sensible shoes she referred to as 'dike shoes.' Another household had given her a pair of black leggings that matched the damaged shirt she refused to discard. Defiance. Gabriel had to admit he now found her countenance to be pleasing, if still altogether too provocative for one so young.

"We need to find food," Audrey stated. "Our stores are getting low."

"Looters will have gotten there first," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "We will find what sustenance we can elsewhere."

Pickings had been slim upon the road, the households the compass on the Prophets hand led them to barely surviving on what little they had. Mortal food was revolting, but Gabriel had been forced to acknowledge his now-mortal body needed the sustenance and increased his consumption of the vile nourishment in order to stop the degradation of his mortal shell. The rapid decline of his girth had slowed, but it hadn't stopped. Food was scarce in the desert. He only ate what he needed to force the accursed shell to function, saving the rest for the Prophet.

"Maybe it's our destination?" Audrey asked, her voice even _more _uncertain as she surveyed the ruined city as they drew closer and frowned. Her map identified the city as Las Vegas. A seething cauldron of sin and disobedience wiped from the Earth by the heavenly host like Sodom and Gomorrah.

"If it is the Father's will that we travel there," Gabriel stated, his voice filled with resignation, "than travel there we will."

He expected the Prophet to go off on one of her tirades against his faith in the Father, but she merely pressed her lips tightly together and held her tongue. The Prophet was getting better at containing whatever fire burned within her veins that caused her to rail against Him, to defy Him. The fire the Father found so fascinating. Defiance. Just as the Prophet had railed against the Father to defy him _that _way in the beginning, now that the Father had marked his prophet with a sign excluding her from the sin of blasphemy, the Prophet _still _defied Him by frequently denying Him the satisfaction of seeing her blaspheme. She was a lab-rat under a microscope, and she knew it.

As the Prophet learned to control her emotions and channel them into other responses, Gabriel found his own self-control beginning to slip, to whisper doubts, to question the Father and allow tiny lapses in self-control that he had never experienced before in his very long existence. It was as though he and the Prophet were two acrobats balancing on a see-saw. The closer Audrey moved towards the fulcrum, the closer Gabriel was forced to move as well to keep his balance.

"We go together," the Prophet stated, reaching out to take his hand and tugging him towards the city as though he were a dog on a leash. Her hand was warm and small in his, reassuring. It was forbidden to look forward to each small touch, but he cherished it, telling himself that it was all right because it was the Father's Prophet initiating the contact. Audrey showed no prurient interest in him. If anything, he suspected she viewed him as a big dumb animal to be pitied. It was nothow he was accustomed to being perceived, but he was adjusting.

"It's going to be dark in approximately two hours," Gabriel stated. "If we go in there, we need to find a defensible position to spend the night."

"We'll find something," the Prophet stated, looking up at him and giving him a weak smile. "That's a pretty big city. There _has _to be something left standing. Maybe even some survivors?"

"You need a good night's sleep in a real bed," Gabriel said, making his decision as he reached out to touch the dark circles beneath her eyes. He could tell she was exhausted.

Gabriel had heard the Prophet's tirade against the Father that night eight weeks ago in the old woman's kitchen, where she had refused to relegate him to the barn and screamed he was not a dog. Gabriel didn't understand her anger. He had been created to serve. It was the only thing he knew how to do. The Father even referred to his legions of angelic warriors as the 'dogs of heaven.' When angels accomplished whatever task the Father had assigned for them, they removed themselves from his glorious presence so that their ordinariness would not offend him.

Of _course _he would go to the barn without complaint if it meant the Prophet could sleep in a comfortable bed. The Prophet's decision to forsake the company of her own kind if it meant excluding _him _was a futile gesture, but it had been strangely comforting. Perhaps it was just another strange manifestation of the defiance she appeared to contain in endless supply? It was not his protection that she desired, but his company_._ Before Audrey, only his brothers had ever truly desired his company. Especially Michael.

A few of the households the compass on the Prophets hand had led them to were welcoming, but most had heard via radio transmissions or rumor that it had been angels, not demons, who had nearly exterminated mankind. His kind was no longer welcome on Earth. Angels were held in contempt. Something to be shot at on sight. His presence was not a deterrent against harm. It invited it.

"It looks deserted," the Prophet whispered, her touch growing less certain as the highway they followed led them out of the desert and into the first of the suburbs surrounding the city. Many of the houses were burned completely, but of those that remained, the visages of slaughter were still visible after more than six months. The pampered vegetation was all dead, no water left in the city to run the sprinklers which had artificially kept them alive. Most cars had already been looted for parts or gasoline, and then burned. It appeared the first thing the survivors had done after the apocalypse was to get the hell out of dodge.

"This is not a natural location for human habitation," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "No water. No arable land for crops. No forage for herds."

"Jerusalem is so," the Prophet pointed out. "I hear it is very dry."

"Not this dry," Gabriel said. "Babylon was once a paradise."

Something clattered off to their right, the sound of a metal trash can rolling on the pavement. The Prophet jumped, instinctively moving in closer to his side. Although she defiantly swore off a need for his protection, he was glad she had grown to trust him enough that she subconsciously did what she consciously adamantly refused. He flared his wings, extending the razor-sharp feathers to provide cover to her back should a threat come at them from the rear. What she did not notice, she would not refuse.

He noticed a bare spot where most of the long steely primary feathers had already molted out, the pin feathers beginning to grow back in to replace them too soft to deflect a bullet. Even his wings had become diminished, no longer a weapon of war without the light of the Father to strengthen them into steel. He adjusted the ones he had left to provide better cover for her.

"What was that?" she asked. "Probably just a cat."

As if in answer to her question, a cat streaked past where they walked, followed almost instants later by a small dog pursing it for a meal. With nobody left alive to care for them, domesticated animals wherever they went had begun to revert to feral creatures and hunt. The Prophet had learned the hard way not to simply walk up to a stray dog.

"Nobody has come back to bury their dead," Gabriel said softly, subtly steering her away from a yard that contained the lingering scent of decomposition. Children. He banked his wings so her view was obscured. The Prophet had stopped crying about the carnage during the third week of their journey, but the deaths of children particularly affected her. There were too many bodies for them to stop and bury.

They walked silently through the suburbs, spending the night in an abandoned home that had been curiously untouched by the destruction around it. The house had been looted and reeked of the smoke from the houses which had burned around it, but they found clean linens for the bed and a few canned vegetables in the basement, along with some candles. There was no water, but they drank the broth from the vegetables as they ate a candlelit dinner at the not-too-badly damaged kitchen table once they had turned it upright.

They no longer bothered with the illusion of making up a separate bed for him. He required far less sleep than she did, preferring to stand sentinel for as long as possible, and by the time his weak mortal body began to demand it's nightly allotment of sleep, her nightmares would have begun.

"_Et venis_," the Prophet murmured in the language of the Father in her sleep, a language she swore when awake she did not speak. "_Grigori in. Effugisse!"_

They're coming. The Watchers. They've escaped. It was always the same dream. In attempting to destroy mankind, the Father had strengthened his enemies, making them bold. Mankind no longer walked with the Father. He had lost their trust. They were a force up for grabs. The Prophet foresaw a time when those enemies would make a play for her home.

"_Gigantes venit!"_ she cried out, instinctively raising her hands in front of her face although she was sound asleep and starting to thrash. _"Salvator. Luvandi eum. Gabriel! Gabriel fidius!"_

The Nephilim come. The Savior. We need to help him. Gabriel! Gabriel, help me!

It was the last desperate cry which always compelled him to her side, forbidden or not, and caused him to wrap her in his wings and hold her until the vision ran its course and her body stopped shuddering from the vision which never caused her to awaken, but which left her sweaty and weak every morning. He was unable to awaken her during her visions. Only comfort her as best he could. She called to him, and he had been charged with protecting her. His need to obey the compulsion in her voice when she called his name overrode the law of the Father.

"Shhhh…" Gabriel whispered, nestling in alongside her back and gently gathering her in his arms, dodging the stray elbow that threatened to take out his nose. "I am here, little Prophet. Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall invoke the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

"_Primus discipulus__hic__in hac civitate__,"_ the Prophet said, her voice calmer as soon as he enclosed her in the protective steel cage of his wings. _"__Ille__mutavit__habitum__in__falso__idolo__. __Oportet__ad__templum__venire__aditu__quaestum__.__"_

The first disciple is here in this city. He has disguised himself in the garb of a false idol. We must go to his temple and implore him to join our quest.

Instructions. He would inform her of her vision in the morning and they would begin their search.

Nestling into her, he lay there as he did every night, wrestling with his competing duty to obey the law of the Father versus the duty his father had given him to protect the Prophet. A pattern was beginning to emerge from their journey. The places they were drawn to had ears which were receptive to the news of the birth of the Savior. The Father, it seemed, no longer worried about whether or not humans were obedient. In their disobedience, they had defied his enemies every bit as much as they had defied _him, _stabilizing the stalemate which had existed since the dawn of time between the Father and his enemies. By attempting to exterminate them, the Father had upset that stalemate and lost the humans trust. His enemies were trying to turn the survivors to their purposes.

The Savior, however, had also defied the Father. The Savior was someone humans felt they could trust … _if _they could be made to still believe in him. It would be many years before the Savior's fragile mortal shell became mature enough to assume the mantle of leadership. In the meantime, the Prophet was creating support for the leader that was soon to follow.

The Prophet had turned eighteen during their journey, informing him with a smile one day that she was now a woman. Gabriel did not understand how the magical achievement of a milestone of one's birth transformed one from one state to another. The Prophet still _seemed _as she had the day before, although now that he looked back, he could see how rapidly she had matured in just the short time he had known her.

He had rationalized when he'd first realized a female was stretching out alongside of him to share her warmth that she was still a child, and that it was okay because he was injured. When the nightmares had started, he had rationalized that he was only giving comfort to a child. But once she had announced she was now a woman, Gabriel had been forced to acknowledge the secret he had been keeping hidden in his heart. He _liked _the feel of her asleep in his arms. He _liked _it when she tugged him along by the hand or lay her mortal hand upon his quivering now-mortal flesh. It was forbidden, but he did not wish for it to stop.

When the Father finally welcomed him home, Gabriel knew he was going to miss her terribly. Inhaling her scent, he wondered what else the Prophet had to teach him as he drifted off to sleep.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"I came here once with my parents," Audrey informed him, her voice hushed as they walked along the Vegas strip. "I thought it was the coolest place."

"Do you think so still, now, Prophet?" Gabriel asked her, his brutally handsome face blank and unreadable, his default expression.

"That sign over there," Audrey pointed, "the one that looks like part of a man's torso? That was once a cowboy. He'd be all lit up at night and he had this arm that waved up and down. Like this." She pantomimed the wave the sign had used to make. "It was as though he were welcoming you, saying 'howdy.'"

"Do you feel welcome now?" Gabriel asked.

"I haven't felt anything but anger since the day the world ended," Audrey answered.

She noticed Gabriel's subtle flinch, and then the way his unreadable expression subtly transformed into a slightly sullen one. Tact. Her words had wounded him once again, although she had no idea why. They had not been meant to cut.

"You weren't the one who gave the order," Audrey said softly. "It is not your fault the world ended. Only that part of it which you participated in. If he hadn't sent you, he'd have sent somebody else."

"Nobody else would have dared take on Michael," Gabriel said softly, one wing twitching to accentuate his words. The sullenness gave way to the unreadable expression once more. "Not even in his diminished state. He cut through the Fallen like they were wisps of clouds."

Audrey could detect the hint of sorrow behind his mask. Gabriel hid his emotions well, but she knew he missed his brother. Something else was bothering him, however, but she had yet to figure out what that was. Feelings were something Gabriel was not used to feeling, much less discuss.

The sound of a bottle rolling across the pavement stopped both of them in their tracks, both automatically crouching into a ready position, ready to spring in any direction at whatever threat came at them. After the incident with the old woman, Gabriel had _insisted _they stop and practice fighting skills for at least one hour per day. He was beginning to teach her how to fight with a knife.

The crack of gunfire retorted across the square. Gabriel leaped in her way, knocking her to the ground and shielding her with his wings to deflect the bullet even before she had a chance to react.

"Gabriel!" Audrey squealed in terror, but her fear did not stop her from instituting the roll he had taught her to get back up as fast as she had gone down in a direction that led to cover.

"Stay down," Gabriel ordered, reaching behind his back to pull the 40-pound mace out of its carrying straps. With a twist of the handle, it transformed from a simple metal ball at the end of the stick to the spiked weapon of Audrey's nightmares.

"Your new growth isn't bullet proof," Audrey hissed. "Please. Be careful!" She hadn't been certain whether she had been disturbed, or pleased, to realize the new feathers growing in to replace the molted ones on Gabriel's wings were soft and downy. His wings had healed quite some time ago, but Gabriel was still unable to fly. She strongly suspected the reason was that feathered wings were an angels' natural state, and that the withdrawal of heavenly mojo rendered the steel-enhanced wings too heavy for Earth's gravity.

Or to put it in Earth terms, god had been pumping his warriors full of some mean strain of god-steroids that made them artificially big, aggressive, and invulnerable, but once those steroids were withdrawn, the angels reverted to their natural state. A state much closer to humans. She suspected it might have something to do with that collar the Father used to make him wear.

A second shot fired at them from a different direction. More than one opponent. Shouts erupted from several different directions at once. It appeared they had found the survivors.

"We mean you no harm," Audrey shouted, raising one hand. "We're not armed with guns. We came looking for somebody. We just want to find him and then we'll leave."

The sound of more than one bullet randomly firing in her direction was her answer. These were not survivors. This was one of the bands of all-too-common thieves that was banding together in the power vacuum of lawlessness to prey upon the weak.

"Prophet!" Gabriel growled deep in his chest. "I told you to stay down!"

Audrey had not had occasion to _truly _see Gabriel in action since the day the world had ended. Sure, he had overreacted when the old woman had fired a warning shot, and he'd also had to disarm a few frightened homeowners who would freak out sometimes when he first appeared and become physically combative, but this was the first time they'd faced multiple armed opponents who appeared to actually mean them harm. His physical frame had shrunk considerably since that day and he could no longer fly. In spite of her hatred of god, she found herself automatically saying a prayer that Gabriel was up to the task.

Sizeup. The first thing you needed to do in an emergency situation was size up the situation. Glancing in the three different directions the shots had come from, Audrey could detect movement from the entrance of one of the casinos, one from behind a burned out car, and the third from somewhere on a roof.

Take stock of your assets. Her only weapon was the knife Gabriel let her carry. It was no match for a bullet. Her only defense was to take cover and wait for _them _to come to her, hopefully surprising them. She was small and maneuverable. She might be able to get into someplace they didn't expect.

Environment. She had cover from a burned out car. If she could get forty feet down the street, there was an alley. If she could get to there, she would be out of the pathway of the sniper on the roof.

Gabriel had rolled to behind a car directly opposite hers. She caught his attention and signaled her plan using the hand signals from the Army Survival manual Michael had left in the police cruiser. She'd needed to teach Gabriel how to communicate with them. Angels, it turned out, communicated telepathically via the interface of the Father during battle. She wasn't very good at using the hand signals yet and had to signal him more than once, but eventually she got a nod of approval. Gabriel approved of her plan. He signaled back that he would distract the shooters long enough for her to make a break for it.

Her heart jumped into her throat when he suddenly made a break for the next closer car to the shooters, his wings trailing out behind him like a long black cape as he crouched low to the ground. Immediately the shooters started firing at him, giving Audrey her opportunity to work her way to the dumpster that was her last cover before she made a break for the alley.

One of the shooters saw her, firing at the position she had just dived into. It gave her an idea. Trash from the dumpster had long ago been rifled through, the contents strewn about on the ground around it. Crawling on her belly like a snake, Audrey slithered over to grab a chunk of trash that was around the same size and color as a human head and a broken broom handle, and then slithered back to her original position. Stabbing the stick into the 'head,' she wiggled the decoy out as though the 'head' were her own and was rewarded on the second try by a bullet shattering the thing to pieces. She let out a fake scream, hoping Gabriel wouldn't panic thinking she'd really been hit. She then slithered up the ladder on the side of the dumpster like a spider to the point just before she'd become visible to the sniper, crouching, knife drawn, and waited.

More gunfire erupted, a terrified scream, the metallic thud of the mace, and then silence. Gabriel had gotten his first prey. Despite the adrenaline running through her veins, Audrey shuddered as a flashback fired in her brain, distracting her from what she was doing now. Gabriel smashing Michael with that mace at the Paradise Diner. The cold, merciless look in Gabriel's eyes. The complete lack of emotion when he killed. No anger. No fear. Just a predator stalking its prey. She glanced up just in time to see her _own _quarry coming around the corner, a thirty-something thug coming around the corner with the gun aimed down, expecting to finish off a wounded opponent. Audrey swung her knife and leaped.

When Gabriel fought with the knife, he was terrifyingly beautiful to behold, a killing machine performing an effortless ballet. With Audrey … not so much. She awkwardly nicked the guy with the gun in the side of his neck and then fell upon him like a sack of potatoes. It was only the fact the gunman had not expected her to leap from the air which saved her, the gunman crumpling beneath her and dropping his gun in the fall.

"Why are you…" Audrey started to shout, never getting to finish her sentence and ask 'kill us?'

The gunman grabbed her by the hair and snapped back her neck, trying to punch at her face but missing because she had landed on top of him. They wrestled. She was at a distinct disadvantage, being significantly smaller and lighter than the gunman. Basic physics. They both rolled for the gun at the same time and pulled each other back, the only thing saving her being the fact Gabriel had tried to teach her how to break the stranglehold of somebody pulling you back. She had dropped her knife in the shuffle, but she saw the splintered broomstick she had used in the first place. Something unexpected.

Rolling a bit further, the gunman dove for her at the same time she reached for the stick, his torso moving close enough to her position that she was able to stab him in the belly. The gunman shrieked in agony, writhing on the ground in pain as he tried to pull out the broken stick. Audrey immediately rolled to where the gunman had dropped the gun, dodging a bullet from the sniper as she did so, and then rolled back just in time to retrieve her knife.

"Don't move, jackass," she hissed at the wounded gunman, cocking the hammer on the Glock 9mm semi-automatic and aiming it at his chest. She slipped Gabriel's knife back into the sheath around her waist and crouched, making damned sure that she didn't expose herself to the sniper on the roof.

It was some time later when she heard the sound of Gabriel making his last kill. A scream. The sound of the mace smashing what sounded like concrete. And then silence. It was the loud sound of wings flapping that caught her attention as Gabriel plunked down on the ground next to her and ended up sprawled on the ground, grunting in pain at his very hard and ungraceful landing, but a _landing _it had been, not a fall. Gabriel had flown down from the roof.

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted, leaping into his arms to hug him as he rather unsteadily got to his feet after the rough landing.

Her first impression was to feel hurt as he suddenly shoved her out of his arms and turned away, but the dull 'thunk' and grunt of pain that immediately followed registered through those hurt feelings as she realized, in her glee to see him fly, she had taken the gun off the gunman and he had made a lunge for her. Gabriel had hit the gunman in the face with the blunt end of his mace, knocking him unconscious.

"I did not kill him, Prophet," Gabriel said, glancing at the gunman and eyeing her warily. "You saw fit to let him keep his life, so I only incapacitated him." He froze, as though he was certain he had somehow incurred her displeasure.

"I showed him mercy," Audrey said, understanding Gabriel's apprehension, "and then he tried to kill me anyways. It would not have mattered if you had killed him or not. He forfeited my mercy when he attacked me again after he had surrendered."

Gabriel nodded in understanding. He was a slow learner, but he was finally beginning to understand. Gabriel saw the world in terms of black and white. Mercy was a grey area Audrey was trying to teach even as the end of the world had changed her concepts about the very rules she thought she had understood. It was not going to be an easy lesson, but for the first time, Audrey had hope Gabriel would someday be able to grasp all the subtleties.

"Come," Audrey whispered, crawling into his arms and finishing the hug, being careful to remain out of the line of fire of any potential gunman just in case any remained. "You flew!"

Gabriel crouched unspeaking, some emotion quivering beneath her touch as she examined his body and wings with her hands to assure herself the injuries he had just suffered were minor. He had suffered a large cut above one eyebrow which she gently dabbed at with some medical supplies she kept in her rucksack.

"What you did was very dangerous," Gabriel quietly admonished her. "You should have made for the alley and escaped the way we'd planned."

"You needed a distraction to take out that sniper," Audrey said. "One presented itself."

"When I heard you scream," Gabriel said, "I'd thought you'd been hit. I thought …. I …" His words trailed off, but he didn't need any. Audrey hadn't seen such an anguished expression on his face since the day he had realized he was mortal.

"Shhhh…" Audrey whispered. Bending in and touching both sides of his face, she bent up and, ever so gently, kissed his forehead just above the cut, surprised when he did not pull away but instead encircled his arms around her waist, his nose brushing her throat as he inhaled.

They lingered like that for a moment until it occurred to her that she was probably causing him some terrible angst, Gabriel being so devout to follow the word of the Father and angels not supposed to like mortal women and all that. Gabriel was being very protective of her, chasing away the boogeymen who intruded into her dreams at night, but the impulse that pushed her forward right now would most _definitely _not find approval with the Father. It was an impulse which surprised her. Gabriel was a few billion years her senior and she was making an ass out of herself. She did not wish to cause him any more suffering at the hands of the undeserving Father he still adored on account of her than he already suffered from now.

"A kiss to make it better…" Audrey said, embarrassed at her own inappropriate behavior, looking away so he wouldn't see her blush as she broke their embrace.

"A kiss to make it better," Gabriel said, his voice husky and tinged with emotion as a cornucopia of emotions danced across his face. After a moment, he had recovered from the embarrassment she must have caused and donned his customary stoic expression.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Gabriel trudged alongside the Prophet through the garish, burned-out city, so deep in thought that he didn't notice her stop and bumped into her.

"This is it," the Prophet said with great conviction.

"This is our destination?" Gabriel asked, not needing to know what 'it' was. 'It' was the only reason he'd agreed to continue their incursion into this God-accursed city in the first place, a modern-day Gomorrah. Why a future disciple of the Savior would settle into such a forsaken place was beyond his comprehension.

"Yes," the Prophet said, a look of pure impish innocence upon her face that took his breath away. "Temple of a false idol. You don't get any falser than this."

Gabriel stared at the unlit, garish white and pink sign that signaled the entrance to the 'temple' the Prophet had led him to. Set back from the main strip, the squat commercial building housing the 'temple' was singed from fire and several darkish-brown spots on the pavement signaled where someone had died, but the 'temple' itself was otherwise unharmed.

"Viva Las Vegas?" Gabriel asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. "Themed weddings?"

The Prophet laughed, the first real laughter he had heard from her in all the time he had known her. Underlying her laughter was a light, tinkling sound that took his breath away. Her divinity. He could see the spark of divinity which enabled her to defy the Father and still survive and it made his heart hurt with a combination of sorrow, joy and some other emotion he had become aware of as the weeks passed that had grown to dominate his consciousness, but which he could not name.

"It's an Elvis chapel," the Prophet said, laughing even harder at his confusion. "Elvis Presley. The King of Rock and Roll? Haven't you ever heard of him?"

"Elvis Presley is dead," Gabriel stated flatly. "If he was meant to be one of the Saviors' disciples, then we are 35 years too late."

"We're looking for a disciple garbed in the attire of a false idol," the Prophet stated, highly amused at some joke Gabriel just didn't get. "You don't get any falser than this."

The Prophet strode decisively down the driveway towards the building, a skip in her step he hadn't seen since they had left the house of the old woman. They had left the refuge of the cliff hoping the instructions would lead them to sanctuary, some place that had been left untouched by the heavenly host, but all they had found was despair. The Prophet had emotionally aged decades in a matter of weeks, her once irreverent manner now cautious and guarded, although not so much that it had dimmed her underlying defiance. Only transformed it into a different kind of defiance. One with a purpose. All that fell away as the Prophet reached the large double front door and pounded upon it with a zeal that surprised him.

"You worship this false idol?" Gabriel asked, not understanding the source of her enthusiasm.

"No," the Prophet said as she waited by the front door, her mischievous grin causing her dark velvet-blue eyes to sparkle with her internal light. "But my grandmother did. She never met an Elvis relic she didn't like. We used to buy them for her for Christmas and her birthday."

Gabriel decided perhaps it was best he did not challenge the Prophet about the ease with which she accepted the worship of false idols. The Father had cast him down amongst the mortals and assigned him to protect his blasphemous, defiant Prophet because something about the humans' defiance had piqued the Fathers interest. The more time he spent with her, not as a heavenly creature, but as a mortal, the more it was beginning to dawn upon him that Michael was right. In his contempt, the Father had overlooked something precious. Something, if the Prophets' ominous visions were accurate, which the Father had not even realized he needed.

Obedience. He would shadow the Prophet and protect her as she made her journey, not questioning the strange places she led him and exempting her strange beliefs from blasphemy as the Father had instructed. Her observations, he was learning, although decidedly unpleasant and hurtful, were also highly accurate. It was not his place to judge.

"Go away," a voice cautiously asked from behind the door. Male. "We're closed."

"Please," the Prophet said. "We've come a very long way to see you. We need your help."

"Go away," the voice said tiredly. "There's no help left to give."

What the Prophet did next surprised Gabriel. She did not get angry, or rail the way he had become accustomed to railing when she spoke to the father. Instead, she started to sing.

'_Then sings my soul, my Savior god, to thee'_

'_How great thou art! How great thou art!'_

The Prophet sang the refrain a second time, and then some other verses. Gabriel stood frozen where he was, breathless. The Prophet had a voice more pure than the most heavenly choir in the Fathers palace. It wasn't just the mechanics of her voice that was breathtaking, but the way she poured every ounce of the spark of her own divinity into the song.

The Prophet stopped and stood, waiting before the door of the temple of the false idol, no apprehension or expectation of rejection in her stance. It was his own jagged breathing that brought Gabriel's attention to the fact that, as she sang, he had started crying. Inside the door, he heard the sound of several latches and bolts being unlocked, and then the creak of the door as one side slowly slid open.

"That was beautiful," the tired looking, middle-aged man wearing a garish white Elvis suit sighed as he scrunched up his face to squint into the blinding sun. "Most people only want to hear the King's pop hits."

"My grandmother was a disciple of the King," the Prophet said quietly. "When she died, she instructed us to bury her with her original Elvis 33 rpm of that album and an old record player so she could still hear the King's hymns in heaven."

"Elvis was not a god," the man said. "But he _tried _to use his position of power to help people see the light, even as he, himself, knew he was a failure. Like us all, I guess…"

Gabriel moved, his large frame causing a shadow to fall before the door. The man recognized a second person stood beyond the door for the first time.

"Holy shit!" the man shouted in terror, recoiling and falling back from the door, trying to slam it. "Demons! Get out!"

"I mean you no harm," Gabriel said, his large hand preventing the man from slamming the door shut in the Prophets face even as he tried to make his voice rumble reassurance. "I protect the Prophet." He had become aware that the sound of his voice, alone still inspired terror and awe amongst the humans even though it no longer burned with holy fire.

"You were supposed to protect _us_ from evil," the man snarled. "Not wipe us out like cockroaches. Word has gotten out. God is not to be trusted."

"But the Savior is," the Prophet said softly. "He has defied the Father to come back and lead this world out of darkness. He has returned."

"Where?" the man asked incredulously. "I have heard rumors, but then again, I have heard rumors that Bigfoot now lives in Ceasars Palace."

"You tell me," the Prophet said, stepping out of the blinding sunlight so the man could better see her. "Read the instructions. They will guide you."

The man noticed for the first time that the tattoos upon the Prophets face were not merely dirt or some vulgar artwork emblazoned upon her skin, but heavenly symbols emblazoned by the finger of the Father himself. The man glanced at the tattoos, and then at Gabriel.

"Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord," he recited, studying Gabriel carefully, "shall answer the wrath of the Left Hand of God. Gabriel, I presume? Carrier of the Word of God?"

Gabriel just nodded, surprised that this caricature of a dead entertainer could so easily read the heavenly script written on the Prophets skin, and also know his name and former duties even though they were not enunciated amongst the writing on the Prophets forehead. Humans, he was beginning to discover, were many-layered, surprising creatures. Not just the Prophet.

"Is it true?" the man asked. "You were his midwife?"

"Yes," Audrey said.

The man hesitated, not sure what to do, and then made his decision. "Come in," he said, opening wide the door. "It's not exactly the Sistine Chapel, but it's the best I could do to minister to the flock in a city such as Las Vegas."

"Thank you," the Prophet said, her manner gracious as she stepped inside. "My name is Audrey. Audrey Anderson."

"Matt," the man said. "Or more precisely, the Reverend Matthias H. Bradford. Methodist minister. Aren't you rather young to be a Prophet?"

"Aren't you rather unorthodox to be a minister?" the Prophet shot back, a hint of the cutting edge of her defiance entering her words.

"Touche," the Reverend said, hesitating, and then leading through several halls that had been scathed by destruction to a room which had been set up to be a caricature of a church. Pews lined the aisle, a microphone and implements of a band were set up on an alter with a large, plain crucifix that doubled as a stage, and in the middle of the aisle sat a convertible, pink Cadillac. The room had been left unscathed.

"Why are you still here?" Gabriel asked. "This city has been destroyed."

"Wiped from the face of the Earth like Sodom of old," the Reverend said, his voice weary.

"What happened here?" the Prophet asked.

"I was conducting a wedding," the Reverend said. "There's no flock to minister to in Las Vegas. Not really. People here … they were always focused on other things. Life. Nobody ever had the time to listen to the sermons of an obscure Methodist minister with a graduate degree in arcane biblical history. But the Elvis fans? I look a lot like the King just before he OD'd and can sing like him, too. They never complained when I dressed as Elvis and slipped a real Christian blessing into their nuptials or sang some of the King's religious hymns during their wedding reception. I had to earn a living somehow."

"I had a religious education teacher like that once," the Prophet said. "First communion classes. She was a Dominican nun. She used to love teaching us about the history behind the bible, and she didn't mind using unorthodox teaching methods to keep us interested in what she had to teach."

"What happened to her?" the Reverend asked.

"The church banished her to some remote outpost where she couldn't damage any more impressionable young minds," the Prophet stated, scorn lacing her voice. "As soon as she was gone, I lost all interest in religion."

"Pity," the Reverend said. "The Dominicans are like the Jesuits. They believe in spiritual enlightenment through education and truth, not dogma. They were always butting heads with the Vatican."

An awkward silence stretched out between them for a few minutes, the Reverend glancing between the Prophet and Gabriel, waiting.

"The Prophet has visions of a coming war," Gabriel said, ignoring the look of surprise Audrey gave him. "A coming time of darkness that will dwarf the apocalypse. In attempting to exterminate humans, the Father has made his enemies bold. The Prophet's visions are becoming more and more disturbing. Last night, the vision instructed us to find you. You will join us."

"You didn't tell me…" the Prophet started to say.

"You didn't need to know," Gabriel stated firmly.

"How bad?" the Reverend asked.

"The Grigori have escaped," Gabriel said. "The Nephilim are coming."

"What?" the Prophet asked.

Although she cried out in her sleep during the visions and spoke in the language of heaven, Audrey had no detailed memories of the horrific nightmares which left her exhausted and sweaty, shaking with terror, each morning. She had no idea what she dreamed of, but Gabriel did. He'd existed long enough to remember what had happened the _last _time the Father had battled the Watchers.

"So the ancient scripts are real?" the Reverend asked, his eyes disturbed. "The ones that predate the bible?"

"They are a flawed description of what happened," Gabriel stated, "but the ancient Sumerian texts did attempt to write down the history before it was completely forgotten. You have read these texts?"

"Yes," the Reverend said. "My Master of Divinity is in ancient near-eastern philosophy. I had the privilege of studying some of the fragments of the ancient Sumerian clay tablets as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls."

"You have read Enoch?" Gabriel asked.

"Yes," the Reverend said. "Several versions. Which is most true?"

"None of them," Gabriel said, snorting. "Enoch was a false prophet. His scrolls deliberately mixed truth and untruth to achieve his personal political goals, obscuring the truth until it was believed to be little more than a fairy tale. It is a failing of all attempts by man to write down the Word of God."

"Gabriel," the Prophet asked, concern etching her brow. "What are you talking about?"

"Humans aren't the Father's only mistake," Gabriel said, inwardly cringing as he uttered the truth he knew would have gotten him cast out of heaven for even _thinking_ it if he hadn't already been fallen. "You are just the latest of a long string of failures."

"We are not a mistake!" the Prophet snapped angrily, her stance suddenly taking on the demeanor of a mountain lion about to pounce. "We don't order the murder of innocent babies!"

"No," Gabriel said wearily, "you don't. Which is why the Father changed his mind."

The Reverend watched them argue, looking from one to the other, attempting to figure out the power dynamics in their relationship and figure out just which one of them was in charge. Angel? Or the young human with tattoos all over her body. Gabriel was unable to enlighten him. First, he had to figure it out for himself. But before he did that, he had to talk down the Prophet from exploding into another one of her tirades against the Father which would only leave her exhausted.

"Audrey," Gabriel said, his voice conciliatory and tinged with sorrow as he used her given name. "The Father punishes me still for my role in the apocalypse. Your righteous anger does not serve our purpose right now." His wings drooped in shame at the memory of how mindlessly he had been willing to kill without question on the Father's behalf.

Gabriel watched her anger waver. She tightly pressed her lips together in that defiant stance he had come to recognize as the Prophet redirecting her anger into another avenue in order to deny the Father the opportunity to watch. He had become aware that the Prophet took great effort to deny the Father the opportunity to watch her wield the ability she so effortlessly used to cut through illusion and lay bare the hideous motivations of all she cut down. She refused to remind him of his shame and institute the Father's punishment on the Father's behalf. Defiance. For some reason she had never disclosed, Audrey understood his role as the Father's sin offering to mankind and she refused to accept it.

Recognition of what Gabriel had just uttered dawned upon the Reverends face. The disciple garbed in the attire of a false idol knew his biblical history well.

"You blew the horn that signaled the apocalypse?" the Reverend whispered.

"I did more than that," Gabriel sent bluntly. "I was sent to kill the unborn Savior because he defied the Father in choosing to fulfill his promise to return to your world after it had been forbidden."

The Reverend gasped in horror. "The Savior … he's dead?"

"No," Gabriel stated. "Not because I didn't try. The Prophet and my brother Michael convinced the Father to change his mind. I have been cast down from heaven as punishment for following the Fathers orders."

"That's why the apocalypse made no sense," the Reverend said, instinctively backing away from him. "It was nothing like the Book of Revelations. I heard rumored the Archangel Michael convinced God to give us another chance. There are a lot of rumors, most of them conflicting."

"Gabriel," the Prophet said, her voice and eyes filled with compassion. "You were following the Fathers orders. Your fault is your willingness to obey him without question, not everything else that happened."

"I am learning that now," Gabriel said. "And I shall willingly continue to pay for that mistake until the Father sees fit to forgive me."

"Fucking genocidal maniac," the Prophet screamed, finally losing control of the rage that always existed just beneath the surface. "You are not some fucking goat to throw off the cliff as a sin offering to some old demon adversary of his. Apology not accepted!" The Prophet turned, raising her fist at the ceiling. "You hear that you fucking asshole! If you want to make restitution for you sins, you're going to have to do it _yourself!_ Apology not accepted!"

"Ohmigod," the Reverend whispered, appalled at the blasphemy he was hearing. "She speaks blasphemy."

"You can read the instructions," Gabriel stated flatly. "The Father has granted her an exemption from the sin of blasphemy. In her cutting words, the Prophet speaks only the truth. The Father has decided he needs to start hearing the truth from now on instead of obsequious flatteries designed to flatter his ego. He has chosen the Prophet to be his vehicle."

"Oh," the Reverend stated, looking from one to the other. Gabriel could tell the man was _really _confused. So was he. Once he figured it all out, he'd enlighten the man.

"You're not a dog," the Prophet whispered, shuddering as she tried to get a grip on her rage before it went any further. "You're not some poor dumb animal to get put down after its owner 'sics it on somebody and then is too chickenshit to face the music."

"It is my duty to fulfill the needs of the Father," Gabriel said softly, reading the by-now familiar signs and anticipating what was about to come next. "He has sent me to you so that you can teach me the difference between what he asks for, and what he truly needs." He took a step towards her, waiting, welcoming what he knew would come next.

"You're not a fucking dog," Audrey said, tears streaming down her face. "You're not a fucking dog."

Audrey collapsed into his arms, sobbing. Protectively closing her in his wings to shield her from view, he comforted her, his heart breaking with her sorrow, for it was really _his _anger and sorrow she was manifesting each time she had one of these episodes, the anger and sorrow he had not yet learned to exhibit on his own.

He knew it was forbidden for him to look forward to each opportunity to hold her in his arms like this, to relish in the feel of her flesh touching his as she taught him what it meant to feel his own emotions, but relish it he did. Each time she touched him, spoke to him, searched his pale-blue eyes with her dark velvet ones, Gabriel felt a yearning he had never felt before, not even when he had still basked in the light of the heavenly Father. He didn't know what to call the emotion he felt, but Gabriel _wanted _to be there to comfort her. Even though he _knew_ such wanting was a sin.

The Reverend excused himself, understanding that whatever he was seeing was something not meant for his eyes. Gabriel gave him a grateful look. He would speak to him later.

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered into her ear as her sobbing finally began to subside. She had never spoken of the sorrow which had damaged her young soul so profoundly long before the events that had transpired, but Gabriel understood it was an old wound, one which had enabled her to look at the broken monster crumpled at the base of a cliff and take pity upon it. One that left her exhausted.

Her head began to loll. Gently, Gabriel picked her up and carried her over to the back seat of the garish pink Cadillac parked in the middle of the chapel. The strange temple of a false idol which, like Audrey, had contained too much of a spark of the divine for the heavenly host to destroy. Adjusting his wings so his few remaining razor-sharp feathers did not puncture the seats, the white leather strangely untouched, he stretched out upon the seat and pulled her sleeping form on top of him, enclosing her in a cocoon of his arms and wings.

Her breathing become soft and shallow as her exhaustion took her, Gabriel moderated his breathing so that it matched hers so as to disrupt her rest as little as possible. The Prophet had not been getting nearly enough sleep. Perhaps if he held her from the outset, just this once, in this strange temple which had been untouched by the heavenly host, perhaps she would be granted merciful sleep unmarred by visions of the future?

A yearning unlike anything he had ever felt before registered in his chest, not pain, but a hunger. He could not name the feeling he felt, but when he held her, it … flowed.

"Heavenly Father, forgive me," Gabriel whispered, staring at the rude wooden cross that seemed almost out-of-place in this garish temple. "I know it is forbidden, but I cannot help the way I feel. If it is not your will that I feel this way, please give me a sign, for I no longer know your mind."


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

"Here," Audrey said, pointing at the wilderness which stretched off in the distance and then pointing to her map. "Zion National Park. My parents brought me here once as a child."

"There is water in this park?" Gabriel asked, shaking his near-empty canteen.

After nearly six weeks of wandering the sparsely populated Nevada desert, some nights spent at the rare households that zig-zagged across their path, but most spent out under the stars, their supplies were once again running dangerously low. Only the fact Gabriel had mastered the art of bow-hunting the sparse fauna in the desert and the Reverends' knowledge of local edible cacti had kept them adequately fed and watered.

"The mountains are high enough to capture the moisture that floats above the desert air," the Reverend said. "It sucks it down into the peaks and runs off to the park below. The park dries down a lot this time of year, but there should still be adequate water in the streams to drink and fish."

"And bathe," Audrey said hopefully, staring at her itchy skin where the still-stifling early September heat caused her own sweat to evaporate so quickly it left behind a dusty layer of white salt by mid-afternoon. "Nothing personal, guys, but you all stink."

The Reverend gave her his best Elvis-impersonating grin, his brown eyes flashing with mirth. The Reverend had helped them scavenge _real _camping supplies before they had vacated Las Vegas from a deserted sporting goods store, saying prayers for the souls of the owners, whether alive or dead, in lieu of compensation since there was nobody there to pay and they didn't have any money.

Audrey had scavenged a pair of _real _hiking boots, happily discarding the 'dike shoes' the old woman had given her back in the Mojave desert, and some more appropriate clothing for wandering the wilderness, but had saved her tattered too-short skirt, a symbol of her own defiance. When the survivors had vacated the city, most had simply loaded up their cars with their household belongings and headed someplace else. Nobody in their right mind thought of _walking _across the desert. They had found tents, sleeping bags, mess kits, high-end survival gear, and bows and arrows.

As for Gabriel … he had been _most _unhappy to have his still-large frame crammed into mortal clothing, especially the yuppie-hiker knockoff of combat boots and cargo pants she had insisted he wear. He stoically endured the unfamiliar feel of modern shoes on feet that had only ever known leather sandals, but she secretly suspected he had grown attached to the cargo pants. Pockets. Gabriel had declared they were a practical adaptation to ones' environment and stopped giving them a baleful eye after the second day.

His armor was tucked into the enormous hiking pack he carried along with the bulk of their supplies, but his mace he kept perpetually slung in its carry-straps despite handguns and the sparse ammunition they had scavenged from the three gunman who had shot at them, ready to protect her against any threat.

Gabriel now taught daily _both _herself and the Reverend to fight, the former army-chaplain Reverend quickly losing his middle-aged paunch and giving Gabriel _some _credible practice sparring. Gabriel seemed to enjoy it when he sparred with both of them at once, but even together Audrey and the Reverend barely taxed his fighting skills.

"There's this spot I remember where the river tumbled over the rocks like a ladder," Audrey said, fondly remembering her childhood to the national park they entered now. "We went tubing down it wearing our jeans. Got all banged up."

"The salmon aren't running this time of year," the Reverend said. "But there should still be trout in the stream. Perhaps we should head there?"

Audrey glanced at the compass rose tattooed on her hand. "This way. We'll see where we're supposed to camp." She could smell the moisture in the air. It was the sweetest scent she'd smelled in months. She was glad when the compass led them to exactly the spot she remembered, one of the few happy times she'd spent with her parents, to set up camp. The compass rose disappeared. This was where they were supposed to be for a while.

"First one into the water is a rotten egg!" Audrey shouted good-naturedly, a feeling of elation that she hadn't felt in a very long time surging through her veins as she unabashedly stripped down to her underwear and bra and made a break for the river, leaving her clothing strewn carelessly behind her. She ignored the disapproving look both the Reverend and Gabriel gave her as she splashed into the rocky river, squealing with delight from the cold.

"You heard the woman," the Reverend said. It took several minutes for the Reverend to join her. The Elvis-impersonating preacher was no prude, but he changed into a pair of swim trunks before also splashing into the water, sighing with pleasure as he sat down in the shallow water and lay flat so the water covered him. The river dried down to little more than a rocky stream this time of year, but scattered amongst the rocks were places one could completely submerge themselves if they wished.

"Gabriel?" Audrey called. "Will you join us?"

"I will stand sentry," Gabriel said flatly, deliberately avoiding looking at her.

"Come," Audrey said, winking at the Reverend. "Fill your canteen."

The Reverend stared at her with a blank expression for a moment, and then picked up on the mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

"There's a nice, clear pool of water right here," the Reverend said with a straight face. He pointed to a pool of water immediately adjacent to the one where Audrey had submerged herself. "Perhaps you could fill all of them?" He glanced at Audrey and winked back.

Gabriel picked up all six canteens they carried and silently ambled over to the pool of water. As he crouched to rinse each one out and fill it in the clear, cold mountain water, Audrey gingerly stepped across the stones in her bare feet.

"You look hot, Gabriel," Audrey said, giving him a shove, just barely ducking in time as he instinctively flapped his wings to maintain his balance and avoid being clubbed.

"Hey!" Gabriel shouted, catching his balance just before he hit the water.

Audrey was determined. She feigned a fall and shrieked in mock terror. Gabriel reached out and caught her, using his own body to break her fall and plopping down face-down into the pool of water. Both she and the Reverend pealed with laughter at their mischief.

"That wasn't very nice," Gabriel said, his voice even and flat as his eyes wandered down to her transparent bra and panties and then froze, staring at the tattoos which marked her abdomen all way down into her panty-line. She heard his sharp intake of breath, and then he tore his eyes away, looking at some point off in the distance, the muscle in his cheek twitching as he clenched his jaw.

"You caught me," Audrey said, giving him her most disarmingly innocent smile as she gazed into his unearthly, ice-blue eyes. "My hero."

Her breath caught in her chest as he held her gaze, unmoving in the cold water, some emotion registering in his normally unreadable face that she could not place. Neither of them moved, the moment stretching out for what seemed an eternity as she heard her own heart beat pounding in her ears, the only sound the stream gurgling over their bodies.

She could feel Gabriel's flesh shudder beneath her. "I should finish," Gabriel finally said emotionlessly, breaking eye contact and moving to stand, helping her up. "I wish to survey the area for game before I bathe."

"Of course," Audrey said. She stared at him, not sure what had just happened. Was he angry at her for getting him all wet?

Picking her way across the rocks back to her preferred pool of water, the one that was just almost deep enough for her to float, she passed the Reverend and gave him a high-five.

"Serious fellow," the Reverend said. "I keep hoping he'll lighten up, or at least talk in more than one or two word sentences, but he never does. It's as if we're dealing with a machine."

"If you'd been through what he's been through," Audrey said, sinking back into her adjacent pool of water, "you'd be serious too. Cut him some slack. For billions of years he was told to be one way, and then the asshole upstairs just cut him loose. It's going to take him time to learn."

"It's as if he doesn't feel emotion," the Reverend said. "Like a robot. What did they do to him up there?"

"He feels every bit as strongly as we do," Audrey said softly. "He just doesn't understand what it is he's feeling. The only emotion he's ever been permitted to feel is duty."

They chit-chatted for more than an hour, banal conversation about the flora and fauna of the park. The Reverend was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge, not simply arcane pre-biblical religious theology, and over the past two months he had filled Audrey in on the legends about the creatures of her nightmare, the Grigori, the Nephilim, and the fallen ones. She asked Gabriel about the legends, but he was tight-lipped, preferring to speak to the Reverend when they were alone rather than her. She knew he was trying to protect her, to prevent making her nightmares worse, but she wished to know the truth.

She could sense a great tear in his psyche, an emotional wound from those turbulent times which had irrevocably scarred him. Although he discussed the facts behind some of the legends with the Reverend, Audrey doubted very much Gabriel ever discussed what he thought or felt about it. Gabriel wasn't used to thinking for himself. It was forbidden in any context other than to carry out the will of the Father. It was as if he had drawn a line in the sand between his old life, where it was forbidden to think, and now, when Audrey expected him to exercise discretion, and refused to use his new skills to contemplate that which had already come to pass.

After she felt thoroughly refreshed, her hair clean for the first time in weeks, she excused herself from the Reverends company and decided to hike up to a spot she remembered where the river they camped beside now originated from a breathtaking waterfall that plunged down from a crevasse in the mountain over a thousand feet. The path had not been maintained for many months, but it had been worn into the forest by decades of pedestrian foot traffic. She could hear the roar of the river grow louder, the air become laden with mist. She rounded a bend in the trail, and stopped.

Gabriel was poised at the top of the cliff, eyes closed, arms outstretched, naked in the sun. She stepped to one side so a tree trunk obscured her from his view, watching, breathless as he dove into the air, wings pressed tightly down his back as though he were a diving hawk, and executed a perfect swan dive off the cliff into the river below.

She had always thought of him as burly, brutal, and strong, his features those of a Rottweiler. Gods' attack dog. But Gabriel had lost much of his excess mass while here on Earth, even the razor-sharp feathers transforming into the downy ones she expected of an angel. Now … while still taller and far more muscular than any man she knew, his features had transformed into those of an Adonis, long, lean, and beautiful in his nakedness.

She watched, spellbound, as his head broke the surface of the water. He splashed his wings in the pool, ruffling his feathers in the water, almost playful as he washed his body and wings, ducking repeatedly beneath the water to wash the desert grime from his hair. He floated on his back for a while, spread eagle in the sun, completely unaware he had an audience and leaving nothing for the imagination. She had diligently avoided looking at areas she knew would violate his modesty when he had lain broken and despondent at the foot of the cliff, although she was no stranger to the intimate areas of a male, but she stared unabashedly at him now.

Gabriel lazily swam to the edge of the pool, his long, muscular arms easily pulling him through the water, and heaved himself up on some rocks, giving her an unobstructed view of his very muscular rump. He shook his hair and wings like a dog, beating the water out of his feathers, and sighed with pleasure as the first smile she had ever seen lit up his features. His smile was so beautiful it made her heart hurt, and after a moment she realized it was because she had been holding her breath, too afraid to breathe in case he heard and it broke the magical moment.

Once again Gabriel climbed up the face of the cliff, muscles rippling as he easily propelled himself up the sheer rock face, and poised at the top for a dive. She held her breath as he dove and, this time, instead of diving into the pool below, he spread his wings and beat them until the wind caught them, catching the updraft created by the moisture evaporating upward from the waterfall and spiraling lazily upwards into the sky.

Gabriel was flying…

Silently, Audrey faded back into the woods, not wishing to disrupt this moment. When he wished for them to know he had regained the gift of flight, Gabriel would tell them.

Something had changed…

No longer did Audrey find herself thinking of Gabriel as a loyal attack dog or a broken creature to be pitied. Nor did she consider him to be an immortal creature, too ancient and ethereal to wrap her brain around. From that day forward, Audrey began to think of Gabriel as a man.


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Gabriel silently watched the Prophet pull back the bow and arrow, letting the arrow fly and hitting the target he had set up slightly off-center. Not a kill shot on small game, but possibly a good enough shot to wound large game such as a deer so you could get a second arrow into it. Or a man.

"Darn!" the Prophet complained. She looked to him, her eyes imploring. "I don't understand what I'm doing wrong!"

Petroleum wasn't the only thing in increasingly short supply since the world had ended. Ammunition for the two handguns and sniper rifle were also impossible to find. Although they carried the guns with them in case of emergency, they had not been able to find any ammunition for them. His mace was not a hunting tool, and even _he _couldn't throw a knife far enough to take down a rabbit at 1,000 feet. Although bows had never been his first weapon of choice, it was the most logical weapon for all of them to learn under the circumstances.

"You're still holding your breath, and then exhaling as you release the bowstring," Gabriel said. "You need to slowly start to release your breath just before you release the string so that the movement of your chest doesn't jerk your arm."

"Why can't I just hold my breath?" Audrey asked.

"Because if you're shooting at real game," Gabriel said, "you may be holding your breath and holding the string taut for a very long time before you have a clean shot."

"Suppers ready!" the matriarch of the household who had welcomed them called across the yard. All around them, children ceased buzzing around Gabriel like curious little puppies and scurried towards the big house where seven wives and over fifty children shared a single father. Polygamist Mormons. The compass rose had led their little group into a polygamist compound, an entire town where polygamist families thumbed their noses at mortal law and lived as Abraham did in the bible. Although polygamist sects were the _minority _of Mormons, these seemed to be the households the Prophets compass rose kept drawing them towards.

Gabriel smirked inwardly to himself, preventing his amusement from registering in his features as he helped the Prophet line up her last shot before supper. For millions of years he had watched the ancestors of humans had live with an alpha-male and a band of females, right on through the entire Old Testament. The Father had no problem with polygamy, neither preferring it nor condemning it. All He cared about was that humans reproduce and enact social structures that ensured the vulnerable young survived and grew up to respect His law. With that confirmation of their faith from the angel who had formerly been charged with carrying the Word of God, their little group had been welcomed with open arms.

Audrey had been horrified when she had learned their hosts were polygamists, and even _more _horrified when the compass rose had disappeared from her wrist for more than a week until it had finally reappeared this afternoon. It appeared the Prophet had as much to learn from the polygamists as the polygamists had to learn from the Prophet.

Although the apocalypse had hit the Mormon stronghold just as it had hit every other area where they had travelled, the closer they got to Salt Lake City, the more they saw signs of recovery. Run out of the rest of the United States back when Utah had been nothing but uninhabitable desert and forced to band together to survive, the Mormons had developed unshakeable tenants about working together, sharing resources, and stockpiling at minimum a years' supply of all the food, supplies and money a family needed to survive if the judgment day came during their lifetimes. Well … the apocalypse had come, and the Mormons had been prepared.

It was _this _lesson that Gabriel suspected the Father wished for Audrey to learn, not that she should find a husband and seventeen sister-wives…

The only thing the Mormons had _not _been prepared for was just how many of their own 'saints' would succumb to the heavenly host inhabiting the bodies of the weak and killing the strong. Mormon territory had lost a great deal of its population as everywhere else, but not as many as, say, Los Angeles or Las Vegas. Wherever they journeyed, families were consolidating households so that their territory would not fall prey to the bands of roving bandits that grew increasingly bold.

"Now draw back the bowstring," Gabriel said gently into the Prophets ear, supporting her aiming wrist with two fingers of one hand while he helped her draw back the bow with his other arm, his back pressed against hers. He pressed his chest into her back. "Exhale slowly, and release the string a moment or two after you start to exhale your breath." He breathed with her, moving his finger ever so gently on her drawing hand to signal her when he wished for her to release the arrow. She let the arrow fly, making a perfect bullseye.

"I did it!" the Prophet squealed, turning and throwing herself unabashedly into his arms and giving him an affectionate kiss on the cheek before leaping out just as unexpectedly, running over to the Reverend to give him a high-five. "Bullseye!"

"Don't let it go to your head," the Reverend said, smiling at her. He was putting the finishing touches on his Elvis Presley outfit. Tomorrow they would leave, so tonight the Reverend had promised to perform every song from Elvis Presley's album of religious hymns "How Great Thou Art" for the deeply religious, if unorthodox, polygamist colony. The Reverend looked … happy.

Their unusual hosts had been deeply soothing for Gabriel. Not their faith, although it gave him comfort to hear them pray and sing exaltations to the Father despite the carnage he had visited down upon their species, or even their hospitality, which was impeccable. It was the ease with which the children of the colony had simply accepted him as one of their own. The Father had created all angels fully formed the day he created the universe, and then kept them separate from the mortal races he had created them to tend on his behalf afterwards. Although he had encountered many human children in his existence, even rescued many, this was the first time he had ever spent so much time amongst a single group of them. He now understood why the Savior had always spoken so wistfully about how much he missed the children on Earth.

"I'm starved," the Prophet said, grabbing his hand and tugging him towards the enormous house. "Hannah said they're making pork roast and sweet potatoes tonight. Your favorite." Hannah was the first, or head wife of Aaron, the patriarch of the family.

"Sweet potatoes?"Gabriel asked, his interest piqued. Food. His first eleven months as a mortal, Gabriel had first despised his bodies need to consume mortal food, then come to accept it. Now that they were getting into territory where the food was abundant and fresh, however, he was discovering there were some things he actually enjoyed. He'd begun to regain some of the weight he had lost.

As they sat at the table, the patriarch, Aaron, had questions for Gabriel.

"What can you tell me of our patron angel, Moroni?" Aaron asked.

Gabriel donned a blank expression, carefully choosing his words.

"I have never had the privilege of meeting the angel of whom you speak," he said.

"But you _must _know of him," Sarah asked, Aaron's second wife. "He is the angel who revealed the sacred tablets to our prophet, Joseph Smith."

"Heaven is a very large place," Gabriel said evenly. "I am an archangel. A warrior of the Father, only one caste of many. There are many castes of angels that serve both above and below the warrior caste, infinite numbers. Too many for a mere foot soldier such as myself to meet."

Gabriel could not lie. But if he had learned one thing from watching the Prophet struggle with her gift of cutting truth, it was that sometimes it was better to withhold the truth or state a lesser one rather than cut someone down with an ugly one.

"Have you seen Joseph Smith seated at the right hand of the Father?" Kailyn, Aaron's third wife asked.

"I am a soldier," Gabriel stated evenly, his expression deliberately unreadable. "Time moves very differently in heaven than on Earth. It has only been a blink of an eye in heavenly time since your Prophet died. I have not yet had an opportunity to meet him."

"What about Jesus?" one of the children asked, his eyes sparkling with wonder. "Have you met Jesus?"

"Yes," Gabriel said, a feeling of guilt and sorrow tingeing his voice. He glanced over and saw the sympathetic look both the Reverend and the Prophet gave him. "I am not worthy to walk in the Saviors presence."

"Were you really the one to tell Mary she was going to have the son of god?" another child asked, a little girl barely three.

"Yes," Gabriel said, his voice tinged with sadness. "I was with her when the Savior was born the first time around. And I held his mothers and his wife's hand when he left the world the first time, as well."

"So it's true?" Aaron asked. "Mary Magdalene was really Jesus's wife?"

"Yes," Gabriel said. "He was Jewish. The Jewish believe a man is incomplete if he is not married. He bore many mortal children, the descendents of whom still exist on the Earth today."

"I thought it was forbidden for heavenly creatures and angels to marry?" Aaron asked.

Gabriel's jaw tightened.

"The Father asked Jesus to incarnate into a mortal body and live as one of you so he could fully understand what it was like to live as a human," Gabriel said quietly. "The Father … sometimes he has a hard time understanding what your species is all about."

"So why did the Father allow Jesus to be killed the first time around?" Hannah asked.

Yes … why _had _the Father allowed it? The Savior had forbidden Gabriel to interfere, while the Father had been dismayed when his son had decided he _liked _living amongst the humans and wished to stay longer than the Father had intended. There had been rumors. Heavenly host sent to whisper jealousies in the ears of the Jewish temple priests. Audrey's revelation that the name of the other condemned the crowd had chanted, Bar-Abbas, meant 'son of god.' The Savior choosing to die a horrible death on an instrument of torture instead of simply dissolving his mortal shell, forcing all who watched to suffer along with him, including Gabriel and the Father. His last words, not to ask the humans why they had betrayed him, but to ask the Father why he had forsaken him.

"The Savior forbade me to interfere," Gabriel said, sorrow etching his face. "And the Father told me to honor his request. An angels first duty is to obey, so I obeyed. Without question."

It was too much. They had told Aaron the full truth about the apocalypse, but at Aaron's request they had kept this information from the rest of his family. About his lack of discretion, his guilt.

"Can you please excuse me?" Gabriel asked. He got up and excused himself from the table, moving outside to the porch. The Prophet moved to follow him, but he signaled he wished for her to stay with their hosts. He needed to be alone.

"Why, Father, did you command me to do such an abominable thing?" Gabriel asked, looking up at the sky. "It is good that I am being punished now, but why did you order it in the first place? I trusted you. Completely."

He sat there in silence for a long time, alone with his thoughts. About the Father. The Son. And the Prophet. What was he going to do about the Prophet? He had asked the Father to give him a sign, and he didn't like the answer.

The Reverend joined him after a long time.

"The Savior is very different from the Father, isn't he?" the Reverend asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "Most of your New Testament is made up of the beliefs of the Savior, not the Father."

"Does that make the Father angry?" the Reverend asked. "That his son was only here 30 years, yet in such a short time, usurped him in the hearts of his children?"

"It is not my place to question the Father," Gabriel stated flatly.

"When are you going to tell her?" the Reverend asked gently.

"Tell her what?" Gabriel asked.

"That you love her," the Reverend said.

Gabriel's sharp intake of breath surprised even him. Was it really that obvious?

"It is forbidden," Gabriel stated flatly. "I risk too much already."

"You fear punishment?" the Reverend asked.

"I have already been punished by being cast out of heaven," Gabriel stated. "I have dragged countless damned to the realm of Sheol. It is a dark and terrible place, but I do not fear it."

"So why do you hesitate?" the Reverend asked.

"I would gladly trade all eternity in heaven for a single night of her returning my love," Gabriel said, his voice anguished. "What I fear is that he will punish _her._"

"Are you certain of the Father's intent?" the Reverend asked. "He did, after all, make you mortal."

"You can read the instructions as well as I can," Gabriel stated. "He who defiles the Prophet of the Lord shall suffer all eternity in Sheol. The last angel who ignored those instructions had all his progeny sent there as well as himself. Those progeny are now angry and seek escape."

"Perhaps he wasn't referring to you?" the Reverend said. "Perhaps it is just a general warning against … I don't know … rape?"

"A rapist wouldn't be able to read the instructions," Gabriel said. "Only I can read the instructions. And you. And probably a few others."

"Perhaps it's just a general list of rules?" the Reverend stated. "For the Prophet to disseminate later?"

"You saw where he put that prohibition," Gabriel said. "Right on top of her mound of Venus. Those instructions did not appear until I … I … until I started having impure thoughts about her and asked the Father what was his will."

They sat there in silence for a very long time, their breath billowing clouds in the November cold.

"What will you do?" the Reverend finally asked. "She is not made of stone. If you will not love her, somebody will."

Gabriel turned away so the Reverend wouldn't see the great tear that made its way sorrowfully down his cheek. He was silent until he was certain he could keep the emotion from causing his voice to warble too greatly.

"I will give her as much as I dare give of myself without causing the Father to harm her," Gabriel said. "I will protect her with my life. And someday, when she finally moves on to somebody who can give her what she wants, I will pretend to be happy for her and I will endure."

The Reverend got up and gave him a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder. Camaraderie. Amongst the humans, Gabriel had finally found the faint echo of camaraderie he had once felt for his brothers in heaven.

"It's time for me to thank these kind people for their hospitality by giving them my best Elvis gospel impersonation," the Reverend said. "Will you come in and join us?"

"I think I'll just listen from out here if you don't mind," Gabriel said quietly.

"As you wish," the Reverend said, giving him another squeeze.

Gabriel sat staring at the sky as the sound of the Reverend's voice impersonating the King of Rock and Roll singing hymns to the Savior filtered out through the walls of the large communal farmhouse.

"Father," he whispered, "have I not endured every indignity you have piled upon me without question? Why teach me what it means to love and then forbid me to know it?"

The Father, of course, did not answer. As the Reverend finished his string of hymns, his songs turned towards some of the Kings love ballards. Love Me Tender. Glancing in the window, he saw the Prophet slow-dancing with Aaron's eldest son, a young man only a few months younger than the Prophet. Gabriel felt as though someone had just taken a knife and stabbed it through his heart.

Leaping off the porch, he flung himself into the air and flew up onto the roof. Tears streaming down his face, he wrapped his wings around himself and cried for what could never be.

It was forbidden.


	19. Chapter 18

_Note:__ Thank you to all the wonderful reviewers who've posted kind words. Most writers write fanfiction to answer some inner muse, to fill an inner void or some little voice that whispers "I wish this had turned out like that." It's a very personal thing. But when other people take the time to read your stories, it's like a little gift from heaven._

_Thank you reviewers. __ Please keep reading and, if you have a moment, push the button and drop a line. The web is still being spun, but perhaps some of you will see some of your gifts delicately woven into my web in coming chapters?_

X

Chapter 18

"And then _she_ says," Audrey chattered happily, tugging Josiah along by the hand, "why did the Father put the serpent in the garden in the first place if he knew the serpent would be nothing but trouble?"

"What did _he_ say?" Josiah asked. Josiah was the eldest son of Aaron and his head-wife, Hannah. The patriarch of the polygamist family they had stayed with for a week had requested they allow their son to accompany them to Salt Lake City, where it appeared the compass rose was leading them, to make a pilgrimage to the Mormon temple on the families' behalf. Josiah had recently turned eighteen. In accordance with Mormon tradition, it was time for him to be ordained into the Melchizedek priesthood, an occurrence Audrey associated with something akin to a Catholic receiving confirmation.

"Well, he flares his wings in that way he always does when you know he means business," Audrey said, spreading her arms wide, slightly upright, and spreading her fingers so that they trembled in mock-indignation, "and he says to her, 'it is forbidden to question the will of the Father!" The last sentence she said in her best pantomime of Gabriel's deep bass voice, scrunching her face into a near-exact replica of his sternest expression.

"So what did she say?" Josiah asked, his eyes wide with wonder.

"Well," Audrey said, changing her demeanor once more to pantomime the no-nonsense voice and body language of the heavyset, African-American woman who had put them up one night during their journey, the owner of a daycare center who now found herself the mother of a dozen orphans. "She just takes a drag of her cigarette, as if seriously considering what he just said, and then says, 'Honeychild … when you got kids, the first thing anybody with half a brain does is childproof the place and lock up all the goodies. Of _course _they ate the apple! What self-respecting kid _wouldn't!'"_

Audrey looked back at Gabriel, who was trudging along behind them as they made the weeks-long walk to Salt Lake City, and was taken aback by his scowl. He never smiled, except for that one time she had watched him bathe in the river after endless months in the desert, but ever since that day the big angel had sunken deeper and deeper into his thoughts, keeping her more and more at an emotional distance even as the length of time he needed to hold her and sooth her during her increasingly terrifying night-visions increased. Since leaving Aaron's house, however, he had become outright unfriendly. What was up with that?

Josiah looked at her, horrified. "That's blasphemy!"

"I got a tattoo right here on my forehead saying I'm exempted from the sin of blasphemy because when I blaspheme I always speak the truth," Audrey said, pointing to one of the tattoos. "I'm telling you … the woman was _right_. People have got to _stop _taking the Father's word literally and start thinking for _themselves_!"

A trip that had once taken hours in the car now took weeks, but everywhere they now went, they were welcomed, fed, housed, and treated with respect. The presence of Josiah helped. Aaron was well regarded by both polygamist and mainstream Mormons and she was discovering the Mormons had a soft spot for flawed prophets, angels, and wandering ministers.

Gabriel had quietly taken her aside, after she had specifically asked, and informed her that the underlying tenant of the Mormon faith, the visitation by the Angel Moroni to Joseph Smith and revelation of the tablets containing the Book of Mormon, were nothing but a fairy tale. Smith had been a megalomaniacal itinerant preacher with no following who had invented the story to feed his own ego. The Father had predictably sent the heavenly host to whisper to the mainstream Christians that the prophet was false and compelled them to burn, beat, slaughter, and generally drive Smith's followers out of the territory.

What had been surprising, Gabriel informed her, was that although Smith and a few of the other early church leaders had been certifiable crackpots, the disenfranchised Christians who had grasped onto some of the core truths Smith uttered in his sociopathic deviousness to tell people what they wanted to hear were _not _false. Driven out into the desert to survive, the early followers cobbled together truths from the increasingly bizarre rantings of their early leaders and created a religion that actually _worked _because many of their core beliefs instinctively mirrored teachings of the Savior which mainstream Christianity had suppressed_._ The Father had tried to destroy the fledgling faith several times but, in the end, changed his mind and decided to just leave it alone.

Although the Mormon faithful clung to the supposedly divine origins of their faith with a vengeance, Aaron had not been surprised to hear the truth. He requested they only reveal this truth to the patriarch or matriarch of each family they visited while in Mormon territory, some truths being too terrible in times of sorrow such as this to endure. The elders were aware their religion might be built upon a keystone that was questionable, especially after the apocalypse, and wished to gently nudge their flock towards those beliefs which were truth without destroying the foundation of hope which was enabling the Mormons to recover when so many other parts of the country were still decimated.

"He doesn't like me very much," Josiah said quietly, glancing nervously back at Gabriel.

Audrey glanced back as well. She had not seen Gabriel so sullen since he had awoken from his injuries at the base of the cliff and realized he needed to consume mortal food, and never for such extended periods of time.

"Come," Audrey said, reaching out to playfully punch Josiah in the shoulder. "Ignore him. I don't think he's happy about the prospect of having to spend an entire day answering twenty questions from your church leaders. It'll be more talking in one day than all the talking he's done in the year I've known him."

"Has it really been one year?" Josiah asked.

"Christmas is in four days," Audrey said, her smile disappearing. Christmas. The day the Savior had come into this world, into her waiting hands, a second time. The day Gabriel had blown his terrifyingly horrible horn signifying the end of days and then burst through the front door of the diner, killing his own brother for disobeying god, trying to kill the baby, killing her, and then been cast down from heaven by the Father as a sin offering after the Father had changed his mind.

Gabriel did not wish to hide his sin of failing the Father, even as he still struggled with having failed the genocidal fucking maniac when he had done as God asked and obeyed. It was another truth Aaron had asked they reveal only to each families' patriarch or matriarch and the church elders, but not the ordinary people desperately clinging to the hope Gabriel represented, that the Father had sent a Prophet of the Savior into their midst to pave the way guarded by the Left Hand of God.

"It's good you'll get to spend Christmas in the temple," Josiah said. "You have a beautiful voice. My father hopes the elders will request you to sing at the Christmas mass."

"I'm not used to singing in front of a crowd," Audrey admitted, sheepishly. "My only voice training is singing along to a karaoke machine."

"When you sing," Josiah said, a starry eyed expression coming into his eyes, "it is as though a ray of light bursts through the heavens and shoots rainbows down from the sky. You will put the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to shame."

Audrey was aware that Josiah had a hopeless crush on her. If he'd been a little … okay … a _lot _hipper … and not from some weird polygamy sect … at one time in her life she would have been attracted to him. Josiah had grown up on a farming commune and had grown large and muscular from a lifetime of hard physical labor. If she had to be honest with herself, if she could just get him to unbutton that damned top button of his shirt and be a little less formal, hip or not, the old Audrey probably would have been gleefully leading the devout young Mormon down the road to perdition and tempting him with every deadly sin she could think of, including fornication. Josiah was _hot! _Audrey had been no angel when fate had changed her, and no virgin. Acting out sexually had been just another way to shake her fist at the world and scream out her defiance against her parents.

But now…

She glanced back at Gabriel. It had not just been the Savior who had changed her. Nor dying. Nor the realization that the cutting truths she had always screamed in defiance needed to be wielded with discretion to achieve the ends she desired. No … Gabriel had changed her. First she had hated him. Then she had pitied him, a broken creature whose care distracted her from her own pain. Then she had come to accept him as a burden she had to bear. As he had grown stronger, she had come to view him as a protector, a loyal dog, a stodgy old fart who took the place of the parents she had lost and tried to keep her out of trouble. Then … that had changed too. She had begun to see him as her equal. Human. Her friend. Now? As she watched Gabriel discover his humanity, Audrey found herself becoming more and more aware of her own divinity.

"Audrey?" Josiah asked, bringing her out of her thoughts. "I asked if you would be willing to sing How Great Thou Art?"

"Maybe," Audrey said. "I will sing songs of faith my grandmother used to sing about the Savior because I know he is good, but it will be a cold day in hell when I sing praises to the Father!"

The anger gripped her, flowing through her veins like heavenly fire, righteous indignation. Whatever strange power took over when she felt the rage, they had the same feel about them as the visions she experienced each night as she slept. Both powers flowed through her with a fervor she could not control, both left her shivering and drained, and both necessitated Gabriel's protection to help her ride them out. Although her outbursts had become fewer and further between, they had also become more urgent and violent, just as the visions were becoming more urgent and violent, desperate in their need to communicate … something … using the only vessel they had. Her.

Audrey suspected they originated from the same source, although she could not name what that source was. Gabriel thought it was the will of the Father, but Audrey wasn't so sure. Why would the Father rail against himself and give instructions that weren't always in agreement with his wishes? Nor did they have the feel of anything she associated with Michael. Or the tiny Savior she had helped birth. The Savior was now in mortal form and unable to channel holy fire except through the self-imposed limitation of his own, vulnerable, mortal shell. Something else was going on. Something Gabriel might suspect, but was forbidden to speak about.

Tact. Josiah had asked her to sing a song of the Savior, not the Father. Succumbing to one of her episodes now would serve no purpose except necessitate they lose another day and cause Josiah to miss the Christmas ordination he was hoping to receive. They had already lost two days, the truths uttered in the first episode Josiah had witnessed leaving the young man trembling and despondent even as the Reverend had quietly explained to him the strange power she wielded. She suppressed her defiance, knowing she would instead pay the price in her nightly visions.

Gabriel had given Aaron his vow of honor that he would spend a day answering the questions of the church elders honestly. Perhaps Josiah could … add … a few questions to the questions Aaron had suggested the elders ask?

"Josiah," Audrey said. "I have a favor to ask."

For the next few days, Audrey discussed her thoughts on the questions nagging her subconscious and worked with Josiah to formulate questions the elders could ask that would appear natural, but elicit truths Audrey needed to know. They walked, co-conspirators, with their heads pressed together and voices hushed as they conspired to coax their recalcitrant champion to reveal some of the blasphemous truths he so carefully avoided speaking aloud out of fear of offending the Father who had cast him aside.

"Audrey," the Reverend said, coming up to her as they entered the Salt Lake City limits. "Can we talk?"

"Sure," Audrey said, breaking her perpetual huddle with Josiah. She usually spoke to the Reverend as they walked, or occasionally Gabriel, although with Gabriel it was more that she talked and he silently listened, but she had had little time.

"Alone?" the Reverend asked.

She dropped back to walk next to the Reverend who, during their travels, dressed as they did, his Elvis costume carefully tucked into his hiking pack. They walked a while in silence as the Reverend struggled with something that was on his mind.

"What's on your mind?" Audrey finally asked.

"You should be more sensitive," the Reverend said softly, glancing back at the sullen Gabriel.

"I don't understand," Audrey said.

"I know," the Reverend said. He was silent, his thoughts trailing through his mind.

Audrey let him work his way through his thoughts. Not speaking while somebody else thought things through was a trick she had learned when dealing with Gabriel, but she was discovering it was a wonderful way to force _others_ to either reveal or acknowledge a truth. She wondered what truth the Reverend struggled with now?

"Do you think he is made of stone?" the Reverend finally said softly, looking her in the eye.

"Who?" Audrey asked.

The Reverend glanced back at Gabriel.

"What?" Audrey asked, perplexed. Did she think Gabriel was made of stone? Of course he wasn't made of stone. She, better than anyone, understood just how vulnerable Gabriel was. Had she inadvertently offended him with one of her terrible, cutting truths about the Father and not realized it. She glanced back at him one more. Gabriel had been profoundly unhappy for a while now, more so the past few weeks. After months of slowly thawing out and becoming outright likeable, he had retreated _back_ into his impenetrable shell, culminating several weeks ago into the sullen giant who trudged grudgingly at the back of the group.

If not for the tender way he held her and whispered words of reassurance into her ear when she experienced a vision or had one of her episodes, Audrey would have sworn Gabriel didn't like her anymore…

"You should be more sensitive," the Reverend repeated cryptically, his expression almost pleading. He broke eye contact and gradually dropped back to walk with Gabriel.

What?

Nightfall was just beginning to fall as they climbed a shallow rise in the flat Utah plain and caught their first glimpse of the Mormon temple shining off in the distance, spires backlight by working electricity in the darkened city, like the Emerald City shining off in the distance in the Land of Oz. Despite herself, Audrey caught herself giving a sharp intake of breath at the beautiful temple the Mormons had built to symbolize their faith.

Aaron had arranged for them to stay with relatives near the temple using a network of working telephones the Mormons had cobbled back together from old land-lines, giving a lifeline to the brain of the Mormon church which had stepped into the void created by the apocalypse to shepherd her people towards recovery. One did not simply walk into the Mormon temple, especially not the inner sanctum she and Gabriel would be drawn into to answer questions. There were certain steps one needed to take to purify themselves. Audrey felt annoyed when Josiah had explained the steps, but they seemed strangely reassuring to Gabriel, who was used to such rituals before being allowed into the presence of the Father or the higher orders of angels.

"I go now," Josiah said, taking her hand. "I will be the first member of the family to take my ordination of Melchizedek from the mainsteam temple, instead of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints temple, since the two sects broke apart nearly one hundred years ago."

"Must you leave now?" Audrey asked, reluctant to be parted from his company. Having spent months in the taciturn Gabriel's company, the devout Mormon had seemed a breath of freedom.

"I must begin my rituals of purification to be fit to receive my ordination," Josiah said, his eyes serious. "Once I take my vows, I will lead my life according to the tenants of the mainstream church, not my fathers' church. It is his wish that our two sects be reconciled using whatever truths you and your friends reveal to the elders."

"I'm glad," Audrey said. She used the hand he held captive an approving squeeze.

"Part of the tenants of the mainstream church is that I will only be allowed to take one wife," Josiah said. "With Gabriel's revelation that polygamy is not against the will of the Father, but found disfavor with the Savior who has come back to guide us, the ways of my father will probably die out. He wishes me to be the first, to guide the rest of our family so that we are ready when the Savior becomes old enough to assume the mantle of leadership."

"I'm glad," Audrey said, a joy going through her that she could not explain. If more people such as Josiah were touched by her wanderings, than it would have all been worthwhile. Humanity would have a fighting chance.

"It is expected that as soon as I receive my ordination," Josiah said, his face turning pink and his voice beginning to stammer, "that I will take a wife. One wife."

"Good," Audrey said, suddenly becoming uncomfortable as it dawned upon her which direction this conversation was headed.

"I would follow you," Josiah said. "I would follow you wherever you would go, preaching the word of the Savior and walking by your side."

Audrey didn't know what to say. Her customary truthfulness thankfully abandoned her at the moment as she opened her mouth and nothing came out.

"Marry me, Audrey Anderson," Josiah asked, his voice almost a plea. "You are the most beautiful, divine woman I have ever met and I am in love with you." He stood there, his eyes lit up with hope, holding his breath.

"Oh," Audrey said, not knowing what to say. Was _this _what the Reverend had been referring to when he had admonished her to be more sensitive? Was that why Gabriel had been glowering at her with disapproval? Had she somehow inadvertently led Josiah on?

Tact. Why crush somebody with a hurtful truth when a lesser truth will suffice?

"Josiah," she said. "Come here. Out of sight. And bring a light."

She led him around some shrubs to where the light of an oil lamp pierced through an unshaded window on his uncles house, giving enough light for the young man to read the instructions she had tattooed all over her body. Josiah also had a portable kerosene lantern. She lifted up the hem of her T-shirt, unbuttoned her cargo pants, and unzipped it.

"Audrey?" Josiah asked, his eyes wide with a combination of surprise and desire as he trembled with emotion, not sure just what it was she was about to do. "We don't … we don't…."

"Shhh…" Audrey whispered. "It's okay. No kinky stuff. Look."

She pressed apart the zipper of her pants and slid them down her abdomen just far enough that the line of her panties was exposed. Pushing down the line just an inch farther, but not so far that her pubic hair was exposed, she pointed to the line of heavenly symbols tattooed in a line just underneath the elastic of her panties, where only people who pushed down her panties would ever have occasion to see.

"Read them," Audrey said, taking his hand, folding it gently so that just his index finger protruded, and then moving that finger down to touch the first symbol on her trembling abdomen. They had been teaching Josiah to read the signs. He read them, slowly and painfully, his hands trembling on her bare flesh as he read.

"Whoever shalt defilith the Prophet of the Lord shall be condemned to eternal damnation in Sheol," Josiah read. He looked up at her eyes, tears coming to his eyes at the implications of what he read.

"You have your answer from God himself," Audrey said gently, bending upward from where she had leaned back and hastily zipping back up her pants. "Ever since … um … I don't think I'm supposed to … um … like a nun, maybe?"

"I'm sorry," Josiah said, catching his breath and suppressing his disappointment. "I didn't mean to defile you." The look on his face was forlorn and broken.

"You have _not _defiled me," Audrey said. "You have paid me a great honor."

Josiah stood there, trembling with emotion, as Audrey gently took his face in both hands, slowly bent inwards, and tenderly gave him a kiss. Josiah hungrily responded, but gently she cut him off. She wished to comfort him, not tease him.

"You're pretty hot, you know," Audrey finally said, using levity to defuse the situation. "I'm going to be thinking of you every time I glance in the mirror at this damned tattoo and wishing it wasn't so. I'm the _last _person you'd think god would want as some sort of wandering Vestal virgin!"

Josiah burst out laughing at the blasphemy she had just uttered, understanding after their journey together that, in her blaspheming, Audrey always uttered the truth. And it _was _true. If the confounded tattoo was some sort of divine punishment, she probably _would _be looking back at this moment with regret.

It wasn't necessary for her to add that, lately, she'd found her thoughts wandering more and more to a certain brooding, silent angel. A forbidden creature who had glowered at her formerly blatant displays of sexuality and appeared to be impervious to her charm. A heavenly creature she had begun to think of lately as a man…

Blasphemy…

Truth…

"Goodbye, Audrey Anderson," Josiah said, picking up his satchel and preparing to finish his journey to the temple where he was already late for an appointment. "I shall never forget you so long as I live."

"Goodbye, Josiah," Audrey said. On an impulse, she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a quick, passionate-but-playful kiss right on the lips, mussing his hair, and then unbuttoned the top button of his shirt before giving him an affectionate slap in the ass, causing him to yelp. She gave him a lascivious look. "I'm going to remember you, too." To accentuate her point, she waggled her eyebrows and gave him a wolfish grin.

"You are a contradiction in terms, Audrey Anderson," Josiah smiled, then walked away shaking his head, his shoulders square and no longer sad. "Perhaps that is why you have been chosen?"

"Perhaps," Audrey said softly as he faded off into the distance. "Perhaps."


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Gabriel watched the Prophet kiss the young Mormon male who had followed her around like a lovesick puppy for weeks, and then lead him around the corner of their hosts' house to a secluded spot in the back yard.

He knew he shouldn't look, a voyeur, a peeping tom, but he rationalized that he was here to protect her. As silent as an owl stalking his prey, he flew up to the roof of the house, banking his feathers so they made as little noise as possible, and watched.

Watched the Prophet lay back in a supine position and partially disrobe…

Watched the Prophet grasp the young Mormon's hand and invite the male to touch the bare flesh just above her mound of Venus…

Watched the Prophet, moments later, now standing, grasp the young Mormon's face and passionately kiss him, and then unbutton his shirt. An invitation…

A crushing weight sat upon his chest, unable to breathe, to move, frozen in horror as an avalanche of emotions slid down upon him, ripped out his heart, and buried him in despair.

It was wrong of him to watch! She was forbidden to him, a mortal creature with mortal appetites which were forbidden for him to him to ever, ever satiate! She was not made of stone, and he could never, ever give her what she needed, a hunger he now understood. It was forbidden for him to even watch!

Flinging himself into the air in despair, he flew off and found himself drawn to the only beacon of light in the entire city, the Mormon temple with its lofty ivory spires stretching towards the sky, a false idol mounted upon its central spire blowing a replica of _his _trumpet. He landed upon the central spire, fluttering down to the first level where the pointed roof of the spire met the spire itself and had a small edge large enough for him to sit.

"Why, Father?" Gabriel screamed up to the sky the same question he asked many times each day. "Why? Why do you torment me with a longing for something I can never have? Why?"

He wept until he no longer had the water to produce any more tears, until his body simply shuddered with grief like jello because he no longer had the strength to even shake his fist and scream at the sky. Why?

For once, he thought he understood what it felt like when the Prophet lost control of her gift of truthful blasphemy and the holy fire of rage took over. For once, he questioned the Father.

But such thoughts were forbidden. Protecting the Prophet was his duty. Nothing more. It wasn't the Father's fault that foolish Gabriel had succumbed to temptation and fallen in love with the woman he had been sent here to protect. He was no better than Lucifer.

Obedience…

Duty…

Gabriel sat there, all night long, alone with his misery, until the first rays of dawn lit the sky.

And then he took to the sky, flying back to the house of their hosts, so that he could fulfill his duty. Protect the Prophet. No matter what it cost him personally.

But heaven help the Father if someday the fickle deity chose to make a mockery of self-sacrifice and order him to harm that which he had been sent here to protect. If the Prophet had taught him anything, it was that the Father was occasionally fallible…


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Gabriel fluttered down into the back yard of the house of their current hosts, the extended family of the young man whom the Prophet had chosen as her consort. He had no more tears left to cry, only sorrow. Dawn stabbed through the sky, the knife-like rays vulgar in their cheerfulness as they stabbed though his heart like heavenly swords.

No matter what he found behind the door, he resolved, he would face it with obedience and stoic resolve. The young Mormon was a good man and a devout follower of the Father, if very young. The Prophet deserved to be loved. If Gabriel had to choose a worthy consort, the young Mormon was probably as close as he would ever find on Earth to what she deserved. His job was to act as her protector. The Father had answered his pleas by painting his 'no' across the very place Gabriel found his thoughts travelling to now, a reminder that the longing in his heart was forbidden.

He could still love her, secretly, in his heart, without succumbing to his baser impulses. A chaste love. The lie the Catholic church had tried to perpetuate about the Savior, belittling the Saviors mortal wife and removing all reference of her from the sacred texts except a passing insinuation that the Saviors consort had been little more than a prostitute. She was _not._

Gabriel would, in truth, live the lie even the Savior had been unable to endure. Because no matter how small the breadcrumbs of her presence, it was better than the alternative, to be parted from her. Gabriel would endure. He opened the door and was surprised to find, instead of a house full of sleeping people sluggishly awakening to greet the dawn, chaos and panic.

"Gabriel!" the Reverend cried out. "Where have you been?"

Beside him, both the host and hostess of the house were standing, frantically wringing their hands. There was no sign of the young Mormon male.

"I had … business to attend to," Gabriel said, schooling a stoic expression upon his face and hoping the Reverend, who had become his friend, was still too groggy to notice his eyes were swollen and red from crying.

"She was screaming," Obediah, their host, said.

"We can't wake her up!" the Reverend exclaimed, grabbing him and dragging him down the hall. "She needs you!"

"What of her young … friend?" Gabriel asked, just barely managing to divert the jealous sneer from his voice, the angry insinuation that he knew the truth. "Didn't he attend to her?"

"Josiah?" Obediah said. "Josiah went to the temple last night to prepare for his ordination. He must spend the days before his ordination performing rituals of purification and prayers. He left right after you did."

Were they lying, trying to spare his feelings? Did they know? The Reverend knew. The Reverend threw open the door to her room and stepped back. Inside, the Prophet lay on the floor where she had flung herself off the bed, tangled in the covers, writhing as though in pain, sobbing as she called his name while one of the visions which cursed her dreams each night projected torment after torment into her mind.

"She needs you," the Reverend said, giving him a look that was an accusation.

"Little Prophet?" Gabriel asked. He sniffed the air, angel-scent being much more sensitive than that possessed by humans, and could smell no trace of human semen, or even the scent of the young Mormon male in this room. Whatever had happened between them, it had not happened here. But he could smell blood. _Her_ blood. She had insinuated she was impure. Had it been her first time? He was confused.

"Gabriel," the Prophet moaned, clutching at her abdomen as though she were in pain. "Why? Why? Why?" She sobbed uncontrollably and then whispered, "damn you."

Rage flooded through his veins. Had the young Mormon violated her? He didn't seem the type. Nor would the other members of the household have allowed it after they had heard her scream. What had happened here?

"Gabriel," the Prophet moaned, a deep keening moan that resonated with the sorrow contained within his _own _heart like a tuning fork. Whatever Earthly pleasures her mortal shell required, he realized, she still needed something only _he _could give her. She needed _him._

"I'll take care of her," Gabriel told the Reverend. "Shut the door behind you, please."

The Reverend knew their secret, that each night he walked the fine line between duty and sin by stretching out alongside of her and encircling her in his arms until the visions passed. The Reverend would divert the attention of their hosts.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, lowering himself to the hard floor and completing their nightly ritual. "Whoever dare molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

"Gabriel," she moaned. As he gathered her into his arms and encircled her in his wings, it felt … right. Instantly, her writhing stopped and she fell into a fitful sleep. He was exhausted from his night spent upon the pinnacle of the Mormon temple. He slept too.

It was many hours later when she finally stirred, waking him from the fitful sleep he endured, nightmares of the Prophet being condemned to Sheol because he was guilty of committing the unforgiveable sin of loving someone more than he loved the heavenly Father.

"Gabriel," she murmured, her voice small and exhausted. Drained. She sounded … defeated.

"I am here," Gabriel said gently. "I am here to protect you."

The Prophet gradually opened her eyes, red-rimmed and puffy from crying. She never had any memories of her nightmares, but she bore the physical marks of her dreams each morning.

"My stomach hurts," she said weakly, and then noticed where she was. "What happened? Why am I on the floor?"

"You had another vision," Gabriel said, guilt stabbing through his heart. "I was … busy. I didn't get here until you had already fallen off the bed. I am sorry."

The Prophet sighed, a bone-weary sigh that sounded as though she were carrying the weight of the world upon her slender shoulders. "My stomach hurts," she said. "I must have banged it in the fall."

"Shhh…" Gabriel said. "Let me see if you are bruised."

She lay there, too exhausted to move, and allowed him to gently peel up her shirt to expose several inches of her midriff. He gasped.

Claw marks tore through her tender flesh! As though some great beast had clawed at her. His heart beginning to race, he pulled up her shirt further, almost violating her modesty by exposing her breasts in his haste, and saw they crisscrossed her entire stomach. He shoved up the long sleeves of her shirt and discovered similar claw marks as well as the tooth marks of a predator on her arms, and even more on her legs, and her neck. Rolling her over, she even had the claw marks on her back.

"What did you dream of?" Gabriel almost shouted, rage flooding his veins. "What did this to you?"

"I don't remember," Audrey whispered, cringing back from his anger. "I can never remember the dreams."

"What dreams?" he shouted, all semblance of self-control absent from his face as he frantically touched the claw marks and tried to figure out just what the hell could have done this to her. "What do you dream of each night?"

"I can't remember," the Prophet cried, curling up into a fetal position and staring at him with owlish eyes. "Gabriel … you're scaring me."

A loud knock was on the door. "Audrey? Is everything okay in there? Gabriel?" The Reverend.

Gabriel gasped for breath, fighting to regain his self-control. He had seen many wounds from battle, but none had ever caused him to feel this combination of helplessness, remorse, and rage.

"I'm okay," the Prophet called weakly.

Gabriel shuddered at what he had done. Last night, he had flown off and left the Prophet unprotected.

"I'm so sorry," Gabriel whispered, pulling her back into his arms. "I failed you."

"You didn't do this to me, Gabriel," the Prophet said weakly. "It was the monsters in the nightmare. I wish I could remember."

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel said, picking her up and putting her back on the bed and gently tucking the covers around her. "I will stand sentry. It won't happen again."

"I'm afraid," Audrey whispered. "I'm afraid to go to sleep."

"It won't happen again," Gabriel said, fire lighting up his eyes as he took her hand. "I swear on my own immortal soul, I will not let anything happen to you ever again. Ever." He took her hand in his and settled into a sitting position on the bed next to her. He would spend his vigil there.

The Prophet gave him a weak smile. After only moments, her eyes slowly slid shut once more and she drifted back to sleep.

Gabriel refused to move the rest of the day, sending his regrets to the temple and missing his appointment with the Mormon elders. From now on, _nothing _would ever cause him to leave the Prophet's side, even if it meant he had to stand outside her door as she made love to whatever consort she eventually chose and protect her through his own tears.

It wasn't until sometime later that it dawned on him that, in his anguish over seeing her kiss the young Mormon male, perhaps he had misconstrued what he had seen?

It was with much stammering and embarrassment some time later that he asked the Reverend if anything had _happened _and, after much beating around the bush, finally gave the Reverend enough of a hint about what the hell he was so upset about that the Reverend was finally able to put the matter to rest.

"Josiah asked Audrey to marry him," the Reverend said, somewhat bemused.

"And?" Gabriel asked, trying to don a poker face and not entirely succeeding as the position of his wings betrayed his anxiety.

"She let him down gently," the Reverend said, giving him a knowing smile. "The young man didn't seem too terribly crushed. Something about she's been marked by god for a special purpose."

"You think she showed him the … instructions?" Gabriel asked, his wings _definitely _betraying his relief. His skin flushed guilty and hot at the memory of the Prophet stretching back in the light and disrobing just far enough for the young Mormon to read the prohibition in the language Gabriel had personally taught the young man to read giving the Prophet a viable excuse to tell the man 'no' without having to hurt his feelings, and then hastily pulling back up her pants before giving the young man a kiss goodbye.

"I don't know," the Reverend said, his face cracking into a shit-eating grin. "You were the one who saw it. You tell me."

Was he really that transparent?


	22. Chapter 21

Chapter 22

"Obediah informed us the young woman was attacked by some demonic force while she slept last night," the temple President asked. "Have you ever heard of such a thing before?"

"Yes," Gabriel answered, his face unreadable as he patiently submitted to the grilling he had promised Aaron as a thank you for providing hospitality and opening the necessary doors for he and the Prophet to traverse through Mormon territory in search of whatever it was the compass rose was leading them to find. "For months now, the Prophet has spoken during her visions of the Grigori escaping. You call them dragons. Or demons. Grigori could inflict such wounds."

"Is she possessed by demons?" one of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asked. "Or … this heavenly host you spoke of possessing people during the apocalypse?"

The Apostle gave Audrey an apologetic look. After her nightmare last night, Gabriel refused to leave her side, forcing the church elders to bend their rules about not allowing women into the most sacred inner sanctuary of the temple where the Quorum of Twelve Apostles met. It wasn't every day the Left Hand of God flew down from heaven to chat. They adjusted.

"The Prophet is not possessed," Gabriel said. "There is another force speaking through her."

"The heavenly Father?" another Apostle asked.

"No," Gabriel stated flatly.

"The Savior?" the temple President asked.

"No," Gabriel stated, not elaborating.

"What then?" the temple President asked, appearing slightly frustrated.

"I suspect it might be the Holy Spirit," Gabriel said. "But I am not certain. I am … I am but a soldier. I have never been worthy to bask in the presence of something so high."

The Holy Spirit? Audrey vaguely remembered mentions of the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, in Sunday school, but when she had asked about it, the answers had always been dissatisfying and vague. Not even the Dominican sister had an accurate answer to the question, although she stated it wasn't for lack of research. The Holy Spirit was mentioned as part of the trinity of the Father and the Savior/Son, but never explained.

"Why would the Holy Spirit attack the Prophet," one of the Apostles asked.

"The Holy Spirit did no such thing," Gabriel said. "I am certain of it. The Grigori are another of the Fathers … mistakes. They were created to travel between dimensions and patrol the Fathers worlds, but they were too unpredictable and viscous so the Father interred them in a penal colony that lies between the dimensions. Sheol. Somehow, when the Prophet dreams of them, she can see into their dimension, and they can see her. They must have followed her and attacked because I left my post. They saw an opportunity to attack the Holy Spirits messenger."

"What is this Holy Spirit?" an Apostle asked. "Part of the Father?"

"No," Gabriel asked. "It is … it is forbidden to speak of it."

"Do you even know?" the temple President asked.

"It is forbidden to speak of it," Gabriel said, glancing at her, and then making up his mind about something. "But I have heard rumors."

"What rumors?" the temple President asked.

Gabriel hesitated, glancing at Audrey. She gave him her most reassuring look and nodded, urging him with her demeanor to keep going.

"The Savior is different from the other heavenly beings," Gabriel said. "We were all … created. The Savior was … born. He just … appeared … one day in our midst … not too long after the Father sent the great flood. He comes and goes. There are rumors that the Father once took a consort. Another … immortal. It is rumored that she … left him … taking the child with her … after the Father sent the asteroid to wipe out the Grigori … before the Father created humans … because she felt the Father had become too controlling."

"Is this where the legend of Lilith comes from?" the oldest of the Apostles asked, a frail old man in his late eighties.

"I thought Lilith was Adam's first wife," a second Apostle said.

"There was no Lilith at the Garden of Eden," Gabriel snorted derisively. "I was there. The Father turned heaven on its ear the day he ordered my species to bow down to the children he had created to replace the Son he had just lost and ordered us to worship them. It fractured heaven into heaven and hell. It was rumored … it was rumored the Father created your species as a toy for his son to prove to his consort he had changed. When it failed to lure her back, he grew bored with you and found an excuse to cast you out of Eden so he could focus on other things."

Audrey gasped. And she thought _she _spoke truthful blasphemy! No wonder Gabriel had been keeping his mouth shut. What had changed? Had her injuries last night frightened him so badly that he was now willing to open up?

"Why would this Holy Ghost intervene now?" the temple President asked.

"Her son adores mankind," Gabriel said flatly. "He defied the Father to come back. The Father was furious. He ordered the heavenly host to destroy mankind and _me _to destroy the Saviors mortal vessel. Think of the reprieve you have now as an ex-wife dragging her husband back to court and getting an injunction to restrict visitation because the ex-husband is acting inappropriately in front of the child. I don't know _what _is going through the Father's head, but if things are as I believe they might be, the Father is now on his best behavior because he is dealing with another immortal that won't be pushed around."

The Quorum of Twelve Apostles exploded in chatter, digesting what the angel sitting before them was disclosing.

"Aren't you going to get into trouble for telling us this?" the elderly Apostle asked, his eyes blue with cataracts.

"Yes," Gabriel said, his wings twitching. "If I'm even right. I might not be. It's just rumor and speculation. But if the Grigori have recovered and are on the move, the Father will have no choice but to play nicely with the Holy Ghost. They will only be able to defeat the Grigori by marshalling their combined forces and working together."

"Why would this Holy Ghost choose to speak through the Prophet?" the temple President said. "And why would the Father mark her flesh and send the Archangel Michael to bring her back from the dead."

"Audrey saved the Saviors life," Gabriel said. His wings drooped. "From me. I unquestioningly followed orders. Michael refused. I am not worthy to even walk in the Prophets divine presence, much less protect her. It should be Michael protecting her."

"Michael protects the Savior," Audrey spoke up at last.

"How do you know this, child?" the elderly Apostle asked. "Do you remember your vision?"

"He told us all so the day he appeared at the diner," Audrey said, "and nothing in his actions has ever led me to believe otherwise. It all … it all makes Michael's behavior make sense. Michael must have known the truth behind the rumors Gabriel heard."

"And these … episodes … you have?" another Apostle asked.

"The Father abused the Holy Spirits child and tried to hurt him," Audrey said. "Whatever force channels through me, it is outraged by the Father's actions, but adamant we protect the son against some larger threat that now exists because the Father made a mistake. Everything the force has me do so far is to make things easier for the Son. If I were a mother…"

The silence stretched out in the room, the Apostles nodding in agreement. If somebody did something like that to _their _child, there would be hell to pay.

"Why did you agree to help Gabriel?" the elderly Apostle asked. "After all … he'd just tried … did … kill you?"

The old guy was a sharp one. Gabriel wasn't the only one getting grilled. She noticed the way Gabriel sat back, staring at her intently, himself curious to hear the answer.

"Because Michael asked me to," Audrey said, squirming uncomfortably in her seat.

"You must have hated him, child, after what he'd done," the elderly Apostle asked, his rheumy eyes fixing on her face, the intelligence that peered from underneath the frail shell as sharp as a razor.

"Yes," Audrey stated.

"And yet you _did _help him," the elderly Apostle said. "And in fact appear to be quite fond of him now."

"Yes," Audrey stated, glancing at the look of intent interest Gabriel gave her and squirming. It was coming. The question was coming. She had a sneaking suspicion she wasn't the _only _one who'd put Josiah up to putting bees into the Apostles ears.

"Why?" the elderly Apostle asked.

What was this? Twenty questions? Was the old geezer a lawyer or something? Cross-examining her?

"I don't see the relevance," Audrey dodged.

"You and this angel, who openly admits he was cast out of heaven for attempting to kill the Savior, have just appeared in our midst with outrageous tales that, in many cases, directly conflict with all we have ever been taught," the elderly Apostle said, no recrimination in his voice. "You have, essentially, just told us God is fallible and not to be trusted. The Mormon church is one of the few institutions in this country, in the entire world, which has survived the apocalypse intact enough to act as a shepherd for what small bit of humanity remains. If, as you claim, the Savior has come back into the world and needs our support, it is important that we understand what is true, versus not true, so that we can guide our people."

"You haven't met Michael," Audrey said, placing her hands in front of her onto her lap, palms up. "He saved everyone he could. He brought me back. He … wept ... for the loss of his fallen brother. He remembered a time when I had prayed to him as a little girl, and he knew I would understand."

"Understand what?" the elderly Apostle asked.

"His brother," Audrey said. "He knew I would understand Gabriel."

"Why?"

"I once had this dog…" she whispered, looking at her hands and avoiding eye contact.

The Apostles were silent, waiting, using her trick of waiting to force her to tell the rest of the story.

"I always wanted a dog," Audrey said, "but my parents wouldn't let me have one. I used to pass this junkyard on the way to school. They had a bunch of dogs there. Big, ugly, mean things. They abused them to make them mean. They used to have bets at night, charge admission, pit the dogs against one another and watch them fight."

She was silent for a minute, glancing up at Gabriel. Compassion shone from his eyes.

"I got bitten by one of them once," she continued. "Was afraid of them. But I was a kid. I really wanted to have a dog. So I started stealing leftovers from the fridge and feeding it to them on my way to school each morning. Just tossing it over the fence and the dogs would come running and wag their tails. Didn't even growl at me anymore. Just did this happy little food dance whenever they saw me coming. I did that for almost a year."

"Please, continue," the elderly Apostle asked gently.

"One day I went to toss the leftovers over the fence and I heard a whimper," Audrey said. "The one that bit me. Big ol' thing, part Pitbull, part Rottweiler or Doberman. Never did figure it out. The dogs always came running for the food, but there were no dogs. Only whimpering. So I climbed the fence to see what was wrong."

"And?" the elderly Apostle asked, masterfully drawing the story out of her. Definitely a retired lawyer. Or police investigator.

"The poor thing was ripped to shreds," Audrey said, glancing at Gabriel. "Barely alive. They'd been having a dog fight the night before when the police raided the place and broke it up. Arrested the owners. Seized the dogs. Missed that one. The dog crawled under a junk car near where I came to feed it each day to die."

"What happened next?" the elderly Apostle asked. Audrey noticed the way Gabriel watched her. She'd always refused to tell him the story about the dog, because then she'd have to admit to him that in the beginning, she'd seen _him _as little more than a stupid mutt.

"I stole it," Audrey said. "Wrapped it up in my school coat. Skipped school. Went home and got my old red wagon. Brought it home."

"Did your parents condone this?" the elderly Apostle asked.

"No," Audrey said. "They told me to get rid of it. So I hid it out in the shed behind the house."

Gabriel's interest piqued at that one. She could almost see the 'aha!' in his mind. Why she'd been so adamant that she wouldn't simply relegate him to the outbuildings when they travelled places where he wasn't welcome.

"How long did you keep the dog?" the elderly Apostle asked.

"Almost a year," Audrey said. "My father knew. He pretended he didn't know, but he knew. I used to sneak out to the shed to feed and brush it, and play with it, and take it for walks in the park. I didn't have any friends back then, so the dog became my friend."

Gabriel had leaned back in his chair, studying her intently.

"We were young money," Audrey continued. "Upstarts in an upscale neighborhood. The other kids were really mean to me. Making fun of my parents' car. Making fun of my clothes. Making fun of my dog. He was a hideous old thing, all scarred from fighting. But I loved that dog."

"What happened to the dog?" the elderly Apostle asked.

"One day the snottiest girl in the neighborhood came up to me and started shoving me around," Audrey said. "The dog bit her in the face. He thought he was protecting me." She was silent, her guilt stretching out before her like a bridge.

"What happened next?" the elderly Apostle asked.

"The dog officer took the dog," Audrey said. "They had a hearing and my parents denied it was our dog. Said it was just some junkyard stray. He had marks all over him from fighting, so they assumed it was true. The city ordered the dog be put to sleep."

"Why didn't you speak up?" the elderly Apostle asked. His rheumy eyes were compassionate, not condemning. "Why didn't you tell them the dog was only defending you?"

"I told my parents," Audrey said. "But they said we would have to pay for restitution for the girls' stitches and everything and I might be sent to a foster home if I told them the truth, so I shut up. I let them put down my dog because I was too chickenshit to speak up and tell the truth."

"You were just a girl," the elderly Apostle said gently. "It wasn't your fault the dog thought you were in danger and tried to protect you."

"Yes it was!" Audrey shouted, standing up and throwing her arms in the air. "It _was _my fault. The girl was mean to me and always pushing me around and whenever I told my parents, they'd tell me I had to suck it up because the girls' father was the head of some social circle they were trying to get into. I finally got sick of it and told the dog to 'git em. So the dog got her. Exactly like I asked it to do! Only I didn't know how much damage a dog like that could do because I'd never seen it fight. She needed 37 stitches in her face and another 23 stitches in her hand. The girl was scarred for life! I'm no better than God!"

There. The truth. The horrible truth which had been eating at her all these years, had caused her to be so angry at her parents and so receptive when Michael had let her know he'd heard that prayer the day when she'd begged for divine intervention to save the life of her dog and a bible had fallen off the pew, open to Leviticus 16, the story of the scapegoat.

Audrey sobbed. Gabriel fluttered to her side, comforting her.

"Michael knew I'd understand his brother," Audrey said, looking up at Gabriel with tear-stained eyes. "He knew I was capable of loving a monster and forgiving it for biting me. He knew I wouldn't make the same mistake twice." The last was said as almost a whisper.

"Let's go home," Gabriel said gently, taking her hand and helping her get up.

"We had a few more questions," the temple President said politely.

"We're done," Gabriel said. "We're going home."

She leaned on him all the way home, the tears of grief from the confession she'd been withholding for a decade finally coming. The source of her rage. All these years, Audrey had hated … herself.

Gabriel never said a word.


	23. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

"She has the voice of an angel," Josiah sighed, leaning back in the pew. He was wearing the garments of his ordination, performed earlier today. He had asked Gabriel to attend, completely unaware of the hostility Gabriel had borne him earlier or why.

"Yes," Gabriel nodded in agreement, surreptitiously wiping a tear of purest joy out of the corner of his eye and hiding his sniffle under a cough. That, she did. Josiah and their hosts had finally managed to sweet-talk Audrey into singing her grandmothers favorite old Elvis Presley hymn at the Christmas service at the temple. It hadn't so much been singing in front of an audience which bothered her. It was the prospect of the traditional Mormon 3-hour long mass which stretched beforehand which had made her choke.

"It is good to humble oneself occasionally before the Father," Gabriel had gently admonished her when she refused to go.

"I can't stand that much of my _own _company," Audrey had replied with one of her cutting truths. "Never mind the Father's."

It was their hosts who had finally settled upon a compromise. Gabriel would attend with Obediah and the men. Audrey would linger behind to cook and bring food later, reducing her church-time to less than an hour. She had squirmed the entire time next to him in the pew, bored out of her mind, until the Reverend had finally come on to sing as a guest-singer with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as backup. After that, she had settled down until it was her turn to sing.

Gabriel could hear that something had changed in Audrey's voice. It was as though, with her confession before the Mormon elders, the source-pain upon which all other anger was built had been lifted from her heart. The spark of divinity he had always been able to hear in her voice, from the first moment she had called him a jackass at the base of the cliff, now rang loud and clear. Although Audrey would probably never forgive the Father his lapse in judgment, Audrey acknowledged she had once made a similar mistake. He clapped wildly as she finished her song and stepped off the stage, another singer taking over to sing another hymn.

"We're ready for you, Sir," the usher stated, gesturing awe-struck for him to come backstage.

Silently he got up, trying not to accidentally clobber Obediah's family with his wings as he made his way through aisles built for human physiology in the dark.

Amongst the humans, it was traditional to give a gift on the anniversary of the Saviors birth. The Savior appreciated this touching ritual so much that he had deliberately chosen to incarnate in again on the exact same day the second time around so he wouldn't muddy the water. One year ago today, they had met, under very different circumstances than they found themselves in now.

Gabriel now wished to give her a gift, a question she had jokingly asked him numerous times as they had gotten to know one another. Audrey had always asked him how he'd gotten the title 'carrier of the word of god.' Tonight, he was going to show her.

"As I'm sure you all know by now," the temple President announced, looking out over his flock which the apocalypse had caused to shrink to a fifth its former size, far more survivors than other areas hit by the heavenly host, but still a heavy loss, "a special guest has chosen to walk amongst us. He asks that we make no spectacle of his appearance, but he _would _like to offer us a glimpse of what will someday greet us when we meet our maker at the pearly gates. I give to you, Gabriel, carrier of the Word of God."

Gabriel quietly walked onto the stage, motioning with his hand that he wished for the audience to stop clapping. The temple President made a hand signal to cut and his flock respected his command. It was forbidden for him to ever tell the Prophet of the love he bore for her in his heart, to know her in any role other than as her protector, but just once, he wanted to give her a glimpse of it.

'_Father,' _he prayed silently as the room grew silent, _'just this once, please give me back my ability to allow others to hear your voice.'_

He sang then in the language of the Father, a language no one in this room understood, a song of love. Gabriel's voice had always been the strongest of all the angels, his vocal range running from sub-audible rumbles that shook the foundation to notes so high even dogs couldn't hear them. It was the reason he had been chosen to carry the Word of God. As he poured every ounce of his being into his voice, he sang the song that was the inspiration for the Song of Solomon, a heavenly song the Father himself had once sung to woo his consort and win her heart.

The Father liked this song. He granted Gabriel his wish.

His mortal vocal chords limited him, denying him the ability to sing the chords he had so effortlessly sung in heaven, but his voice was still powerful and strong, the acoustics in the temple flawlessly amplifying his voice so that no microphone was needed.

_Let her kiss me with the kisses of her mouth, for thy love is better than wine…_

The song started with a longing to be loved, comparing his beloved to many beautiful, heavenly things that had no earthly counterparts. Gabriel had sung the song many times for the Father, but this was the first time he had ever felt it in his own heart, been able to pour his _own _longing into the song. The song then moved to sorrow.

_By night on my bed I sought her whom my soul loveth: I sought her, but I found her not._

As he sang of loss, Gabriel poured every ounce of sorrow into the song, blending a deep bass which made the foundations of the church rumble. His voice was no longer just mortal. Was this how the Father had felt when his consort had left? Gabriel felt compassion for the flawed Father who he still loved with all of his heart despite the fact he now questioned him. One could both love, and question, he realized.

_I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn herself, and was gone: my soul failed when she spake: I sought her, but I could not find her; I called her, but she gave me no answer._

Tears streamed unabashedly down his cheeks as wove his own heartbreak into the song. The entire congregation had begun to cry. His heartbreak mirrored the Father's, and the world wept.

_I charge you, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell her, that I am sick of love._

Was this why the Father forbade his immortal creatures to know any love other than love of Him? Did it break the Father's heart to see his creations happy and not be happy himself? Did he fear that they would leave him as well?

And then Gabriel sang of how beautiful he found his beloved little Prophet. How he longed to make love to her. And for the first time, he allowed himself the sin of _picturing _himself doing the touching spoken of in the song of songs, of touching his beloved in a way he knew would condemn them both to the pits of Sheol. A hint of the chords he used to sing in heaven, sounds impossible for mortal voices, crept into his voice. As he sang, regardless of whether or not they understood the words, his audience pictured making love to their _own _beloveds, just as he pictured making love to his. He hoped it was _him _the Prophet pictured.

_How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and __thy breasts to clusters of grapes._

As he finished his song, he sent up a little prayer to the Father, the Father he still served because he loved him even though he now knew the Father was a flawed, broken creature, that the Father might someday find it in his heart to allow him to be with the woman he loved. The woman who spoke the word of the Holy Spirit just as Gabriel spoke the word of the Father. He looked right at her as he sang the final verses even though he knew she didn't understand the words.

_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death._

When he finished, the temple was silent. Audrey looked at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Tears were streaming down everyone's cheeks. The Father had allowed him to weave His voice into his own now-weak, flawed mortal voice, and allow those assembled there to catch a glimpse of heaven.

"That was…" the temple President sniffled, blowing his nose and wiping the tears off of both cheeks as he attempted to get his emotions under control, "that was … heaven. Thank you, Gabriel."

Gabriel just nodded, and then faded back into the shadows. He did not wish to make a spectacle of himself. His songs had always come from somewhere deep inside himself, his desire to sing it contrary to his otherwise taciturn nature. Before, he had sung them to please the Father, who he had loved with all of his heart. Now, he had sung his most deeply personal song for his little Prophet.

He could not face her right now, the emotions too close to the surface. If she approached, his sense of duty would slip and he might do something that would put her in danger. He slipped out the back door and leaped into the air, alighting upon the central spire, a fallen angel perched beside a statue of a false one. He watched as the congregation gradually emptied out, riding out the residual emotions from the song as he tried to calm the tidal wave of emotion he had allowed to temporarily escape and get it back under tight control.

It was quite some time later that he realized she had stayed, standing in the courtyard beneath the central spire, looking up and patiently waiting for him. He took a deep breath. It was time for things to return to normal. Schooling his blankest, most unreadable expression upon his face, he fluttered down to her side.

"That was beautiful, Gabriel," the Prophet said. "I didn't know you could sing."

"There is a reason the Father assigned me to carry his word," Gabriel said flatly. "Although now I can only sing with my own voice, not his."

"I hope you'll sing for me again sometime," the Prophet said, tilting her chin up and gazing towards the false angel on the spire. "It would make me … happy." Her breath made white clouds in the cold air. She shivered.

He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her. Wanted to tell her how he felt. Wanted to kiss down her shoulder and suckle her breasts, kiss her thighs and taste her alabaster skin. Allowing himself to picture the things he sung of in the song had been foolish. Now that he had allowed the images into his head, he would never be able to get them out.

"We should go back," he stated flatly, fighting to get a grip on the genie which he never should have let out of the bottle. "I think we have finished what we came here to do."

Audrey looked at her wrist for a sign of the compass rose.

"Not yet," she said. "There's still something we've left undone."


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

She twitched again, tossing her head back and forth in a fitful sleep. Her rest was at an end. The vision was beginning.

_Darkness._

_A horrific creature of nightmare lunged at her, teeth and claws bared as it aimed for her throat. Gigantic and dragon-like. Like a dinosaur. Only sentient. Grigori. _

_The Savior cried out in terror, but it was no longer the cry of an infant. Vaguely humanoid creatures circled the young man, creatures that had once looked like Gabriel, but which millennia of incarceration in a place without light had left twisted and deformed. Radiation sickness. Nephilim. Giants. The descendents of the offspring of fallen angels and humans, incarcerated in a hellish penal colony since birth and taught nothing but hatred of the Father for sentencing them to suffer when the sin of disobedience had belonged to their parents._

_The Savior was in danger. She had to help him. She pulled her knife, Gabriel's knife._

_The Grigori lunged at her throat, knocking her to the ground, its claws slicing through her abdomen like daggers. She realized that, just for a moment, she was no longer in her bed. The Grigori could reach her because part of her was really –there.- She screamed for help._

"Gabriel!"

"Shhhh, little Prophet," he whispered into her ear as he slid in behind her, pressing the length of his torso against her back. "Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

_She stabbed the creature in the eye. It howled in rage and retreated, trumpeting in a thunderous voice to its friends to come help it. The Grigori circled, egged on by the chittering Nephilim, the one she had just stabbed clutching its eye. It was joined by a second, and then a third Grigori. She could not defend against three at once. They attacked._

"Gabriel … help me!" she screamed.

"I am here," he whispered, gently gathering her in his arms. "I will protect you with my life."

_The Grigori began to tear her apart. She screamed. Gabriel leaped into their midst, wings flared, mace drawn. The Grigori trumpeted their rage, drawing more of their kind to their aid. Gabriel was beautiful in his battle armor, but he was now mortal. The light of the heavenly father no longer flowed through his veins as it had the last time he had done battle with the enemies of the Father and his wings were no longer a weapon. Even Gabriel had his limits._

"_You must survive," Gabriel told her, pulling her into his arms. "Uriel will bring you to safety."_

"No!" she cried. "Gabriel! Don't do this! Please!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered into her ear, his hand gently caressing her cheek. "I am here to protect you."

"_You must survive," he repeated, giving her one last kiss before shoving her away into the arms of his waiting brother. "I must atone for my sin by completing this task my Father has left undone. This is my job to finish."_

_Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael pull the Savior to safety. She screamed as another angel pulled her into the air, away from Gabriel. As she watched, he fought mightily, but eventually he succumbed to the sheer number of gigantic lizard-creatures which attacked. Before he went down, he took many with him._

"Gabriel!" she screamed, her voice anguished as she keened.

"I am here, little Prophet," he said. "Whatever is to come, we will face it together."

_She fought at the angel who held her pinned in his arms, preventing her from going to him, kicking and screaming, but was not strong enough to break free._

"Let me go!" she shrieked, half in anger, half in anguish as she struggled against the arms which surrounded her. "We must fight together! He's not strong enough to do this alone!"

"_He atones for his sin," Uriel sneered at her with contempt. "Be glad the Father does not punish –you- as well."_

"Shhhh… little Prophet," he whispered. "Do not fight me. I am here to protect you."

_Off to the side, she noticed one of the Nephilim appeared torn, wavering between following his brethren and helping the fallen angel who still fought on the side of the Father even though the Father had cast him down. She looked across the smoldering landscape and their eyes met. Not Nephilim, but one of the actual Fallen who had sired them. Lucifer. Gabriel's brother. His eyes were filled with indecision and sorrow. The Father had wronged the Fallen the same way he had wronged humans, only no Savior had ever walked amongst their children to guide them, no Prophet had come to pave the Saviors way, no Disciples had wandered in their midst to spread the Word. _

_Something in her vision had changed. Whatever this sin was that Gabriel spoke of needing to atone for, Lucifer understood it and it made him hesitate. If only she had recognized the truth of the situation sooner!_

"Help him!" she screamed, reaching out to the Fallen who wavered. "Please!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered, strong arms gently holding her as she struggled in her sleep. "I am here."

_Uriel held her until the Grigori had finished him off and retreated before letting her go. He sneered in hatred at the Nephilim who had hesitated, taunting him in his arrogance. Lucifer's face hardened in hatred before he turned and left. He was joined by another contingent. Humans. Humanity saw fellowship with the other creatures the Father had condemned. The tide had turned against the Father. The opportunity to turn Lucifer was lost forever._

_She ran to Gabriel's side. He was mortally wounded, gasping in pain as blood ran out his lungs, his mouth, his ears. His belly had been ripped open and chunks of flesh torn out of each limb. There was nothing she could do to save him._

"Gabriel," she sobbed. "What have you done?"

"Shhhh…" he whispered in her ear, gently pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "I will always protect you."

"_We will reunite someday in heaven," he whispered, his eyes focusing on some distant light that only he could see as he squeezed her hand. "My love…"_

_The light went out of his eyes. As she sobbed, his body turned to light and dissipated. _

"_Damn you!" she screamed, shaking her fist at the sky. "This is all your fault. YOU caused this! YOU did this to him!"_

She woke up, jolted awake, to find herself in Gabriels' arms. He had encircled her in his wings in an effort to protect her from the boogeymen which visited her nightmares each night. There had been no more incidents of the Grigori punching through. The dream faded as soon as she opened her eyes, but something in the vision had changed. She clung to the image of the monster who had hesitated. He was the key.

"Shhh…" Gabriel whispered in her ear, his nose subtly nuzzling the hair just above her ear as he whispered words of comfort into it. "You're safe." The arms which surrounded her were large and strong.

"The disciples must come from amongst the fallen," Audrey said, the prescience which gave her the visions still flowing through her veins even though she had woken up. "The condemned. The forgotten. Sinners. We must reach out to those the Father has rejected and recruit them to the purpose of the Savior."

"The Father forbids it," Gabriel said, already retreating behind his customary unreadable expression as he disentangled himself from her body. Gabriel diligently gave comfort when she was injured or afraid and otherwise kept his distance. Her protector. Even from bad dreams. "Sinners are condemned to the pits of Sheol."

"The Savior sayeth let he who is without fault throw the first stone," Audrey said, curiously observing the way the words left her mouth of their own volition but unable to stop them. The words sounded odd. As though they were in another language. "The second disciple is here within this city, a sinner amongst the saints. You must enter the trap and dance with the devil."

The strange power suddenly faded, leaving her feeling exhausted and drained. She slumped against Gabriel, shivering from a coldness that had nothing to do with the winter.

"It is not my place to question the Father," Gabriel said, cringing as though he expected her to rail against him.

Defiance … she should remind Gabriel what a scum sucking piece of crap the Father was. Memory of shaking her fist at the sky and screaming at the Father this was all his fault came back to her. She was beginning to remember more of her visions. Thanks to the Fathers' heavy-handedness, shit was coming down the pipeline at them which was going to make the apocalypse look like a cake-walk.

Tact … railing against the Father made no difference. And lately, she just plain hadn't even felt like bothering. It was beneath her. Teaching Gabriel how to think independently of the Father and helping him understand why the Father was shortsighted, bigoted or just plain wrong was what would turn the tide of the battle she foresaw.

The one who hesitated. What had made Lucifer hesitate in the vision? Something about Gabriel's sin. Something Lucifer had understood. What sin would make Lucifer hesitate? She needed to get Gabriel to open up about Lucifer.

"Why do you protect me?" Audrey asked, looking into his eyes and, although she could not remember the dream in any great detail, somehow she knew something had changed in that dream because something had changed in _him_. "Because the Father has ordered it to be so?"

"Because –I- wish it to be so," Gabriel said, his look unreadable as he tucked his emotions neatly behind the stoic expression he used to hide what he was feeling. The subtle twitch of muscle in one cheek belayed the undercurrent of strong emotion which lay beneath the mask.

"What if he were to order you to stop protecting me?" Audrey asked, searching his eyes. "What if he were to change his mind again and order you to kill me?"

Gabriel's lip twitched up slightly into a sad smile. "Then I shall shake my fist at the sky and tell him 'no' like a certain little Prophet I know, because that is what he needs, not what he wants."

The vision. As he had died, Gabriel had called her 'my love.' Was that the sin that made Lucifer hesitate? Why would that make Lucifer hesitate?

Was Gabriel in love with her?

How did she feel about _him?_

"Don't leave yet," Audrey asked, trying to forestall his leaving her side. He always left her side as soon as the nightmares retreated and she woke up, diligently keeping his distance the rest of the time.

"I am not made of stone," Gabriel whispered, regret tingeing his voice. "It is forbidden for me to seek my own comfort. I am only permitted to protect you."

"I'm so cold," Audrey said, snuggling into his soft, downy feathers, a comforter against the late December cold, and said the truth she knew would compel him to stay. "You must protect me from the cold."

Gabriel hesitated, visibly torn. Obedience. Gabriel never denied her any request unless it put her life in danger. Or unless it conflicted so deeply with one of the tenants of the Father that he feared eternal condemnation because of it.

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel said, pulling her into his arms and resettling his wings around her. "Once we find this second disciple of yours, we shall need to get you a warmer blanket."

Audrey snuggled into his wings and drifted back to sleep, safe in the circle of his arms. This time, her sleep was uninterrupted.

Neither of them was surprised to awaken the day after Christmas to find the compass rose had reappeared on Audrey's hand. It was time to leave the safety and order of Mormon country and travel back out into the wilderness.


	25. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

"It just disappeared," Audrey said, glancing at her hand and noticing the compass rose had vanished.

"But it just came back," the Reverend said. "It's only been one day. We haven't even passed the city limits."

"Well now it's gone," Audrey said, adjusting her backpack. "We're here." She glanced back at Gabriel, silently trudging behind them, at their backs, his face emotionless, standing vigil. Like always. Always a step behind her, ready to catch her if she fell, but never at her side. Only during her visions did he ever let down the wall and stand at her side.

The neighborhood they were in now had been particularly hard hit when the heavenly host had invaded humanity and wiped out as many humans as they could. Although the bodies had been cleaned up and thoroughfares cleared so traffic could get through, mostly foot traffic and horses in this age of almost non-existent petroleum supplies, nobody had bothered to clean up the burned out buildings and shattered windows other than to ensure the mess wasn't littering a public sidewalk. Far better than other towns they had visited, but still a chilling reminder that even the devout stronghold of the 'saints' had been judged unworthy by the Father.

"Now what?" the Reverend asked, carefully scrutinizing the surrounding buildings.

"We set up camp and we wait," Audrey said. "My vision said to find the second disciple we must enter the trap and dance with the devil. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

Gabriel silently surveyed the surrounding area, and then set up camp in a looted building that had only been lightly singed by the fires. After several months of increasing levels of comfort and hospitality amongst the Mormons, adjusting to life on the road again was going to be tough. The Mormons had offered to transport them via truck and horse-drawn wagon to the edge of Mormon territory, but Audrey had declined. Their journey wasn't so much one of reaching a destination as of touching the lives of certain people along the way. She was here to pave the way for the Savior. However long it took, this journey had to be made largely on foot.

"Anything?" the Reverend asked, glancing towards her hand several hours later as night fell.

"Nothing," Audrey said. "We must sit and wait."

Gabriel pulled out some of the fried chicken and potato salad Obediah's wife had loaded them up on this morning and silently passed around the food. He'd finally begun to regain some of the weight he had lost since she'd first met him, but few mortal foods appealed to him. At least he'd finally lost the appearance of being forced to gag down insects and maggots under extreme torture whenever he ate. Some foods … such as fried chicken … he even found tolerable.

"Eat," Gabriel quietly admonished her when she allowed the food to linger too long on her plate, too curious about what in this neighborhood might turn out to be their destination to finish. Gabriel never ate until he was sure Audrey had all she needed, only ever picking at a few morsels until she was done. She picked up her plate and finished eating.

"Thank you, Gabriel," she said, meeting his eyes across the hodgepodge of battered shelving they had set up as a makeshift table. Gabriel, she had noticed, always sat with some barrier between them. A table. A fallen log. Across a room. A camp fire. Never more than a leap away from her side so he could protect her. Never close enough to touch. He'd even begun to retreat several steps behind her when they walked, rarely giving her the opportunity anymore to take his hand and tug him along. Only during her nightmares did they ever touch.

"There's no gas in the cook stove," the Reverend said, frost turning his breath billowy white. "This floor is concrete. I'm going to build a fire."

"We should gather enough for the night," Gabriel stated. "We may be here a while."

Gabriel silently helped the Reverend gather shattered wood from inside and around the building, neatly piling it close to a broken window so the smoke would vent and taking guidance from the Reverend as he built the fire. Gabriel hid his discomfort well, but before he had fallen, he had never truly experienced cold or heat. Curiously, his feathers had grown in thick and luxurious for the winter. For the billionth time, Audrey wondered what kind of creator would give his creations bodies so capable of living in a realm of sensation, and then deny them the ability to feel?

Traffic passed by in the street, ignoring the strange little band camping out in their midst. These were strange times. The Mormon church maintained a strong, central grip on their flock by ensuring every area they controlled had access to basic supplies and information. Word that an angel walked in their midst and was to be shown every courtesy, but otherwise left alone, had gotten out. Gabriel was not self-conscious about what he was, but he'd learned to garner less attention by hanging back and tucking his wings against his back to avoid creating a 3-ring circus.

Once they left Mormon territory, it would be a different story. Had word gotten around, as it had around Los Angeles and Las Vegas, that it had been lower-level angels possessing the weak, not demons, who had wrought the apocalypse? If so, Gabriel's wings would become a target on his back.

Fragments of her vision came back to her. Gabriel had kissed her before shoving her to safety and called her 'my love' with his dying breath. The brother-angel had sneered at her in hatred and insinuated _she _was the one responsible for whatever 'sin' Gabriel felt he had to atone for with his very life. Throughout the bible, it said that angels were heavenly creatures, spirits who could not feel, but she knew from having watched him struggle with his mortality that Gabriel could feel every bit as much as _she _could. Could Gabriel really be in love with her?

'_Do you think I am made of stone?'_ Gabriel had asked her.

She watched him carefully now, feigning interest in the tattered Boy Scout Handbook Michael had left for her and carefully using the shield of her own eyelashes and veil of her hair to disguise her intent scrutiny. At first she had thought him a hideous monster, and then a mangled, ugly old dog. As he had healed, and scarred, she had begun to think of him as being brutally handsome. A beautiful, powerful, deadly creature bred by the Father to kill … like a mountain lion or grizzly bear. Now the scars of his fall had faded, the sharp edges had faded from his feathers, and weight loss had given his features an almost a vulnerable, youthful look. It was though his body was trying to mold itself into something she would be capable of loving back.

The Reverend and Gabriel silently sat together and sorted through their supplies, one occasionally asking a question, the other giving a one or two word answer. Her mother had called it 'male bonding.' The way men formed friendships by accomplishing some task together without talking. The Reverend was good at drawing people out of their shells, one of the things that made a good minister. He had gotten Gabriel to admit things to _him _that the stoic angel would never tell _her._ The Reverend had admonished her for being insensitive. Did _he _know?

She absent-mindedly moved a strand of hair out of her eyes, and then touched the spot on her forehead where she knew the Father had written instructions ordering Gabriel to protect her. Did he protect her because it was his duty? Or because he wanted to? It had taken him a year to reassure her that, if the Father ever changed his mind and ordered him to kill her, he would refuse. Obedience. Is that the 'sin' spoken of in the dream? That made more sense than something as ridiculous as a billions-year-old angel falling in love with a mouthy, eighteen-year-old snit with a bunch of freak tattoos all over her body.

"I think something's going on there," the Reverend said, pointing out the subtle increase in traffic that had been occurring over the past few hours. Throughout the rest of Salt Lake City, the Mormons worked hard and then turned in for the night early. In this neighborhood, however, there appeared to still be some sort of nightlife.

"Was that just … a bird?" Audrey asked, pointing to a flash of color disappearing around a corner off in the distance.

"It was a man," Gabriel said, his expression intense and alert. Audrey could almost picture his ears pointing in that direction, and then pushed the image out of her mind, ashamed. Gabriel was not a dog. "Or a woman. It was hard to tell."

"I hear music," the Reverend said. "Rock music. I guess not everybody sings hymns in this city."

"The sinner amongst the saints," Gabriel stated evenly, as though turning the idea over in his mind.

Audrey glanced up over the makeshift table and had to deliberately make herself look away as it suddenly hit her how very beautiful her personal protector had become. She had caught glimpses of this beauty before. Diving off the cliffs into the river. Singing his beautiful, heavenly song that mortal ears could not translate, but mortal hearts could understand. Moments when his touch would linger an instant longer than was necessary and she would catch a glimpse of fleeting emotion beating a retreat behind his stoic mask.

"We should investigate," Audrey said, forcing herself to focus. They had a disciple to find.

A pair of men wearing long trench coats walked by, chattering good-naturedly, and walked around the same corner the 'bird' had disappeared around. They would start there. Audrey shadowed them down the street, rounded the corner…

And laughed…

"Gentlemen," she said, needing to bend over to prevent her sides from splitting in laughter. "We must enter the Trapp."

The rock music was emanating from a tired old nightclub, or more accurately a good-sized bar, with a garish purple sign emblazoned 'The Trapp." Yellowish light shone through the windows, which were curtained, and a multitude of shadows could be seen moving inside. Stringing out the door, revelers in costumes patiently waited in the cold to get inside. At the door stood a burley, muscular bouncer next to a sign that read, 'Private party. Costume required.'

"Reverend," Audrey said. "You'd better go back and change into your Elvis costume. Gabriel … I think you'll pass muster. Me? It's a good thing I saved that skirt." They worked their way back to their impromptu 'camp,' changing and stowing their supplies in an inconspicuous place so they wouldn't get raided while they were otherwise occupied.

"It is not fitting for a Prophet of the Father to wear such suggestive attire," Gabriel stated flatly, his look disapproving, as Audrey stepped out from a back room wearing her combat boots, some crazy striped wool knee socks the Mormons had given her to stay warm that she had pulled up all the way to her thighs, the too-short skirt she had died in and then mended with medical sutures, her old bustier, and the 50's-era coat the old woman had given her.

"It's a costume party," Audrey said, giving him a mischievous look as she bent down to brush her hair upside down to fluff it up, and then twisted it up into a bun, securing it with a couple of shards of mangled wire that resembled chopsticks. She bent down to get some soot from the fire and paused, indecisive. "What do you think? Road warrior? Or zombie apocalypse?"

"Road warrior," the Reverend shouted out from behind the door where he was changing. "I don't think zombies would go over very well given all that's happened."

"Road warrior it is," Audrey said, bending into her bag to grab the fur collar she had saved from her old, mangled sweater and attaching it to the coat. She pulled a few strands out of her hair, quickly braided them into mini-braids, and then readjusted her hair with a few more pieces of twisted wire and debris.

"I'm ready," the Reverend said, stepping out in his Elvis costume, which he had restored back to its pearly white and mended while staying with the Mormons. He put on his dark sunglasses and gave Audrey his best 'Elvis the pelvis' pose, pretending to hold a microphone.

Audrey felt almost giddy, giggling as the Reverend got into 'Elvis mode' and started mimicking the King's mannerisms. Audrey strutted across the room doing her best Tina Turner walk. Gabriel scowled.

"What?" Audrey asked.

"I have no … costume," Gabriel said. He spat out the last word with contempt. He sat cross-legged and cross-armed next to the fire, studying their peculiar behavior with disgust.

Audrey looked at the Reverend. The Reverend looked at her. Gabriel was clueless. They both burst out laughing.

"You find mirth at my expense?" Gabriel asked, the muscle twitching angrily in his jaw belying the flat tone of his voice.

Audrey strutted over to him, the way Tina Turner had strutted over to Mel Gibson in Thunderdome, placed her hands on her hips, and slowly lifted her combat-booted foot, placing it upon his chest, and pushed him back so he leaned back vulnerable and prone.

"Aren't we a pair, Raggedy Man?" Audrey asked with a straight face. The look of surprise on Gabriel's face was priceless.

The Reverend burst out laughing. Gabriel scowled even more, if it was possible to scowl any more, thunderclouds growing in his eyes. Poor Gabriel! He didn't have a clue! Audrey quickly dropped to her knees from where she stood over him, grabbed his cheeks with both hands, and planted a big, affectionate kiss right on his lips.

Which lingered…

Electricity shot through her body as she heard his sharp intake of breath and realized this was something he desperately wanted. Arms came around her and a deep, almost agonizing moan escaped his lips as he responded to her kiss like a drowning man desperately gasping for oxygen. Something deep inside of her responded to his hunger, some primal emotion she had never felt before, but which sang out as his kiss deepened, pulling her further into his embrace. She felt his body quiver beneath her touch as though he were afraid of her.

And then he pushed her away.

"It is forbidden," Gabriel whispered, his voice almost a plea. His breathing was ragged as he skittered back on the ground from her like a dog afraid of being beaten by its owner, wings flared as though ready to take flight. His eyes were haunted as he unconsciously reached up to touch his lips, raw emotions dancing across his face, and then put down his hand, self-conscious of being watched. She had only meant to be playful, but she realized that somehow she had crossed some magical line he was too terrified to cross.

"I'm sorry," Audrey stammered, suddenly understanding that what she had seen in her vision had been real. "I didn't … I was just … I didn't mean … I'm sorry."

The Reverend had gone over to the shattered window, intensely pretending to be interested in something outside the room. He coughed, pretending to clear his throat.

"I think full battle armor would be pretty cold at these temperatures," the Reverend said innocuously, staring out into the night. "Perhaps just the breast-plate and arm-bands over the cargo pants will do?"

"And the mace," Audrey said, picking up the lifeline the Reverend was throwing to her. "Definitely the mace."

Gabriel silently faded back into the shadows, avoiding her gaze while he fought to get whatever emotions she had unleashed under control. She had surprised him. He had not been expecting her to kiss him, so he had not been prepared to deflect his emotions behind his usual stony response.

"You should not tease him unless you mean it," the Reverend quietly admonished her as soon as Gabriel went to a back room to get changed.

"He fears the Father will punish him?" Audrey asked, her old hatred of the Father filling her veins, but curiously detached from the fire which had consumed her before.

"He fears the Father will punish _you,_" the Reverend said, giving her a pointed look. "Gabriel would go to hell and back for you. The only thing he fears is that _his _weakness will cause _you _to be punished."

His sin. The unknown angel in the dream had sneered at her about Gabriel being punished for his sin. The sin which had _almost _moved Lucifer to help him, but not quite. She needed to get Gabriel to talk about his brother.

"It was only a kiss," Audrey said, unconsciously wrapping herself in her arms as her voice became small and weak. "I didn't mean any harm."

"That's what I'm afraid of," the Reverend said. "_Only_ a kiss. It means a hell of a lot more than that to _him._"

'_Do you think I am made of stone, little Prophet?'_ Gabriel had asked her.

"Just don't tempt him unless you mean it," the Reverend said, his voice resigned and filled with regret. "Whether we agree with it or not, I think everybody on the planet knows by now that the Father's laws are a lot more than a bunch of musty old admonitions in some old religious texts."

"You think I should just leave him alone?" Audrey asked.

"I think you should not tempt him unless you feel the same way about _him _that _he _feels about _you,_" the Reverend said, sighing. "I'm an Elvis-impersonating wedding singing minister. You've _got _to believe love will somehow find a way. But I've also seen countless couples get drunk and get married on a whim because they had an exciting romp in the hay, and then get divorced three days later because they didn't mean it. If you do that to him for naught, it will destroy him."

"I didn't mean any harm," Audrey whispered. "I didn't even … I didn't even start thinking of him that way until…" Her voice trailed off. There had been more than mischief in her kiss. She had kissed him because she was curious if he really had feelings for her and she wanted to know. The kiss had been impulsive. Made while wearing the persona of a powerful woman who had power over a desirable man.

She had kissed him expecting him to make some stiff, indignant response. Ruffle his feathers with disapproval. Tell her it was inappropriate for a Prophet of the Lord to fling herself at a male. She had kissed him because she had wanted to _know. Was_ he made of stone?

He was not!

And she realized what that feeling was that had been clamoring for her attention for quite some time. She was _glad _he was not made of stone, for it had only been the belief that he was unfeeling and untouchable, a belief he had been going out of his way to perpetuate even though it was a lie, which had caused her to compartmentalize him in her mind and hold him at arms' length so she didn't get hurt.

At what point had she started thinking of Gabriel as more than her protector?


	26. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

"Invitation?" the burley, beefy armed bouncer challenged them as soon as they got to the door of the Trapp.

"We, um, left it at home," Audrey stammered.

"Are you even old enough to drink?" the bouncer asked, his face flat and unemotional behind his sunglasses.

"That's a great costume, man," one of the men in line behind them said with admiration, reaching up to touch Gabriel's wings. Gabriel flinched back his wings, not liking to be touched. "Wow! It's like they're real … or something."

"Cool mace," a second bar patron said. "Can I see it?"

"What's with the tattoos?" a third patron asked Audrey.

"This is a private party, kid," the bouncer said. "Come back when you're invited."

"Lena is going to want to see this," a third bar patron said, an African-American woman in a gold, glittering evening dress said, gliding up to them and scrutinizing Gabriel's wings. She was dressed up as Diana Ross. "Russ … go get Lena. Tell her Roxanne sent you."

"You can go right in," the bouncer said respectfully to Roxanne. "I'll hold these jokers outside until Lena makes a decision."

"Later, big boy," Roxanne said to Gabriel, taking her gloved hand and blowing him a kiss. "Lena will let you inside."

The Reverend yelped as Roxanne slapped him in the ass on her way by, giving him a wink, and then started to laugh.

"Beautiful costume," Audrey observed. "She looks just like Diana Ross."

The Reverend laughed even harder.

"What?" Audrey asked, looking to either side. Gabriel was sullen and scowling, having retreated behind that expression to hide whatever emotions she had unleashed earlier. He diligently maintained his physical distance, the way he quickly stepped back every time she moved near belying the cool indifference he had schooled onto his face.

"You'll see," the Reverend said cryptically, mirth twinkling in his eyes before he pulled his dark sunglasses over his eyes and assumed his most convincing Elvis pose for whoever this Lena was who had the power to let them inside.

Gabriel had a small crowd gathered around him, all trying to touch his armor and pat his feathers.

"Are you like, an FX guy, or something?" one patron, a man with a purple or red Mohawk asked.

"How do you get them to move like that?" another asked, a man with a long trench coat asked.

"They look real," a third man with a razor blade and black lipstick on, looking very much like Billy Idol, said as he gave one of Gabriel's primary feathers a tug.

"Enough!" Gabriel snarled, crossing his arms in front of his chest and glowering at the patrons buzzing around him.

"He's got the 'Thor' pose down perfectly," Mohawk Man said, oblivious to the threat of Gabriel's rapidly deteriorating temper.

"And he's got the arms to throw that big old mace he's carrying," Trench Coat man said. "Ooooo."

"What's the armor made of?" Billy Idol man said, boldly rapping on Gabriel's breastplate. "Did you get it off E-bay before the apocalypse?"

"Gabriel," Audrey murmured, reaching out to touch his forearm and calm him before he blew his stack. "We need to get inside."

Gabriel retreated behind his unreadable expression, but she could see storm clouds gathering in his eyes as the patrons continued poking and prodding his 'costume.' She could feel his muscles coiled beneath her fingers like an overwound spring getting ready to explode. Only her small hand on his bare skin was keeping his anger in check.

"Can I hold your mace?" a fourth patron, a man dressed in a zoot suit, fedora, wing-tip shoes, and carrying a violin case asked. Gangster-Man. The man reached to touch Gabrie'ls mace.

"Get back!" Gabriel snarled, instinctively reaching for his mace.

"Gabriel, please…" Audrey pleaded, reaching up to touch his cheek. "We need to get in here." He looked into her eyes, shuddering with anger, and let it go with a grimace and a grunt.

"Ooooo…" Mohawk Man said, admiration tingeing his voice. "He's definitely got the Thor thing down. They should cast him in the next blockbuster."

"If there ever is another blockbuster," Trench Coat Man said. "I can't even get decent radio reception. Nothing but Mormon hymns all day long."

The patrons all sighed at that comment.

"Well, well, well," a breathy, husky voice chuckled. "Just look what the cat dragged in." A voluptuous woman in a full-length blue evening gown, slit all the way up to her pantyline, sidled out the single step up to the bar and glided over to their little group.

"These jokers are trying to crash the party," the bouncer said. "Roxanne thought you might be interested in them."

"Lena, I presume," the Reverend said, stepping right up and offering his hand in a manner that anybody who had ever been forced to watch too many reruns of old Elvis movies at her grandmothers' house would recognize. "I must say, it _is _a pleasure." The Reverend bent down and kissed her gloved hand.

"You really know how to charm a girl," Lena said, casually tossing her white feathery boa over one shoulder. "What's a nice king of rock and roll doing in a shithole like this?"

"Trying to find a sinner amongst the saints," the Reverend said, slipping up his dark sunglasses and giving Lena a wink.

Lena looked next at Gabriel, scrutinizing him intensely. Gabriel scrutinized Lena right back.

"You're a long way from home, big boy," Lena finally said softly, the breathiness leaving her voice. "Slumming?"

Gabriel was silent as he didn't have an answer for her question. He just gave her an unreadable glare, and then when it was obvious Lena was waiting for an answer, he grunted, "Yes."

"This is a closed party," Lena said finally, not breaking eye contact with Gabriel. "If you wish to enter, you must be respectful of my guests."

"Yes," Gabriel said.

"If you wish to enter my sanctuary," Lena said, "you must be willing to pay the price."

"I have a little money," Audrey said, fumbling into her coat pocket and pulling out a few greenbacks. Money nobody wanted anymore.

"Money is worthless," Lena said, glancing at the Reverend. "Times are unsettled. If you wish to gain entrance, you must each contribute something of value."

"I sing Elvis songs," the Reverend offered.

"I sing … backup?" Audrey offered.

Gabriel regarded Lena intently. "I can offer nothing of value except my presence."

"A dance," Lena finally said. "I will allow all three of you entrance if this one gives me one dance."

"Agreed!" Audrey said, grabbing Gabriel by the hand and tugging him towards the door.

"I don't dance," Gabriel started to say.

"You do now," Audrey ordered, shoving the immovable wall of his big frame towards the door.

"I've never…" Gabriel said, his expression guarded and unsure.

"You'll learn!" Audrey snapped.

Gabriel tucked his wings tightly into his back, barely able to move his large frame and even larger wingspan in a bar already overcrowded to popping.

"Drinks for these three are on the house," Lena said to the bartender.

"Thank you," Audrey said.

"Don't thank me yet," Lena said. "The Mormons don't allow strong liquor. I suggest you stick to beer."

On stage, Roxanne, aka 'Diana Ross' was just finishing up singing an old Aretha Franklin tune, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. It appeared the bar was largely lit up with kerosene lanterns, although the hum of a generator could be heard in the background, powering a spotlight on the stage and a single microphone. The rest of the band strummed along on a variety of instruments.

Gabriel backed up to the corner of the bar, parked his body there, and refused to move, his face unreadable except for the occasional contemptuous twitch of his wings every time one of the bar patrons bumped into him.

Roxanne aka 'Diana Ross' finished up her string of songs, and then the Emcee came on to announce the next act as the bar patrons cheered. There were so many people in the bar that she had to stand with her arms pressed jammed against her sides. Most of the men's costumes leaned toward that post-apocalyptic or gothic leather look, but many of the women were surprisingly well dressed.

"And now ladies and gentlemen," the Emcee announced. "Our own Miss Lena would like to dedicate this next song to her special guests." The spot light dimmed and then came back up again with Lena in her blue evening gown, wearing some sort of strange hat, surrounded by four men bare-chested men dressed in little more than black leather pants with goth-style chest-straps held by chrome rings. The audience hushed as the band struck up.

The moment the band started playing, the Reverend gave her a knowing look and a shit-eating grin. It wasn't from her generation, so it took Audrey a moment as Lena sang through the first stanza in her chain-smoking, husky voice before she was able to place the tune as well. They both glanced at Gabriel, knowing what was coming.

_Fee, fee, fi, fi, fo-fo, fum  
>Look at Molly now, here she comes<br>Wearin' her wig hat and shades to match  
>She's got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat<br>Wearin' her pearls and her diamond rings _

_She's got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything_

The four leather-clad men, who appeared to be both dancers and backup singers, danced across the stage and sang the refrain as Lena worked her way through the crowd, over to where Gabriel was trying his hardest to disappear into the wood making up the bar.

_She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,  
>Devil with the blue dress on<br>Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,  
>Devil with the blue dress on<em>

"You promised me a dance," Lena said, reaching out with her gloved hand. "And your kind _never _breaks their promises, do they?"

"No," Gabriel said, reluctantly reaching up and taking Lena's hand. She immediately tugged him back towards the stage with her, just in time to sing the next string of verses. Gabriel stood there, stiff as a board, wings tucked so tightly into his back they would have disappeared if they weren't so darned big, while Lena used Gabriel's large frame as a prop.

_Wearin' her perfume, Chanel No. 5  
>Got to be the finest girl alive<br>She walks real cool, catches everybody's eye_

As Lena sang that last phrase, Lena moved as though to touch Gabriel's chin suggestively with her gloved hand, but didn't actually touch him. Gabriel crossed his arms, the muscle in his jaw betraying his displeasure at being made a spectacle of.

_She's got such good lovin' that they can't say goodbye  
>Not too skinny, she's not too fat<br>She's a real humdinger and I like it like that_

"She's really good," Audrey said, admiration tingeing her voice. "What's she doing all the way up here. She belongs in Las Vegas or someplace."

"She's not a she," the Reverend said. "She's a he."

"Oh, okay," Audrey said and then, as the implications of what the Reverend was saying sank in, exclaimed, "What?"

"Gay bar," the Reverend said. "Look around you. Notice a pattern?"

Audrey looked around and realized for the first time that although there were many men and women present, most of the men were standing chatting with other men, while most of the women were standing chatting next to other women.

"Oh…." Audrey said, glancing at Gabriel and getting that sinking feeling. "Do you think he's figured it out yet?"

"He hasn't taken that mace of his yet and smote any sodomites yet," the Reverend said. "Probably not. He'll figure it out eventually."

"Doesn't it bother you?" Audrey asked, not sure how she was supposed to feel about suddenly finding herself in the middle of a gay bar smack in the middle of the bastian of intolerance, Salt Lake City.

"I'm a Methodist minster from Las Vegas," the Reverend said, shrugging. "Some Methodist sects decided it was prudent to preach tolerance. My congregation was one of them. If not for the gay, lesbian, transsexual and transgender community in Las Vegas, I wouldn't have had any real congregation at all. Live and let live."

"Oh," Audrey said. She stood, ready to spring in case Gabriel suddenly 'got it' and exploded, not sure how he'd react.

Luckily, although Lena for some reason was holding him to his promise to 'dance' with her, or more accurately, stand immobile as a prop while _she _sang and danced, thankfully she, he, she-he, had enough common sense to recognize the murderous look Gabriel had in his eyes and not taunt him any further. The leather-clad men danced around and finished the refrain.

_She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,  
>Devil with the blue dress on<br>Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,  
>Devil with the blue dress on<em>

"At least we found our devil," Audrey said. "Do you think she realizes that's no costume he's wearing?"

"You saw her when she first looked at him," the Reverend said. "She knew _exactly _who he was. She made him promise to respect her patrons before she'd allow him entrance."

"She said she knew his kind always keeps their promises," Audrey said thoughtfully. "How would she know that, other than crap spewed out by big religion?"

"We'll just have to wait and find out," the Reverend said.

After another round of refrains, Lena finished her song and let Gabriel off the hook, gesturing him back towards the bar where she had found him as the audience exploded in applause. Gabriel went back to his corner, tucking his wings in so tightly to the wall he looked like a statue. Gabriel hadn't wanted to come in here at all. She decided she'd better show some appreciation … fast.

"Thank you," Audrey said, shouting over the music. She touched the bare skin on his arm just above his leather wrist-braces. "I know you really didn't want to do that."

Gabriel just gave her a sullen expression, _very _displeased at being forced to go into a bar and turn himself into a stage prop.

It had been a long time since she'd seen him wear his armor, even if it was only partial armor. She'd forgotten how well it accentuated the bulging muscles in his arms. Gabriel had stopped losing weight and begun to bulk up again about two months ago, eating better and working out several hours each day.

Being cast out of heaven had not only been emotionally traumatic. It had also been extremely physically traumatic as well, nearly killing him. Whatever transformation his body had needed to accomplish to exist down here on Earth, it appeared he had finally made the transition and was on his way to regaining his former strength. Audrey realized her hand had lingered on his arm, the noisy room behind her fading as the only thing that registered on her consciousness was the warmth under her fingertips and the curious way it made her heart beat faster. Gabriel studied her eyes carefully, his sullen expression fading at her touch.

"I'm sorry I teased you earlier," Audrey said, certain the music was so loud he couldn't hear. "I meant no disrespect."

Gabriel reached out and touched her chin, drawing her eyes up to meet to his.

"I am not made of stone, little Prophet," Gabriel said, his anger gone and an expression she could only equate as sorrow replacing it. "The Father exacts a heavy price from those who disobey."

"How do you know you'd be disobeying?" Audrey asked, her heart beating in her ears, anxious to hear the answer.

"Because you were not so marked until after I asked," Gabriel said, leaning close to whisper that last statement into her ear so he did not need to shout it over the music.

Her heart sank. She knew exactly _what _mark he was talking about, and she knew _exactly _when it had appeared. The day they had found the first disciple, the Reverend. The day she had woken up in his arms in the pink Cadillac in the garish Elvis chapel, Gabriel so tenderly holding her in his arms after her episode channeling her peculiar gift of defiance.

Gabriel _was _in love with her, and the Father had told him 'no.'


	27. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

"Lena will see you now," the bartender said, nodding to the three of them.

Gabriel's skin was crawling. His feathers were crawling. His hair was crawling. Every fiber of his being was crawling with revulsion, screaming at him to 'get out!' The longer he was forced to watch intoxicated sodomites openly fondle and caress one another, the more the revolting sodomites drunkenly bumped into him and tried to touch his feathers, the more his muscles screamed at him to leave. Only the Prophets hand on his arm had kept him from flying through the window, taking to the air, and burying himself in the Great Salt Lake that never froze until the sin had been cleansed from his body.

Talk about dance with the devil! It had taken him a few minutes to figure it out, but once he had, he had wanted to throttle Audrey and the Reverend, both distressingly blasé about the entire thing. In fact … they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Humans!

All three of them followed one of the bare-chested, leather-clad performers down a dark, narrow hall behind the stage area to a dingy, crowded 'green' room. Lena sat in front of the mirror wearing a bath robe, her blue dress slung over a rack of similar evening gowns and costumes.

"Sit," Lena commanded. "He's probably going to have to stand. Not enough room in here for him to spread out."

Audrey and the Reverend grabbed two battered wooden chairs and pulled them up to the makeup mirror which was backlit by candlelight, the ring of large bulbs which surrounded it dark from the lack of electricity.

"Can't see to put my makeup on worth a hill of beans," Lena sighed wearily. "No electricity. It's all we can do to scrounge up a couple of gallons of gas to run the generator on Saturday night."

"You know who I am?" Gabriel asked.

"Archangel Gabriel," Lena said, pulling off her chestnut wig to reveal a head of short hair below. She perfunctorily reached into a jar of cold cream and began to slather it all over her face, grabbing a towel to begin removing the makeup. "Left Hand of God. Carrier of the Word of God. I saw you sing the other night. And she's the Prophet you safeguard. They weren't too clear about what it is, exactly, the Reverend does."

"Disciple," the Reverend said. "At least that's what the Prophet says I am."

"You were at the temple?" Audrey asked in surprise, glancing at the Reverend.

"I'm a Mormon," Lena said. "Just not a very good one. They let me in to help prepare their sound equipment before the big Sabbath gatherings so long as I don't go in drag."

"A sinner amongst the saints," the Reverend said.

"Speak for yourself," Lena snapped. "You're a little too credible with that Elvis pelvis-tilt to be an orthodox minister."

"The Prophet has drawn us here to find you," Gabriel stated flatly. Audrey had said during her vision two nights ago that they had to enter the trap and dance with the devil. He just had no idea her vision would be so … literal.

"Not what you expected?" Lena asked, studying him carefully.

"No," Gabriel said flatly. "You're a sodomite."

"The visions are very clear, Gabriel," Audrey reminded him, shooting him a warning glance. "We must walk amongst the fallen to guide humanity to the path of the Savior."

"Jesus wasn't too picky about who followed him," Lena said, her voice matter-of-fact. "Not all that crap the apostles wrote about him after he died. _That _was all bullshit. But if you read between the lines about how he treated people, he was pretty enlightened. All he cared about was how people treated each other, not about people sticking their noses into affairs that are nobody's business."

"Bit of a biblical scholar?" the Reverend asked.

"I'm a queer, cross-dressing drag queen living in the worldwide headquarters of Intolerance-R-Us," Lena said. "I've had to do a lot of soul-searching."

"Your nightclub appears untouched by the apocalypse," Gabriel said. "How could this be so?"

"Guess that god of yours just didn't think we were bad enough to bother with," Lena said, her voice changing and becoming deeper and more male as she removed the pads from her false breasts and then removed her bra. She stripped down her bathrobe to her waist and pulled on a T-shirt. "At least … at least not all of us. Some of us didn't make it."

The tone to Lena's voice was unmistakable.

"Who was he?" the Reverend asked gently.

"My … partner," Lena said. "We'd been together for nearly 18 years. Since just after college, when we both came out. Even flew to San Francisco to get married when the mayor there declared they were going to allow gay marriages. I was here, performing, when the apocalypse came."

"What happened?" Audrey asked.

"Same story everybody else has," Lena said, standing up to slip her pantyhose off from beneath her bath robe, and then pull on a pair of jeans before discarding the modesty of the robe. "I was performing here Christmas Eve when the screaming started outside. Ran out to see people going crazy, not caring if they dislocated their own arms or legs, killing people. Ran home to make sure my Eddie was all right and he wasn't. Tried to kill me. Shouted all kinds of vile things at me. Called me a sodomite. Just like you."

She gave Gabriel a pointed look. Audrey and the Reverend _also _gave him a pointed look. The humans appeared to be much more tolerant of how things were down here on Earth than he had been taught to be. He schooled his features into an unreadable expression, ensuring his revulsion didn't show upon his face as Lena spoke. It wouldn't be the first time something the Father had taught him was a little bit ... close minded.

"Eddie was a gentle guy," Lena said, her eyes focused at some horrible point in the past. "Stereotypical gay male. Soft-spoken. Sensitive. Skinny little guy. Not large-boned like me. When he first attacked me, I had a hard time defending myself because I couldn't believe it was really happening."

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said. He knew his words were inadequate to apologize for what the heavenly host had done, what _he _had done, but they were the only comfort he had to offer.

"I lost both my parents," Audrey said, giving Lena's shoulder a squeeze. "They were all I had."

"I didn't have any family in the area," the Reverend said. "They're all from back east. I have no idea whether or not any of them survived."

"What happened to Eddie?" Audrey asked gently.

"He attacked me," Lena said. "It was him or me. I had no choice." Her voice trailed off as tears welled in her eyes.

"Why did you want to dance with Gabriel?" the Reverend asked. "It was an odd price to pay to see you."

"Eddie and I always had a little joke," Lena said. "The Mormons condemned our relationship. Said we were going to go to hell. It used to eat at Eddie. He never came out to his family. I always told him that when I died, I wanted him to bury me in my favorite blue evening gown. That way, when I got to heaven and met Saint Peter at the pearly gates, I could sing Devil with the Blue Dress On and make him laugh before he sent us both to hell. Hoped he'd take pity on us and station us both together. As long as we ended up together, we didn't care _where _we ended up. After all that happened, I figured a fallen angel was probably as close as I was ever going to get."

"Sheol is a terrible, dark place," Gabriel said, "but it's not as bad as it's depicted in your literature. It's more like … a steel town in Pennsylvania. Only more polluted. A _lot _more polluted."

"Your nightclub was surprisingly untouched," the Reverend said.

"Yeah," Lena said, shrugging. "Freaked out the church elders. They thought this place would be ground zero and they were mad as hell it came through the riots and the fires unscathed."

"Did they try to shut you down?" Audrey asked.

"They didn't dare," Lena said. "Especially after I quoted them some crap from the Book of Mormon about only the 'chosen' being left behind to rebuild the Earth. They finally just decided to pretend things were like they always were and leave us alone."

"We were led to believe we would find somebody … like us," Audrey said.

"You believe you were resurrected from the dead to clear a path for the Savior," Lena asked. "And Gabriel was sent to protect you on that journey?"

"Yes," Audrey said. "But how did _you_ know?"

"As I said earlier," Lena said, lighting a cigarette and puffing it thoughtfully, "they let me into the church sometimes to do things for them. You hear an awful lot."

"How much?" Gabriel asked.

"They recorded your little session before the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for posterity," Lena said. "Who do you think was running the camera?"

"Oh…" Audrey said, her mouth making the surprised little O that Gabriel found irresistible.

"You seem to be doing … well … here," the Reverend observed.

"Come back in the daylight," Lena said sadly. "The Trapp is dying. The apocalypse scared the shit out of people. All us old queers been diving back into the closets and pretending we're all good Christians now. Only come out once in a while for a big party like last night. It's just … it's just not the same without Eddie."

"You must come with us," Gabriel said.

"I'm just a cross-dressing fag," Lena said. "What use would I be on your little … quest?"

"For one thing," Audrey said, reaching out to give Lena's, or Leonard's, hand a squeeze. "It sure would be nice to have another woman along on this trip."

Lena smiled weakly, a strange mix between male and female with her male T-shirt but hints of mascara and eye shadow still clinging around her teary eyes.

"That's the nicest offer anybody's ever made," Lena said, sniffling and then grabbing a tissue to blow her nose. "Without Eddie … there's just too many ghosts. Can't even bear to go home anymore. We were together 18 years."

"Come with us," Audrey urged. "I don't know where we're going … oh … it's back!"

"The compass rose?" the Reverend asked, grabbing her hand and looking at it.

"Yes," Audrey said. "It's pointing south-east now."

"I always wanted to head south for the winter," Lena said, making up her mind. "Too cold up here."

"By the time we walk there," Gabriel said emotionlessly, "it will be summer."

"Killjoy," Lena said. "Where you guys staying?"

"In a damaged store front around the corner," Gabriel said. "Our gear is stowed there."

"Get your gear and come back here," Lena offered. "We got rooms upstairs. For private parties. Not to _his _tastes, but they're clean and warm and the sound-proofing muffles the worst of the revelries from downstairs."

Gabriel trudged back with the Reverend to get their gear while Audrey stayed behind with Lena. A sodomite? The Father, or as he was beginning more and more to suspect, the Holy Spirit, was leading them to recruit peculiar allies. Perhaps the Father's former consort was trying to make a point?

After they had settled in for the night, Gabriel stood sentry outside the Prophet's door, listening intently for the first signs of the visions which tormented her dreams each night so he would be there to hold her when the nightmares came. Audrey had kissed him. She had kissed him and he hadn't expected it, so he didn't have the chance to school his reaction behind some carefully erected emotional wall. She had kissed him to be playful and he had kissed her back with all the emotion he had been keeping bottled up inside.

And he had looked into her eyes and realized that she knew…

She knew how he felt about her…

And she wasn't immune to him…

"Gabriel!" she cried out.

It was beginning. For some reason, if he wasn't there to hold her while she had the visions, she would wake up with claw marks on her body. It was no longer obedience which compelled him to curl up behind her and comfort her. It was the only avenue the Father had left open to show her how much he loved her without bringing down the Father's wrath, so he would show her the only way he was allowed.

"I am here, little Prophet," he whispered in her ear as he slid in behind her back and gathered her in his arms. "Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

As her nightmare wound down to its inevitable conclusion, Audrey keening his name and sobbing, damning the Father to all uncreation, Gabriel felt something in his chest break, some small crack in the dam that had been holding back an emotion he had only caught glimmers of before and had always suppressed. The emotion burst forward, the tiniest trickle of seepage escaping from the great dam that was Gabriel's obedience, but he chose for once in his life not to shove the emotion back where it belonged and allowed it to trickle through his soul.

"Shhhh… my love," he whispered in her ear, kissing her gently. "I will defend you with my dying breath. Even if I have to defend you against the Father himself."

Defiance.


	28. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

"He's very protective of you," Lena said, glancing back at the silent, ever-watchful angel who always trudged at their backs as they hiked through the snowpack covering the unplowed roads of the Colorado Rockies.

"It's his job," Audrey said, hedging. "Says so right here. Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God. Gabriel." She pointed to the spot on her forehead where she knew the appropriate symbols resided.

"It's a hell of a lot more than a job to him and we both know it," Lena said, fiddling with her fuzzy mohair scarf the way Audrey had seen her fiddle with her feathered boa that night at the Trapp. "I've been around long enough to know the difference."

Audrey sighed. Lena had been pumping her for information about Gabriel for weeks, information Audrey had found herself reluctant to discuss. How could she explain their strange little situation when she couldn't even explain it to herself?

"What makes you think that?" Audrey asked cautiously. _She _knew Gabriel loved her. So did the Reverend. But you don't just go opening up about that kind of thing to just anybody unless you _really _trusted them. So far Lena had proven the soul of discretion, but it had only been three and a half weeks.

"Eddie may have been a wimpy little faggot," Lena said, her eyes focusing on the past, "but I always knew he felt something special for me. The way he was so thoughtful. Always … I dunno … there? It was as though he was always three steps ahead of me anticipating my thoughts and doing whatever he could to make things easier for me."

"Yeah," Audrey agreed. "That describes Gabriel."

"How does that make you feel?" Lena asked gently.

"You were at the Mormon temple when I made my little confession," Audrey said. "You tell me?"

"It takes a long time to earn back somebody's trust after you've bitten them?" Lena asked.

"He killed me," Audrey said. "Collateral damage. I wasn't even the target. He killed me without a second thought. At the last moment he thought better of it and tried to shield me from the brunt of the impact, but the fact remains my first memory of him is Michael's bullet going through my mothers' brain to stop her from giving up the Savior to him and then Gabriel bursting through the door to kill us."

"But you've forgiven him," Lena said. "It's not just what you told the elders. I can see whenever you deal with him that you bear him no hard feelings."

"You didn't see what the Father did to him to punish him for obeying," Audrey said, sighing. "You can only hate someone who's being punished for hurting you for so long before you say 'enough' and start hating the person who's doing the punishing. Gabriel was a loyal dog attacking a threat because his owner told him to 'sic. God? God just plain gets off on that shit."

"You fear God will 'sic him on you again?" Lena asked.

"No," Audrey said, her voice small. "Not anymore. Took him a year to make that promise, but I know something has changed and he really means it."

"So what's the problem?" Lena asked. "Are his feelings really that one-sided?"

"I'm afraid," Audrey whispered.

"Afraid he'll hurt you?" Lena asked.

"Afraid of the responsibility," Audrey said, her voice quivering with emotion.

"The dog?" Lena asked. Lena had been behind the camera when Audrey had confessed to the church elders the _real _reason Michael had been able to convince her to help his brother after Gabriel had killed her.

"The dog," Audrey said, memory of the big, dumb, loyal mutt she had stolen and nursed back from the dead causing a cornucopia of emotions to cross her features. "I didn't know what a dog like that could do to someone when it attacked someone it thought was trying to hurt me. I _do _know what Gabriel can do. I've seen it first-hand."

"That's a lot of responsibility," Lena acknowledged. "But the way Gabriel feels about you ... I don't think it matters whether or not it's _you _telling him to 'git em or god. If he feels you're being threatened, he's going to protect you, come hell or high water."

"I know," Audrey said.

They hiked in silence for the next several miles, Audrey deep in her thoughts.

"Why did God punish Gabriel when Gabriel was just doing what god asked?" Lena asked.

"Scapegoat," Audrey said. "Leveticus 16. It's the procedure the Father has established to remove the taint of his own mistakes. That way, he doesn't have to admit he's fallible."

"Always thought that book was weird," Lena said. "Lots of 'thou shalt not' and 'thou art an unclean thing' and 'thou shall be condemned' kind of stuff. Classic Old Testament. The kind of stuff I suspect this Savior of yours was trying to change."

They hiked in silence some more, the sound of the wind and drifting snow the only sound in the group, the men behind them similarly silent.

"Do you think he'll ever repeat the same mistake a second time?" Lena asked. "I mean … do something bad because you or god ask him."

"He's trying to learn," Audrey said. "I'm just not sure … I haven't seen him put into those kinds of situations enough times to be _sure _about him. You haven't seen him when he kills. It's like … he becomes this machine. It's … beautiful … and terrifying."

"It's not his fault god created him to be a killing machine," Lena said. "I haven't known him that long, but the Gabriel I see before me doesn't match up with the monster you describe."

"You'll see," Audrey whispered. "It's only a matter of time."

"Would you rather he _not_ protect you?" Lena asked.

"I don't know what I want," Audrey said, her voice rising with frustration. "I'm only eighteen years old! Nobody _asked _me if I wanted to get killed and brought back from the dead and then go on some stupid, holy quest to help the Savior! Nobody _asked _me if I wanted to have some angel fall out of the sky and fall in love with me. I'm just a kid! Why can't I just be a kid?"

"Shhh…" Lena said, glancing back at where the Reverend trudged, giving her a warning glance.

"If the Father himself can make that kind of mistake," Audrey whispered, "then who am _I _to wield the power to 'sic the Left Hand of God onto the enemies of the Father? I'm … nobody."

"Do you love him?" Lena asked gently.

"I don't know," Audrey said. "Maybe. I feel _something _for him. But I'm really, really scared of everything he represents. I don't want to hurt him. After everything he's been through, the last thing he deserves is for me to turn around and hurt him like the Father did."

"You're not the Father," Lena said. "You _learn_ from your mistakes and try not to repeat them."

"I guess I just need assurances from Gabriel that he can do the same," Audrey said. "He loves the Father with all of his heart. What's going to happen the next time the Father gives him an order that's just plain … wrong? Michael said no. Gabriel did what he was told."

"Gabriel has given his word he will never harm you," Lena said. "Not even if the Father orders it."

"But he hasn't made that same promise about anybody else," Audrey said. "He's … he's the angel whose job it is to bring forth the End of Days, a job the Father chose not to finish but to leave for another day. Until I'm certain Gabriel acts because he truly understands the difference between right and wrong, and not just because someone tells him so … "

The thought trailed off. It didn't matter _how_ many times Gabriel held her in his arms to soothe her nightmares or _how _many thoughtful things he did or _how _diligently he protected her. It didn't even matter that she now looked at him and all she could remember was the electricity which had sparked through her feminine core when she had kissed him, how _right _it had felt. It didn't matter that, more and more, she found herself looking at him and feeling a longing in her heart that she couldn't explain. All that mattered was that, until Gabriel had demonstrated to her, under fire, that he _truly _knew, as Michael did, when to do what he was told, and when to say no, it was too much responsibility for her to carry on her already overburdened young shoulders.

Lena stopped, pulled Audrey into her arms, and gave her a great, big hug, 'femming' it up in her best drag queen persona.

"Honey," Lena said. "We're just going to have to teach that big 'ol dog of yours how to behave on a leash."

"That's the problem," Audrey said. "Gabriel isn't a dog."


	29. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Audrey tossed, trying to fend off the nightmare and take control of it even as she slept. Her efforts were in vain. In her sleep, the dark, hideous truth of the future always came through. The vision was beginning.

_Darkness._

_A Gritori lunged at her, teeth and claws bared as it aimed for her throat. The Savior cried out in terror, but it was no longer the cry of an infant, but a young boy. Nephilim circled the Savior, chittering their hatred of the Father who had cast them into Sheol to suffer when the sin of disobedience had not been theirs, but their parents. They smelled the Father had overstepped his bounds and was vulnerable. Weak. Open to attack so they could free themselves and wreak their vengeance upon all the Father had created. _

"_The Savior!" she screamed. "He's in danger. We must defend him at all costs!" She pulled her knife, Gabriel's knife, and assumed a fighting stance, her heart racing in terror._

_Lena and the Reverend rushed to the Savior's side. They turned back-to-back to face the oncoming threat. They were not warriors. They did not know how to fight._

_The Grigori lunged at her throat, knocking her to the ground, its claws slicing through her abdomen like daggers. It did not move like any creature she had ever known. She screamed for help._

"Gabriel!"

"Shhhh, little Prophet," he whispered into her ear as he slid in behind her as he did every night. "Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

_She stabbed the creature in the eye. It howled in rage and retreated, trumpeting in a thunderous voice to its friends to come help it. The Grigori circled, egged on by the chittering Nephilim. It was joined by a second, and then a third Grigori. She could not defend against three at once. They attacked._

"Gabriel … help me!" she screamed.

"I am here, my love," he whispered, gently gathering her in his arms. "I will protect you with my dying breath."

_The Grigori began to tear her apart. She screamed. Gabriel leaped into their midst, mace drawn. The Grigori trumpeted their rage, drawing more of their kind to their aid. Gabriel was beautiful in his battle armor, but he was now mortal. The light of the heavenly father no longer flowed through his veins as it had the last time he had done battle with the enemies of the Father and his wings were no longer a weapon. Even Gabriel had his limits._

"_You must survive," Gabriel told her. "Uriel will bring you to safety."_

"No!" she cried. "Gabriel! Don't do this! Please! We must do this together!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered into her ear, his hand gently caressing her cheek. "I am here to protect you."

"_You must survive," he repeated, grabbing her and giving a kiss, all the hunger he had denied himself contained in his goodbye kiss before shoving her away into the arms of his waiting brother. "I must atone for my sins by completing this task my Father has left undone so –you- are not punished in my stead. This is my job to finish."_

_Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Reverend and Lena fall to the Grigori and be torn apart. Michael flew in and pulled the Savior to safety. She screamed as another angel pulled her into the air, away from Gabriel. As she watched, Gabriel fought mightily, but eventually he succumbed to the sheer number of gigantic lizard-creatures which attacked. Before he went down, he took many with him._

"Gabriel!" she screamed, her voice anguished as she keened. "Don't leave me!"

"I am here, little Prophet," he said. "Whatever is to come, we will face it together."

_She fought at the angel who held her pinned in his arms, preventing her from going to him, kicking and screaming, but was not strong enough to break free._

"Let me go!" she shrieked, half in anger, half in anguish as she struggled against the arms which surrounded her. "We must fight together! He's not strong enough to do this alone!"

_He atones for his sins!" Uriel sneered at her with contempt. "If only the Father had punished –you- in his stead."_

"Shhhh… little Prophet," he whispered. "Do not fight me. I am here to protect you."

_Off to the side, Lucifer wavered between following his brethren and helping the fallen angel who still fought on the side of the Father even though the Father had cast him down. She looked across the smoldering landscape and their eyes met. His eyes were filled with indecision and sorrow. Lucifer understood Gabriel's sin and it and it made him hesitate, but it wasn't enough!_

"Help him!" she screamed, reaching out to the Fallen who wavered. "Please!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered, strong arms gently holding her as she struggled in her sleep. "I am here."

_Uriel held her until the Grigori had finished him off and retreated before letting her go. He sneered in hatred at Lucifer, taunting him in his arrogance. Lucifer's face hardened in hatred before he turned and left. He was joined by humans. Humanity saw fellowship with the other creatures the Father had condemned and followed him. The tide turned against both the Father and the Savior. The opportunity to turn Lucifer was lost forever._

_She ran to Gabriel's side. He was mortally wounded, gasping in pain as blood ran out his lungs, his mouth, his ears. His belly had been ripped open and chunks of flesh torn out of each limb. There was nothing she could do to save him._

"Gabriel," she sobbed. "What have you done?"

"Shhhh…" he whispered in her ear, gently pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "I will always protect you."

"_We will reunite someday in heaven," he whispered, his eyes focusing on some distant light that only he could see as he squeezed her hand. "My love…"_

_The light went out of his eyes. As she sobbed, his body turned to light and dissipated. _

"_He wanted to live as one of you," Uriel said flatly, no expression in his eyes, "and now he has died as one of you. The Father gave his word you would not be punished, but he will make sure Gabriel never joins you. He has been condemned to Sheol." _

"God damn you!" she screamed, shaking her fist at the sky. "This is all your fault. YOU caused this! YOU did this to him! YOU did this to US!"

_She kneeled in the blood-stained dirt where the blood Gabriel had shed was all she had left of him, tearing out her own hair and keening, clutching the bloody dirt to her chest as she cried out his name until she was so exhausted all she could do was moan._

"Gabriel," she sobbed, her voice so hoarse it was little more than an exhalation. "I failed you."

She woke up sweaty and exhausted in Gabriels' arms. Every night he encircled her in his wings in an effort to protect her from the boogeymen which visited her nightmares each night. She was getting better at remembering her dreams. Something in the vision had changed once again. The savior had been younger this time, a boy of 8 or 9, not a young man. The disciples had joined the fight, but it hadn't been enough. Gabriel still died, but the Father now interfered to ensure that, even in death, they would never be together.

The disciples had postponed the inevitable, but it had not been enough. They were only two against the world. She was so tired. Every night, the visions became a little more violent. Every night, she woke up more and more exhausted. Every night, she had the feeling the visions were compelling her to _do something, _but she wasn't sure what would turn the tide.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, kissing her in the forehead and gently tucking her under his wings for warmth. "They will harm you over my dead body."

"I know," Audrey whispered, too exhausted and hoarse to even properly form the words. "But it won't be enough."

"I'll make it enough," Gabriel reassured her, tenderly nuzzling the sweaty hair off her neck.

"A war is coming," Audrey whispered as she drifted back off to sleep in his arms. "You need to prepare us. You need to teach us how to fight."

When she awoke several hours later, he was gone. Gabriel slipped from her bed each morning before she woke, too terrified his control would slip and cause _her _to be punished as well as _him _for the sin of falling in love with her.


	30. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Something didn't feel right.

Gabriel surveyed the foothills, searching for the source of the discomfort that was niggling at his subconscious. As an angelic warrior for the Father, an extension of the Father's will, he had shared the Father's omnipotence, the ability to sense the thoughts of all living creatures, whether sentient or mere animal, and know when something was about to strike. Now … only mortal senses were available to interpret the vague danger he felt.

"Stay close together," Gabriel said to the Reverend. "Something is afoot."

"Lena, Audrey," the Reverend called. "Gabriel's got that feeling again."

Four separate times they had been attacked by bands of roving humans, thugs, intent upon stealing whatever supplies they had. The relative safety and comfort of the Mormons had faded as soon as they'd reached the Rocky Mountains and begun zig-zagging their way upon the path the Prophet decreed, aided by the compass rose on her hand. Some houses were cautiously welcoming, open to the Prophet's message of the Savior who now walked in humanity's midst, but others had heard rumors that the Father had sent legions of lower-level angels to take possession of the weak and turn them against mankind.

It hadn't been the 'rapture' humanity had been led to expect. He, Gabriel, had not blown his heavenly horn to awaken the spirits of the dead so they could stand patiently in line to be judged worthy or unworthy to enter heaven, and then ordered an army of fluffy, white-winged guardian angels to carry the souls of the saved away on golden chariots to the pearly gates to luxuriate in paradise for all eternity. Humanity was pissed, and he, Gabriel, an angel with wings, was a convenient target for their wrath.

"Thugs?" Audrey asked, dropping back to walk beside him and giving him a guarded look.

"Not sure," Gabriel said. "This feels … different."

Audrey insisted he teach them not only how to fight, but how to fight Grigori, pumping him for information about what the creatures looked like, how they fought, and how best to defeat them. How do you explain a creature no one but you has ever seen? Humanities idea of the Grigori had been polluted by deliberate attempts to mask the Father's previous mistakes, political and religious ideology, and finally Hollywood images of demons. It was finally Lena who came up with a more accurate description which the others could wrap their minds around and picture fighting from that same accursed Hollywood.

Velociraptors. With wings. Smart as humans. Insane. Bred by the Father to keep the other creations in line, only they were so unnaturally violent that even the Father hadn't been able to control them.

The group huddled together, instinctively hiding behind the protective spread of his wings. The humans fought back-to-back, but such a position was disadvantageous for an angel. Angels needed room to maneuver, room to leap into the air and perform ariel acrobatics. Open space gave him room to fight or fly. Humans had no wings. They needed to watch each other's backs because, once they were pinned down, they were vulnerable. Gabriel realized that, no matter how much he taught them, they were always going to be vulnerable because he just didn't understand what it was like to truly _be _one of them. Even now.

"Something's moving," Lena said, pointing up to a rocky outcropping to where some brush obscured anything lurking up upon the ledge. If it had been later in the year, Gabriel could have used the silence of the birds as a gauge as to whether or not some predator lurked upon the trial, but it was early April in the Colorado Rockies and winter had yet to fully release its icy grip upon the landscape.

Gabriel slid the straps off his shoulders to the backpack they had modified for him to carry with his wings and slowly slid the pack down to the ground. A branch twitched. A low sound, one he could not place. Something was definitely moving up on the ledge. He reached across his other shoulder and grabbed his mace, sliding it out of its carrying straps and into the palms of his hand. His mace felt good there. Natural. The imprint of his hands worn into the grip by millennia of use using it as an instrument to manifest the will of the father. Twisting the handle, he slid out the spikes.

A low sound rumbled down the rocky ledge. Gabriel flared his wings, ready to act.

"Gabriel!" Audrey screamed.

A tawny streak leaped off the ledge, nothing but claws and fangs, as a chilling cry split the air. Gabriel leaped and swung his mace, but the creature was already upon him, sinking its fangs into one wing as claws tore at his chest and neck, pain shooting through his body as the creature knocked him down.

"Mountain lion!" the Reverend shouted. "It's time to use that last bullet!"

The gun. They had been forced to expend the few remaining irreplaceable bullets in the last skirmish, so outnumbered were they that even Gabriel had been unable to scare off the thugs. They, quite literally, had one bullet in the chamber.

"Got it!" Audrey shouted. "Reverend?"

Audrey was still a lousy shot, having had no opportunity to practice. The Reverend, on the other hand, had grown up in Virginia where civilized people did skeet shooting for a hobby. Whenever a gun needed to be fired and actually hit something, the Reverend did it.

"Shoot it!" Lena screamed.

"I'll hit Gabriel," the Reverend shouted. "I've got to get a clean shot!"

Gabriel shouted in rage and pain at the creature which was tearing great chunks of feathers out of his left wing while it clawed at his chest. He hit it with the mace, but it was difficult to get any momentum behind the swing as he was essentially swinging the weapon in towards his own body. He beat his wings, trying to dislodge the mountain lion, and stopped when he felt his flesh begin to tear.

He had no knife. He had given it to Audrey.

As though reading his mind, he saw Audrey pull the knife and crouch, terror in her eyes, but also determination.

"Audrey!" he shouted. "No!"

She shot him a look of defiance and leaped towards the mountain lion, awkwardly stabbing at it. It was enough. The mountain lion screeched in pain and, in doing so, let go of his wing.

Gabriel shot into the air and realized immediately it was a mistake. Audrey couldn't leap to safety the way that he could. He immediately banked back down, but the mountain lion had diverted its attention to the source of its pain, the frail human who had just nicked it with an unearthly sharp blade.

"Shoot!" Lena shouted at the Reverend.

The gun went off. It missed. The mountain lion leaped at Audrey. Gabriel banked his wings to land between them, but missed. Audrey screamed in terror as the mountain lion knocked her down, tearing at her flesh in an enraged flurry of fangs and claws.

"Gabriel!" she screamed.

Rage flooded through his veins the likes of which he had never felt before. He completed his landing and swung the mace with both hands as though it were a baseball bat, hitting the mountain lion and neatly knocking it off on the second strike. The mountain lion tried to get away, but Gabriel was so enraged he grabbed it by the tail and refused to let it go. He howled in rage, a deep unearthly sound even to his own ears reminiscent of the horn he had blown signaling the apocalypse, and hit the mountain lion again and again and again until its head had been turned to pulp and entrails were beginning to protrude from the body cavity. Blood and bits of tissue clung to his arms, his face, his wings, his chest, but he was just too angry to stop.

"Gabriel," the Reverend called, having enough common sense to stay well back. "That's enough."

Gabriel couldn't stop. The damned animal had attacked Audrey. He screamed at it and hit the creature, long dead, some more.

"Gabriel!" the Reverend shouted. "You're scaring her! Enough!"

Gabriel glanced over at Audrey and stopped dead in his tracks. The Prophet stared at him, eyes wide in terror. Blood seeped from her shoulder where the mountain lion had bit her and her coat was mangled from its claws, but she didn't appear to be too badly hurt.

"Audrey," Gabriel said, taking a step towards her and hyperventilating to catch his breath.

"S-s-s-s-sta-a-a-ay awa-ay f-f-f-from m-m-m-me," Audrey stammered as she skittered back away from him in terror.

"Audrey?" Gabriel asked, and then realized that he still had his mace raised as though ready to strike. He lowered the mace. "Audrey?"

Audrey awkwardly clamored to her feet and ran.

"Audrey?" Gabriel shouted, leaping into the air and then yelping in pain, forced to drop to the ground, as the wound in his wing made itself felt.

"Let her be, Gabriel!" Lena shouted, stepping between him and the disappearing form of his little Prophet running into the bushes crying. He tried to push Lena aside and she pushed back. "You've done enough! Gabriel! Give her time!"

"Give her time," the Reverend said, stepping beside Lena, between him and Audrey, who had disappeared into the underbrush, her frightened sobs the only indication she was still there.

"I don't understand," Gabriel said. The mountain lion had attacked her and he had just defended her. He didn't understand!

"Reverend," Lena snapped, her voice halfway between the masculine voice she really possessed and the feminine voice she chose to use. "Attend to her. Gabriel and I need to have a little talk."

"I don't understand," Gabriel said, panic rising in his chest at the realization that it was not just the mountain lion which had terrified Audrey, but _him_!

"Let me look at that wing," Lena said, firmly pushing him towards the packs that had been dropped on the path. "You're all banged up."

"I don't understand," Gabriel whispered. "Lena. What did I do wrong?"

Lena motioned for him to sit on a convenient boulder, not speaking as she rummaged through their supplies and dug out the first aid kit. Silently she applied pressure to the hole in his wing to stem the bleeding. Gabriel's heart was beating so fast he could hear his blood racing in his ears. In the direction of the bushes, he could hear the Reverends low voice and the sound of Audrey softly crying.

"Hold this here," Lena ordered. "Apply pressure."

Lena tended the claw marks on his chest and arms. His winter coat had spared him considerable damage or he would have been much more badly damaged. He was lucky, he realized, the creature had gone for his wing, thinking to incapacitate him, rather than his neck.

"Do you know what Audrey's first memory of you is?" Lena finally asked.

Gabriel flinched. She never spoke of it, but he was sure it was a pretty ugly memory.

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"Michael shooting her mother through the head so she wouldn't give you the Savior and then you bursting through the door with that mace of yours drawn," Lena said. "She said you were cold. Emotionless. A killing machine sent to kill an innocent baby."

Gabriel flinched, and it wasn't just from the alcohol. "I thought she had forgiven me."

"It's not about forgiveness," Lena said. "Whatever the Father did to you to make you pay for _his_ mistake, it helped Audrey forgive you. But forgiving isn't the same thing as forgetting. A memory like that? So long as she lives, she will _never _be able to forget."

"I'm not worthy to walk in her presence," Gabriel said, dejected. "No matter what I do, it will never be enough. How can you make up for a sin you didn't realize was wrong at the time you did it, but you know it was a sin now?"

"That's the problem," Lena said. "Audrey worries about what _else _you don't understand is not okay to do. The Father saw fit to give her the power to 'sic the Left Hand of God on anybody she saw fit and see what she would do with that power. It's a mantle of responsibility she doesn't want."

"I would defend her with my dying breath," Gabriel said. "Why isn't that enough?"

"Gabriel," Lena said, pausing. She squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "Have you ever wanted something so badly you could taste it, but it terrified you because you were afraid wanting it was wrong?"

"Yes," Gabriel whispered. "I do."

"Every girl on the planet fantasizes about winning the love of a powerful male," Lena said. "A man who would defend her with his very life. Every single one. Even wannabe girls like me."

"I don't understand," Gabriel said. He understood the concept of fantasy. He just didn't understand why it wasn't enough.

"Audrey got a lot more than she bargained for," Lena said. "It's a lot of responsibility for a girl who's just about to turn nineteen. She scared shitless, and you going and pounding anything that gets near her into hamburger isn't going to help matters any."

"You're saying I shouldn't defend her?" Gabriel asked, perplexed.

"I'm not saying that at all," Lena said, flipping her palm upwards in a classic 'Vanna White' letter-turning pose and shrugging her shoulders. "All I'm saying is that you're going to have to get better at keeping things on a leash, especially now that we're getting into unsettled territory where we're likely going to _need _you to protect us a lot more often. Disarm the threat if you can. Kill if there's no other way. No more turning dead things into hamburger with your mace."

"I have been ordered by the Father to protect her," Gabriel said, recognition of the paradox he was in finally dawning upon him. "The more I protect her, the more it reminds her of the past and frightens her, and the further it pushes her away."

"But if you don't protect her," Lena said. "She could end up dead. That mountain lion would have killed at least one of us if you hadn't been here. Humans are no match for mountain lions. Especially not hungry ones in early spring."

Gabriel retreated behind his trademark unreadable expression, digesting what Lena had just told him. Lena had grown close to Audrey on the trail, female company, or as close to female company as she could get under the circumstances. He was surprised to realize he no longer felt revulsion at Lena's touch. Even though he knew she was really a male, he had begun to accept Lena's female persona.

"There you go," Lena said as she put the finishing touches on his mangled wing. "All patched up. I'd avoid flying for a while until the tissue mends enough it doesn't just keep tearing open the wound. You're down a few thousand feathers."

"Thanks, Lena," Gabriel acknowledged softly, and he wasn't just talking about the first aid she had just administered.

"You're welcome," Lena said. She silently gathered up the supplies, stowed everything into their respective little baggies and containers, and tucked it back into the backpack.

Audrey finally returned, coaxed back by the Reverend, and studiously avoided making eye contact with him for the remainder of the day. He wanted to speak to her about it, about what she was feeling, but he wasn't sure what to say. He hadn't even been _aware _he was capable of emotion until after the Father had cast him down.

Just before nightfall, Gabriel ignored Lena's advice not to fly and flew back to the place he had killed the mountain lion. Flies buzzed around the carcass.

What was the reason Audrey had given the temple Elders for Michael to assign him to her care after he'd been cast down? Michael understood Audrey was capable of loving a monster even after it had bitten her. _Would _she ever find it in her heart to love him after he had bitten her so very badly? He didn't know. But he acknowledged that the gruesome sight smashed into the ground laying before him was an extreme he must never be pushed to ever again.

He buried the mountain lion. Now if only there were only some way to bury his shame.


	31. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

_She kneeled in the blood-stained dirt in the spot where Gabriel had died. Where the blood he had shed for her was all she had left. She tore out her own hair and keened, clutching the bloody dirt to her chest as she cried out his name again and again and again until she was so exhausted all she could do was moan._

"Gabriel," she sobbed, her voice so hoarse it was little more than an exhalation. "I failed you."

"Shhh… little Prophet," he whispered in her ear. "I am here."

Audrey shuddered, grief-stricken and spent. The nightly visions left her too exhausted to even more her hand to touch him, like a newborn infant who had not yet learned to command its limbs how to move. She shivered from the cold even though Gabriel tucked her into his wings and warmed her with his body. The chill she felt each night was not a mortal one, but the chill of death.

"You shall find the third disciple amongst the sons of Armageddon," Audrey spoke, the power that compelled the visions at last speaking through her tonight to give them guidance. "You must find fellowship with the one who has walked in the presence of the angel of death."

She knew that when she spoke, it was in a language that was not her own. She understood the words as she spoke them, but Gabriel had spoken to her during the daytime in that strange, heavenly language and she could not understand it at all. Whoever it was who sent the visions, they only spoke after she had been brought so low that she couldn't even move.

"We will find him," Gabriel said, a slight shudder perceptible though his frame. "Azrael marks the soul of all who witness his passing. The third disciple shall be easy to find amongst a crowd." Audrey could tell that the angel of death was one even Gabriel feared.

She drifted, safe in his arms. During the day, she daydreamed about what it would be like to be held by him when the life force had not been practically drained from her body by her nightly visions. What would it be like to reach up and touch his face? To kiss him? To make love to him the way she found herself fantasizing about more and more each day? But at night after she awoke from her nightmarish visions, the only thing she could ever feel was her own sorrow at his inevitable death. The death she was forced to watch each night. The sorrow which she felt more and more into her waking hours with each passing day. Softly, she started to cry.

"I am sorry I frightened you today, little Prophet," Gabriel said gently, misconstruing the source of her anguish. "I did not mean to cause you harm."

"The harm was not a harm done today," Audrey whispered, forcing herself to stay awake even though her body screamed at her it needed merciful sleep. "It's not your fault I am too weak to let go of the past."

"The Reverend explained to me you experience … visions … of the first time you met me," Gabriel said, his voice laced with sorrow. "If only I had the power to go back to the past and change the harms I have wrought." She felt his body shudder in the dark and knew, even in his silence, that he was crying.

"Not visions," Audrey said. "Flashbacks. Sometimes when you protect me, I remember that you were not always my protector and it frightens me. I can feel the terror that I felt that night and it is as though I am back in that moment. Although part of me is aware that it is only a memory, I am helpless to free myself from its grip."

"Like your visions," Gabriel said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Only the visions are of things that have not yet come to pass," Audrey said, recognition of the truth of what the visions were suddenly dawning upon her. She grasped the thought, forcing her exhausted, muddled brain to focus, to grasp onto the truth so she could carry it into the daylight. "I am experiencing the memory of things that have not yet come to pass, only unlike the past, the things we do right now change the vision in subtle ways."

"You think we may have the power to change the outcome?" Gabriel asked, his voice inquiring, husky and low.

"Perhaps," Audrey said, and then gave him a weary sigh. "The things we have been doing along the way have made subtle changes in the vision, but it is never enough. We have changed some threads in the weave of the tapestry, but have yet to change the final outcome. The end is always the same."

Gabriel was silent, gently nuzzling her hair with his nose and adjusting his body and wings to make her as comfortable as possible. He no longer left as soon as the vision was done, but he always left before she awoke, as soon as she began to stir from the lengthy, natural sleep which always followed the visions to restore the cost of her peculiar gift. Where his cheek pressed against her ear, her skin registered wet, his warm, silent tears dampening her hair and turning chill in the early April cold.

"I am sorry I frightened you today," Gabriel repeated, his voice hoarse with emotion in the dark. "I thought the mountain lion had hurt you and I lost control. I am not sure exactly _why_ what I did was wrong, but I will do better next time. You will teach me."

She was so tired. So tired she just wanted to sleep. But they needed to talk. Only when she was trapped in the throe of her visions did Gabriel ever dare whisper some of the secrets he kept carefully hidden in his heart. He kept her at arms' length during the day, afraid to draw too close lest he lose control of his own desire. At night, she was too incapacitated with her own grief and loss to reach out and touch that which she grieved for. They were like some tragic legend of old, two souls reaching across the void, unable to bridge the gap which separated them and touch.

"It was just a starving animal looking for food," Audrey said. "Its death was inevitable the moment it attacked."

"How could I have done things differently?" Gabriel asked.

"Perhaps you could have allowed it to get away when it tried to run," Audrey said. "But no. There was no way of knowing whether or not it would turn around and attack again. Mercy may have been the wrong path. Killing it was probably the only solution."

"You are upset that even after it was dead," Gabriel asked, "my rage was not satiated?"

"Yes," Audrey said, a small glimmer of hope flooding through her exhaustion. Gabriel had looked back upon the moment to examine his actions and realized on his own what had triggered her flashback. The question now was, when faced with the same situation in the future, would Gabriel be able to control his instinct to kill without mercy? He was silent a very long time.

"I have never felt rage like that before like that in my existence," Gabriel said. "I have sensed it lurking within the Father, but I have never felt it of my own volition. When the Father sent me on missions to kill, it was as though there was a blanket over my emotions. I recognized an emotion was important because it signaled a change of strategy was required to complete the mission, but I could not _feel_. The Father forbids us to feel."

"Is that what life in heaven is like?" Audrey asked. "Loss of the ability to feel?"

Gabriel was silent a while longer. She could sense him struggling with how much he was allowed to tell her. She could feel his muscles tense with control as he struggled with the knowledge that speaking of such things to her was forbidden. And then she felt a subtle shift in his physiology as some tiny voice she could almost hear whispered in his ear, a voice she knew well. Defiance.

"It was not always so," Gabriel said. "I was not created to be a warrior. In the beginning, we frolicked in the Garden of Eden like joyful puppies, our only purpose to play at the Father's feet and bring him joy with our antics."

A weak smile made its way to Audrey's lips. Somehow, the thought of Gabriel having ever been young softened the edges of her vision-induced sorrow and warmed her heart. It made him more … human.

"Tell me more," she whispered. "I want to hear what it was like for you to be young."

"We used to amuse the Father by singing hosannas of our love for him in a heavenly choir," Gabriel said. "My voice was the strongest and purest. Of all the angels, he knew that I loved him most. It is why the Father chose _me _to carry his word whenever he wished for it to be communicated."

"I have heard you sing," Audrey said, willing her rubbery, exhausted hand to move and reach towards his face and touch his lips. "I wish you would do it again for me sometime."

"I loved the Father with all of my heart," Gabriel whispered. "He did not need to command us to obey. We did it because we loved him."

"What happened?" Audrey asked. The Father Gabriel described now was very different from the sadistic Father whose name she cursed multiple times each day.

"He changed," Gabriel said. "We never knew why. We were not as we are now, aware of his actions. We were more like … babies. There are whispers that we once had a mother, that the Father was not the only one who created us, but I have no memory of it. Only a … feeling."

"This Holy Spirit you spoke of?" Audrey asked.

"I'm not sure," Gabriel said. "The memory is so faded that I can't remember anything at all."

"The rumors said she left him?" Audrey asked.

"The rumors vary," Gabriel said. "That is the only rumor that fits in with what I know. All I know is that one day, the Father was unhappy and no amount of singing could lift his sorrow. He was sad, so we were sad, too."

"When did you become as you are now?" Audrey asked. "Self aware?"

"The Father came to us one day and said he needed us to help him defend heaven against his enemies," Gabriel said. "The Grigori. We never really had dealings with him before that, but we knew what they were. They were created to do what the angels do now, keep Father's other creations in line. The Father waved his hand and ordered that we would understand, and so we understood. All of a sudden we were self-aware and understood that we had to stop the Grigori."

"The Grigori rebelled?" Audrey asked.

"They did more than that," Gabriel said. "The Grigori are not the demons you depict in human literature. They're more like … insanity. They punish and kill because they enjoy it. The Father could control them at first, but as they evolved and became more self-aware, he lost control."

"You did battle with the Grigori?" Audrey asked.

"We lost," Gabriel said. "Many times. We went from children frolicking in the garden to hardened combat veterans almost overnight. It was … overwhelming."

"How did the Father finally prevail?" Audrey asked. "There are no Grigori walking around on Earth right now."

"Your world provided too many safe havens to route them all out," Gabriel said. "Father finally sent an asteroid to destroy your planet. Only insects and rodents survived. He wiped your world clean so he could start over."

"Did the Grigori die?" Audrey asked, shuddering. An asteroid. The dinosaur killer. Sent to wipe out a race of dinosaur-like sentient creatures who dared defy the Father.

"Grigori cannot die," Gabriel said. "No creature can ever truly die. They only change form to one of being solid in a material form, to being incorporeal as part of the Father. But the Grigori learned to separate themselves from the Father and exist without him. So he interred them in a Keep, a pit surrounded by fire and lava, so they could not escape."

"Hell," Audrey said.

"More like a _part_ of Sheol," Gabriel said. "He didn't create Sheol until later. Think of the Keep as a high-security prison located inside a walled city filled with pollution and crime. The Keep is where the Grigori are kept, while the walled city is Sheol."

Audrey was silent, digesting this information and comparing it to what little she knew from her visions. The Nephilim egged on the Grigori, but did not appear to either be in control of them, or part of them. They were the irresponsible masters 'sic-ing viscous dogs upon their enemies, giddy in their power to wreak vengeance upon those they perceived had done them wrong.

It was this fear, that someday she might be tempted to abuse Gabriel's loyalty and love for her to do something similar the same way she had abused her dogs love for her as a child which had kept her from following her heart until now. She suddenly realized how ridiculous that all sounded. Gabriel could feel human emotion, including remorse. He was nothing like these Grigori.

"Tell me about Lucifer," Audrey asked. Somehow, she knew Lucifer was important. Each night she reached out to him, pleading for him to help, and each night, although she could see Gabriel's death caused Lucifer great sorrow, Lucifer did not come to his brother's aide. What had happened between them?

"One day the Father brought us into the garden and told us he had created humans," Gabriel said. "He said he had created them in his image and that we were to bow down to them and protect them. He said he had given them the gift of free will, the ability to defy his authority and do as they wished."

"You were angry?" Audrey asked.

"I was horrified," Gabriel said softly. "I was incapable of conceiving why anybody would wish to do anything that was contrary to the wishes of the Father."

"Yet you bowed down to them?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "I bowed down to them because the humans made the Father happy for the first time in a very long time and I wished to see him smile."

"And Lucifer?" Audrey asked. "Tell me about the one who would not bow down."

"Lucifer," Gabriel said. As he spoke the name, there was no sign of hatred or spite in his voice the way Audrey had expected. Instead, all she heard was sorrow. "He had always been the Father's favorite. It is whispered that of all the creatures of heaven, Lucifer was most like the Holy Spirit. When the Father started lavishing attention on your species, having _them _play at his feet and commanding _us_ to remove ourselves from his holy presence, Lucifer became jealous. He rebelled. He was not alone."

"So the Father cast him out of heaven to punish him?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "But Lucifer was his favorite and we all begged the Father to forgive him. So he allowed him to come back."

"Why?" Audrey asked.

"The Serpent tempted Eve to take a bite of the apple," Gabriel said. "For some reason, the Father put that tree there as a test of their love for him and when they defied them, he went insane with anger. He told us to drive them out of the sanctuary to fend for themselves and forgave Lucifer."

"But we survived," Audrey said.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "Lucifer was never the same after the Father created your species. He hated you, and he urged the Father to destroy you every chance he got."

"Why didn't he?" Audrey asked.

"The Savior suddenly appeared one day amongst our midst," Gabriel said. "The Father was … I don't know how to describe it. He had mixed feelings about the Savior. The Father announced the Savior was his only begotten son and seated him upon a throne, but the Savior did not appear to make him happy. If anything, he made the Father … angry? Although the Savior was very young, for some reason he was able to get the Father to do things he did not want to do, and he resented it."

"What did the Savior make the Father do?" Audrey asked.

"He told the Father he had a responsibility to protect and guide us," Gabriel said. "The Savior believed your species had the chance to become … more. The Father had already lost interest in your species and wanted to be rid of you, but he wanted to placate the Savior, so he assigned a brigade of angels under Lucifer's command and ordered him to protect your species. Lucifer was outraged about being banished to babysit humanity."

"What happened?" Audrey asked. "Did Lucifer try to destroy us?"

"Lucifer fell in love," Gabriel said, his voice choking up as he spoke. "He fell in love with a mortal woman, and so did most of the men who followed him. He started teaching your species how to take care of themselves and guided them how to make cities. The Father left them alone for many years to live on your world and raise their families. Lucifer was very happy. Then one day the Savior went back to wherever it was he had come from and the Father recalled Lucifer and his legions to heaven. Lucifer refused to go and the men under his command refused to obey."

"How did the Father react?" Audrey asked.

"I have never seen the Father so furious until the day he'd learned the Savior had disobeyed him and come back into your world and ordered the apocalypse," Gabriel said. "The Father fractured heaven to cordon off the area around the Keep into Sheol, a walled city where the vapors from the Keep forever pollute the air and sicken all that dwell within. It is filthy, and crowded, and few that ever enter there are ever allowed to leave. He sent Lucifer's men there to dwell."

"How did that make you feel?" Audrey asked gently. She could tell by the anguish in his voice that this had been traumatic for Gabriel.

"I loved my brother," Gabriel said, his voice choking up with tears. "The father made Michael and I escort them to Sheol as a test of our loyalty. Because Lucifer was the leader of the rebellion, the Father didn't simply have us lock him up behind the gates of Sheol like he did to the other angels. He made us throw Lucifer into the Keep with the Grigori."

Audrey waited while he wept, forcing her tired hand to touch his wet cheeks and comfort him. She was tired. So tired. All she wanted to do was drift off to sleep in the safety of Gabriel's arms and let the sleep take away her sorrow. But this was the first time she had ever been able to get Gabriel to open up about the brother she saw each night in her vision and get more out of him than just a perfunctory one or two word response. This was the first time, since Gabriel had begun to recover from his fall from grace, that Gabriel had allowed _her _to give _him _comfort.

"What about Lucifer's children?" Audrey finally asked. "The Nephilim?"

"The children were angry the heavenly Father had taken away their fathers and destroyed their cities," Gabriel said. "They were half angel. They were as capable of storming the gates of heaven as their fathers. They started a war."

"What happened?" Audrey asked.

"We battled them for a while," Gabriel said, "but it made the other angels question the Father. We fought, brother against brother, for many centuries, but the allegiances were always shifting and it was often impossible to tell which angel was a friend and which angel was an enemy. The Father finally ordered us to wear collars so he could look into our minds and tell who was with him and who was against him."

"The collar," Audrey said. "I always wondered why the Father made you wear a collar like a dog."

"It is a symbol of our obedience," Gabriel said. "It made us strong. It made us … numb. Unable to feel any emotion except that exhibited by the Father. Once I took the collar, I have no memory of any emotion except a vague echo of grief the day the Savior died on the cross and the day I killed my brother, Michael."

"Michael has forgiven you for your obedience to the Father," Audrey said gently, struggling to make her exhausted body obey and give him comfort. "That is why he healed me and sent me to you."

"I know," Gabriel whispered into the dark. "But like you, although Michael may be capable of forgiving me my mistake, I don't think he will ever be able to _forget _what I have done." His large frame shuddered in the dark, suppressed grief, but no cries escaped his lips.

"Why do no Nephilim wander the earth now?" Audrey finally asked after a time.

"It was the same as when the Grigori rebelled," Gabriel said. "Only many of your species, humans, sided with the Nephilim who fought on their behalf. The Father finally sent the flood to drown your species so there was no place left on the Earth for the Nephilim to hide. They had to take to the air to avoid drowning and we picked them off like flies. They were rounded up and sentenced to Sheol just like their fathers had been before them. Sheol was expanded so it could accept an almost unlimited number of souls. It's where the Father sends people who displease him."

Audrey shuddered. Gabriel described the angry god of the Old Testament. The one humans now understood was the one who had sent the apocalypse down upon them with no hope of salvation.

"I'm so tired, Gabriel," Audrey finally whispered, her exhaustion finally becoming overwhelming. "Is it okay if I just go to sleep?"

"Yes, my love," Gabriel whispered, tenderly kissing her forehead. "I am sorry I have burdened you with my thoughts."

"I like your thoughts," Audrey said softly. "I wish you would share them with me more often."

Gabriel was silent for a while, gently caressing her arm and nuzzling her hair.

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel finally said, a peculiar emotion registering in his voice that Audrey had never heard there before. "We have a third disciple to find in the morning. It's time to change another thread in that tapestry you dream of every night so we can change the outcome."

Hope.


	32. Chapter 31

_Note:__ Thank you once again to all the thoughtful readers who have taken the time to review each chapter or drop a line once in a while (you know who you are). I write because the Muse is whispering in my ear and won't shut up until I write things down, but it brings me great joy to see a review notice pop into my inbox. It increases my compulsion to give into the Muse instead of doing something sensible, like shower or clean my house. If it takes me a while to get back to people personally, just know it is because the Muse is whispering louder to get out the next chapter._

_This chapter is dedicated to anyone who ever had a really shitty day and wanted to just shake their fist at the sky in defiance and shout, 'Why?' May you find your own heavenly protector to pick up a mace and smack the selfish asshole in the head!_

Chapter 31

"Is that…?" Lena asked.

"A train?" the Reverend finished.

Gabriel stopped and surveyed the skyline, searching for the source of the throaty whistle they heard off in the distance. Several minutes passed, and then the sound sliced cheerfully through the air a second time.

"That sounds like a steam engine," Lena said, her voice sounding wistful.

"Probably coal-fired," the Reverend said. "It wouldn't be as dependent upon the frail supply chain stretching from the Middle East to here. We're not too far off the Southern-Pacific Railroad main line."

"A steam engine?" Audrey asked. "Isn't that like … old?"

"Kinda like Gabriel," Lena jibed, shooting Gabriel a humorous look. "Old technology still works when the new stuff fails."

Gabriel gave Lena a half-hearted glower. The fact he even allowed her jibe to register briefly on his features instead of hiding behind an unreadable expression was proof of the growing friendship between himself and the gay, female-impersonating drag queen who seemed to have so much insight into Audrey's heart. Lena shot him her most outrageous, feminine smile, cocking her head and tossing her scarf over her shoulder as though it were a feathered boa before strutting away. He'd overheard Audrey's outburst that she regretted her childhood had been stolen from her. He'd been painfully aware since then of the vast difference in their ages. Age wasn't something immortal creatures ever really thought about, but to a race of beings who lived and died in a blink of the Father's eye, Gabriel could now see why something like that would matter to his little Prophet.

"Lots of resort towns preserved their old steam engines as tourist attractions," the Reverend said. "They wouldn't even need coal to run them. Steam engines will run on anything you can shove into the firebox that will burn. Wood. Spent sugar cane stalks. Charcoal."

"Lots of forests up there in the hills," Lena observed, looking back at the mountain range they had descended from. "It makes sense. Small town. Surrounded by mountains and farms. Everything within walking distance and far enough from the death zones of the major cities to not be bothered by too many raiders. What's the name of the next town on the map?"

"Alamosa," Audrey said, looking at her map. "The compass rose is pointing that direction."

They had travelled all day in anticipation of the Prophet's vision last night, of meeting the third disciple, and hadn't encountered a single soul travelling on State Road 100. Normally they would have stopped and set up camp hours ago, but for the first time, Gabriel was beginning to sense a purpose for their wandering and did not dissuade the others when they expressed a desire to push on. They had left the snowpack behind when they'd descended into the long valley they travelled now several days ago and one place was as good to spend the night as another.

"Civilization," Audrey said around an hour later as they spied the first cultivated field since leaving Mormon territory nearly four months before. "At last."

Audrey and Lena ran squealing into the recently plowed field to see what was growing like little girls running into a field of flowers, young woman and old drag-queen. It was the first real joy he'd seen Audrey exhibit in several weeks. Their joy was contagious. He allowed the tiniest hint of the warmth he felt in his heart to register on his face, ticking up the corner of his mouth in a small, satisfied smile.

"What grows there, Lena?" the Reverend called.

"I don't know," Lena shouted. "I'm a city girl."

"Me too," Audrey shouted. "But I see some kind of stalk. It looks like it was just planted within the past few days." She bent down and busily dug in the soil and pulled out what appeared to be a little rock with a small green shoot sticking out of it."

"Potatoes!" Lena said.

"I could sure go for some potatoes right about now," the Reverend shouted. "Baked?"

"French Fries!" Lena said.

"Not for another six months you won't," Audrey said. "I seem to remember they dig them up in the fall."

"You'd better get out of that field before the farmer sees you," the Reverend shouted. "I don't imagine they'll take too kindly to looters."

Audrey bent and carefully reburied the tiny potato plant she had dug up, tapping the dirt around the stem. So caught up in watching Audrey's child-like joy at something as simple as a potato plant, Gabriel didn't become aware of the low rumble growling towards them from the direction they now headed until the first motorcycle broke over the slight rise in the flat valley and headed towards them. Dozens of other engines rumbled right behind it.

"You'd better get out of there," Gabriel warned. They had learned the hard way that those who still had the wherewithal to grow crops had just as much wherewithal to shoot anything on sight that attempted to _steal _those crops.

"I'm just…" Audrey started to say. She cut her words off mid-sentence as Lena grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back towards the road.

"Bikers," the Reverend said, fear lacing his voice. "Harley Davidsons."

The motorcycles that came at them now were not the tame, quiet engines of a full-dress motorcycle enthusiast, nor were they the high-pitched whine of a Japanese high-performance bike. The low rumble and two-by-two formation of the group that came at them now was the formation of an outlaw motorcycle gang riding the post-apocalyptic roads like modern highwaymen and robbing anyone travelling those roads, sometimes even killing them.

"Gabriel," Audrey said nervously.

The others huddled together, back-to-back, with Gabriel at their back to provide an anchor in case they needed to defend their position. In the beginning he had stepped in front of them and flared his wings to their full wingspan to protect his comrades, but Audrey insisted they needed to learn to fight their own battles. The fact he belonged to the same species, or a much higher order of the same species as the non-corporeal wraiths who had possessed the bodies of the weak and wrought the apocalypse upon mankind, made him a target. He tucked his wings tightly into his back, ready to flare at a moments' notice, and loosened the straps on his mace.

"Patience, friend," the Reverend said, glancing back at him. "Meet and greet first. Bash skulls if diplomacy fails."

"More like growl and sniff each other's butts with this group," Lena said, "and hope they don't attack."

Gabriel grunted his affirmation. Diplomacy had never been his strong point. He was the Father's enforcer, the muscle behind the heavenly throne sent in to crack skulls after diplomacy failed. The Reverend had proven his worth as a member of their group many times over by using diplomacy to defuse hostile situations in each new group of survivors they met. In an era where family member had turned against family member and torn them limb from limb, humanity was a little … twitchy … around strangers. Diplomacy was a lesson the Father had never taught him, but which Gabriel intently watched _now_ so that he would never repeat the same mistake twice.

Thirty motorcycles roared to their position, splitting in half and driving by on either side of them, encircling them like a wagon train, and then stopped, killing their engines. A wolf-pack, Gabriel thought to himself. Which one was the alpha male? The bikers wore black leather or denim jackets, sunglasses, bandannas, engineer boots, and an assortment of chains. Many wore wrist gauntlets with studs or spikes. None of them wore helmets, although a few wore bandannas of various colors or leather hats. Nearly every one of them had a cornucopia of crude instruments sticking out of saddlebags on the back of the motorcycles. Machetes. Hunting knifes. Hatchets and an axe. Night sticks. A samarai sword. Even a crude version of a mace.

Most of them sported beards and long hair. Many showed signs of having once been profoundly overweight by the looseness of their clothing and habitual way they sat back in their seats, although in this day and age, few were able to maintain a paunch. The bikers threw jibes back and forth at one another, but eyed Gabriel warily. Even with his wings pressed tightly into his back, his battle armor tucked into his backpack, his mace still hidden in its sling across his back, most humans realized fairly quickly just what he was and had enough common sense not to approach.

One of the riders, a 50-something male with a grey beard, scratched his crotch, grunted, and dismounted his motorcycle, adjusting the long oilskin duster he wore that had the tails strapped to his legs like chaps. There was a revolver strapped to one hip like a gunslinger of old, but it was the large hunting knife strapped to his other thigh Gabriel noticed the man unconsciously flexed his fingers towards now. The gun was probably out of bullets.

"This territory is closed to drifters," the pack leader grunted. "If you want to come through our town, you've got to pay the toll."

Several of the bikers behind him sniggered.

"What toll would you be requesting to travel through your territory?" the Reverend asked politely, neither cringing in fear nor attempting to stare down the pack leader and come across as being a threat. Diplomacy. It was a simple question to a simple statement.

"What have you got?" the pack leader asked. The question was a swaggering growl, but the leaders' stance was anything but swagger. Gabriel knew a trained soldier when he saw one.

"Sons of Armageddon," Audrey whispered, pointing to the 'colors' on the back of the bikers' jackets. "We must find the one who has seen the Angel of Death."

"We have walked a long way," the Reverend said. "We carry on our backs camping supplies and clothing for the trail. We have some greenbacks, but I think we all know greenbacks are worthless."

"Drifters are not welcome in our territory," the pack leader said, looking at Gabriel and giving him an intense stare. "Especially not _his _kind. You must go back the way you came or go around, but you shall not pass without paying a toll."

Gabriel shifted, slightly flaring his wings, an implied threat. The man looked at him, and in his gaze, Gabriel saw the haunted visage of a man who had seen the Angel of Death walk unfettered through a crowd and harvest everyone around him. The pack leader had met death, and he was not afraid.

"I see you have met my brother," Gabriel said softly, just barely loud enough for the pack leader to hear as he held the man's gaze. "Not many are capable of seeing Azrael carry out the will of the Father and remain whole."

The man's sharp uptake of breath was Gabriel's only indication that his comment had hit pay dirt. They stood there, two warriors silently sizing each other up across the battle field. The bikers behind them grew silent, the air filled with so much tension it felt like it might crack.

"We have had enough of God's will in this town," the pack leader finally said. "If you serve the Lord who wreaks death without salvation, then we shall not let you pass."

"I serve the Prophet of the Savior now," Gabriel said, his voice low and deep. "If Azrael touched your mind and left you unharmed, than you are as capable of reading the instructions written across her forehead as I am."

"Come here, girl," the pack leader said, gesturing for Audrey to approach him, but holding Gabriel's gaze.

Audrey cautiously stepped closer, nervous and afraid, but suppressing her fear and assuming the defiant pose she did so well to overcome her insecurities. She stepped close enough for the pack leader to lean closer and read, but not so close that she was within arms' reach. Gabriel had trained her well. The pack leader split his attention between reading the symbols on Audrey's forehead and holding Gabriel's gaze.

"Left Hand of God?" the pack leader said. "The stories are true, then? The Savior has come back into our midst?"

"He is but an infant still," Audrey said cautiously. "A little over a year old. It will be several years before his physical shell has matured enough for him to begin assuming the mantle of leadership. It is our job to pave the road."

"God has granted a reprieve?" the pack leader asked.

"The Father is fickle," Audrey stated, contempt lacing her voice. "He changes his mind. The Son does not. It is up to _us _to make sure the Son is not taken away from this world before he has had a chance to grow powerful enough to assume leadership from the Father."

The pack leader stared, unmoving. Gabriel could almost smell the gears turning in his head. Everything about the outward appearance of the man screamed 'outlaw biker,' but the way he held himself and the organized way which his men automatically moved into position to strike if necessary contradicted the outward appearance of a biker gang. Not the tight organization of a formal military unit, but a trained chain-of-command nonetheless. Gabriel could see the mark of men who had served in combat at some point of their lives, but now ran together out of circumstance and choice.

"Club rules safeguard this territory," the pack leader finally said. "We must protect what is ours from those who would take what we have managed to preserve. No exceptions. The rules are very clear. No drifters may pass without paying a toll. If you wish to pass through our territory, you must pay a toll."

"Suggest one," Gabriel said evenly.

"If I may make a suggestion?" the Reverend said. "The older woman and I are both stage performers. Perhaps a goodwill performance of some sorts would improve morale in the town?"

The pack leader turned this idea over in his head. He turned to what appeared to be his second and command and tilted his head ever-so-slightly in a query. The second-in-command looked to the other men in the group and gauged their reaction. Not a traditional military chain-of-command, but a democratic one. The slight jerk of heads was subtle, but unmistakable. The men were curious. They were willing to accept a 'toll' of entertainment. The second-in-command turned back to the pack leader and gave him a nod.

"Your toll will be accepted," the pack leader said, relaxing his stance. "We will transport you to the city limits and find suitable accommodations for you. You will be allowed to stay three days, at which time you must come up with a new toll-price, or leave our territory. While _in_ Sons of Armageddon territory, you must obey all laws of the pack. Any infarction of rules is cause for immediate removal from the territory. The penalty for serious infarctions is hanging."

"Agreed," Gabriel said, straightening and relaxing somewhat, but not completely. "I am capable of transporting myself. My comrades would probably enjoy not having to walk."

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered. "Your wing…" She was referring to the not-insubstantial damage wrought by the mountain lion yesterday.

"Will be fine," Gabriel finished, cutting her off and then leaning closer to her ear to whisper so no one else could hear. "We cannot divulge my injury. They expect me to fly. I will fly. The flesh is only torn. I will bear the discomfort."

"Erik," the pack leader finally said, softening his stance somewhat and extending his hand to Gabriel to shake it, but not completely relaxing. "Erik Gunnlaeif. The men call me Gunn." Definitely a trained soldier.

"Gabriel," he said, clasping the man's hand. Their grip was the grip of two battle hardened warriors sizing up each others' strength. Erik's grip was firm and strong.

"I'll take the little miss," one of the bikers said politely, holding out his hand to escort Audrey onto the back seat of his 'hog' and giving her a wink.

"The old lady ain't gonna like that, Piggy," another biker laughed.

"Gunn made me do it," Piggy laughed. "You can have the old one, Tex."

Lena huffed and did her best to look indignant. Tex rolled his 'hog' over to Lena to let her crawl on the back, and then burst out laughing.

"This is sure going to be entertainment we ain't seen in a while!" Tex laughed. "C'mon miss. Or is it mister?"

"Miss!" Lena snapped, giving him a huff and crawling onto the back of the motorcycle, adjusting her pack.

Gabriel was glad the biker seemed to be open-minded about his cross-dressing friend. Unable to reconcile billions of years of abstract admonitions against sodomites by the Father with the reality of the second disciple of their group, Gabriel had simply classified Lena in his mind as female and let the matter go. It was only in mixed company that he was reminded that Lena was really a man.

"We ride!" Gunn said, holding up his arm and then pulling it down like a flagman at the starting gate of a drag race. Almost in unison, engines roared to life, the loud ka-chug, ka-chug, ka-chug, ka-chug of tailpipes drowning out all other sound. Giving a second hand signal to ride, the unit rode a few feet up the road and then neatly turned in a figure eight, heading back in the direction from which they had just came.

Gabriel took the sky and followed the biker gang towards Alamosa.


	33. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

"Eeeeeeeee!" Audrey squealed as the biker she was riding behind, Piggy, banked the motorcycle almost horizontal to the road without turning the wheel as they turned onto US Route 285. She clung to his back like a marsupial to its mother.

"You'd better keep your mouth closed while we're moving, Miss," the biker, Piggy, shouted over the sound of the engine and the wind to Audrey, laughing at her terror, once he had completed the turn and brought the motorcycle upright again. "Or you'll be picking bugs out of your teeth."

Audrey shut her mouth. Almost as though in agreement with the biker transporting her to Alamosa, a bug hit her in the forehead and splattered in a sickening 'crunch.' Since she didn't have sunglasses, she decided it would be prudent to duck behind the safety of the bikers' broad back and save her sightseeing for later.

She glanced up at the sky and saw Gabriel flying effortlessly above them, flexing his wings to bank back and forth upon the subtle currents the way the motorcyclists leaned their bodies into the turns to maneuver their machines. Gabriel diligently walked at her side at all times, but when he flew, it took her breath away.

"City Limits, Alamosa," Piggy shouted a few minutes later over the wind so she could hear him. "Population 627."

Audrey noted that the 'Welcome to Alamosa' sign had the former 'Population 8,756' crossed out and the number '626' crudely painted in with green paint, and then _that _number crossed out and the number '627' proudly painted in red paint. Michael had told her less than 8% of humanity had survived. Alamosa had been hit just as hard as everywhere else, but was obviously proud of the fact it was still here. Defiance. Audrey understood the impulse to proudly proclaim an increase in the population of the town in the year since the apocalypse, most likely a birth.

Alongside US Route 285 ran railroad tracks for the train they had heard earlier and a few buildings. The grass in the center of the tracks was sparse and worn … the sign of a route still actively in use. She wondered where the train went and what cargo it transported. Was it possible that some areas of the country were beginning to recover?

The Harley Davidson rumbled reassuringly beneath her thighs, the deep tha-thrum, tha-thrum, tha-thrum of the engine lulling her into a kind of 'zen' state as the wind blew through her hair. One of her old boyfriends had owned one of those 'Ninja' motorcycles and used to show up to pick her up wearing his colorful racing leathers, something which had utterly freaked out her parents, but the high-performance Japanese motorcycle had never felt so … reassuring … as the deep-throated rumble of the American-made Harley Davidson. She could see why motorcycle enthusiasts were addicted to their machines, riding any chance they got.

There was little point in talking to her rider as the wind stole her words from her lips as soon as she uttered them, so she shut her eyes and tilted back her head, allowing the wind to capture her long hair. The thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum of the engine reverberated through the thighs she had wrapped around the seat cushion to maintain her balance, sending a curiously pleasant sensation through her feminine core. The sound was deep and powerful, like Gabriel's voice. She dared to let go of her escort and lean back against the backrest of the seat, wrapping her hands behind her to hang onto the chrome. Ka-chug, ka-chug, ka-chug. The engine sent throbs of pleasure through her body as the wind caressed her skin.

Gabriel flew reassuringly above them, safeguarding them as he always did. What would it like to make love to him? She parted her mouth slightly so she could gasp at the wind, imagining it was hiships her thighs were wrapped around, Gabriel vulnerable and prone beneath her fingertips as he thrust up into her with each ka-chug, ka-chug, ka-chug of the engine. She knew from when she had tended him at the base of the cliff that he was built as other men were built, only larger. Everything about Gabriel was large and strong. He would make a sensitive lover, she thought, sensitive and powerful.

She shifted in her seat, moving her pelvis slightly and parting her thighs so the exquisitely vibrating seat cushion came into contact with her clitoris. As the motorcycle banked around another corner, changing the tempo of the vibration, she gripped her fingers tighter on the backrest of the seat, imagining she was digging her fingernails into his muscular ass, urging him to move faster. Warmth spread through her chest as she imagined it was Gabriel brushing against her entrance, hot and sweaty as he thrust up into her and arched his back. It would be his first time. She could almost feel him cry out and shudder with release, the shudder of the engine as it subtly accelerated out of the curve accentuating her fantasy as she felt her own release in the present. Ahh!

Gabriel's reassuring shadow still trailed them from above. Watching. Always watching. Protecting her. She wondered if the Father could read her imprurient thoughts about her protector and jutted her chin into the air. Defiance! Who was God to tell her who she could and could not love?

'_Do not tempt him unless you really mean it,' _the Reverend had warned her. _'Gabriel would go to hell and back for you. Do not tempt him unless you are capable of loving him as much as he loves you.'_

Memory of the horrifying vision she had each night, of Gabriel pushing her to safety and then sacrificing his life to pay for the sin of loving _her_ more than he loved the Father, slapped her psyche like a cold bucket of water. Eternal damnation was no longer some abstract concept for what small fragments of humanity remained alive. They had seen the apocalypse first hand and the Father had answered Gabriel's prayer to be allowed to love her by tattooing a prohibition across her pelvis. The Father _would _punish him for loving her, just as she knew the Father _would _punish her for tempting him.

Lucifer had succumbed to the love of a mortal woman and paid the price, not just condemned to Sheol, but forced to burn along with the Grigori in the Keep while his offspring suffered just outside within the walled city. Memory of the heavenly host grabbing her wounded father and then strapping him upside-down upon a cross, screaming in agony for them to get away before the boils exploded in acid made her momentarily want to retch. Gabriel was afraid the Father would punish _him _by punishing _her. _It was not control which kept him from indulging his passion, but fear that _she _would be punished as well.

Who was she to cause him such pain?

As they motorcycle gang roared into town, townspeople glanced up from their various tasks, and then turned back to their chores in disinterest. The biker gang was obviously a common sight in town, not considered a threat. Given the size of the gang relative to the remaining population of the town, chances were many of the townsfolk were related. They drove past a college of some sort, gutted and burned. The gang pulled in front of a tavern where other motorcycles were neatly lined up with a large, purple pig painted on the sign. Country western tunes filtered out through the open door. The bar had electricity. Glancing up at the roof, she noticed a string of solar panels and that most other buildings in the area were dark. It had electricity, at least, until sundown.

A large-busted woman wearing a too-tight T-shirt which highlighted the slight 'muffin top' squishing out of the top of her skin-tight hipster boot cut jeans glowered at Audrey's driver.

"What're ya' doing pickin' up strays?" the woman snapped.

"Found these drifters in Jimmy's potato field out on County Road 100," Piggy said, his tone conciliatory. "Gunn asked me to transport 'em."

"You're late!" the woman snapped. "Jimmy called in sick tonight. You're going to have to tend bar yourself! I ain't doing it!" If the woman's eyes had been daggers, Audrey would be dying of exsanguination right about now. Piggy had been a little too eager to offer to transport her. Audrey had the distinct feeling this was a marital spat she didn't want to get in the middle of.

"Thank you," Audrey said, slipping off the bike and offered her hand to the woman. "I'm Audrey Anderson. From Los Angeles."

The woman glowered at her for a moment, and then hesitantly shook her hand. "Molly." It was a one-word retort. Molly didn't _want _to get to know her.

Audrey's thighs tingled from the residual sensation of the motorcycle, the phantom sensation of the reassuring deep thrum of the engine still reverberating through her lower limbs. The fantasy had left her hot and wet. She needed to discreetly tug down her cargo pants to vent the dampness lest she be forced to walk around in wet underwear. As if on cue, Gabriel gracefully landed in their midst, his wings a rustle of pounding feathers hammering the wind to propel his body through the air. Night owl? Or hawk? Audrey could never quite peg what type of bird most accurately matched Gabriel's glossy black wings that so closely matched his dark hair.

"Welcome to Armageddon central," Gunn said, the gang leader, gesturing them inside. The townspeople who had ignored the motorcycle gang rumbling into town suddenly took notice when Gabriel appeared, hurrying over and rubbernecking to get a better look. It was a small crowd, but the longer Gabriel stood outside, wings flared, an otherworldly creature of legend suddenly appeared in the flesh, the more the crowd would grow and more likely they would have trouble. The motorcycle gang leader seemed to have a good grip on the situation. Gabriel nodded and strode in the door.

What struck Audrey the most was just how … big … many of the bikers were. Not as tall as Gabriel, but giants in their own right. Strip them of their leather and denim jackets and put armor on them similar to Gabriel's and she could picture them wielding Viking battle axes against the heavenly host. The Purple Pig was a stereotypical dive, seedy and worn, but like the havens of the first two disciples, the bar appeared to have been curiously untouched. The church visible just down the street, on the other hand, as well as the town hall, the police station, and the state college they had passed on their way here, had all been gutted and burned.

"Nice, big manly men," Lena commented, nervously twisting her scarf.

"Indeed," the Reverend answered her.

Both were obviously ill at ease in the environment they found themselves in now. As for Audrey … not so much. She was in a bar. With bikers. Gabriel appeared to be totally at ease. Her parents would have been _pissed._ Sadness washed through her and she frowned. Life had turned out to involve a lot more than just pissing off her parents. How easy life had been when she had felt safe lifting her chin and shouted her defiance to the world when there had been nothing, really, worth defying.


	34. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Gunn gestured their group to sit around a large, crude wooden table. The wooden chairs were too tall-backed for Gabriel's wings, so he grabbed a long, flat bench from the perimeter of the room and pulled it over for a seat, settling his wings and tucking them into his back so they didn't get stepped on. Lena and the Reverend immediately slid in on either side of him, bookends. Very nervous bookends. Audrey made eye contact across the table and then sat in the empty seat near the club leader. Even the way the bikers sat around the table seemed to suggest some sort of informal hierarchy. Democratic. But definitely a loose chain of authority of some sort. Piggy set a bunch of beers around the table without them being asked for.

"Alamosa appears to be on the upswing," the Reverend observed.

"The church folk are mostly dead," Gunn said, his words measured and guarded as he regarded Gabriel intensely. "So are the town fathers. All the police are dead except for Jack over there. Quite a few of the firefighters. The college professors except the art and music departments. Most out-of-town college students were killed. But this place? This place was untouched."

"We have noticed a similar pattern wherever a disciple of the Savior has been found," Gabriel stated flatly. "I don't know why you were spared, but there seems to be some sort of pattern."

"What were you doing when the apocalypse hit?" Audrey asked the biker leader.

"We were just in here, doing what we usually do, having a club meeting," Gunn said, leaning back in his chair and glancing back and forth between Gabriel and Audrey, sizing them up to see which one was really in charge. "We're a 99% club. No drugs. No criminals. Until the apocalypse happened and drifters started coming into the town to loot it, we didn't even lay claim to a territory. We were just a bunch of motorcycle enthusiasts who like to dress up in leather once a week and ride the highways together."

"I can see what you'd find that appealing," Audrey said, remembering how … gratifying … her first ride on a _real _Harley Hog had been.

"99% club?" Lena asked.

"As in 99% of all motorcycle enthusiasts are law-abiding citizens," the Reverend filled in. "The other groups, the Hells Angels and Banditos, are called 1%-ers, as in 'we're the other 1% you were warned about.'"

Gunn gave the Reverend a raised eyebrow, surprised he knew so much about biker lore. "That's correct."

"You're a soldier," Gabriel stated. "So are most of the men who ride with you." It was a statement, not a question.

"Observant," Gunn said. "Most of the guys are combat veterans from one war or another. Vietnam. The first Gulf War. Afghanistan. Iraq. Couple of skirmishes in the Phillipines. Even got a couple of Korean war vets, though they usually turn in early for the night."

"Where'd you serve?" Gabriel asked, sizing up the biker leader.

Gunn sat back and whispered something to his #2 man, Slim. Slim, who was anything _but _slim, suggested a game of pool, leading the other men away from the table, leading them away from their group. A moment later, Slim came back, alone, and sat down next to Gunn.

"Tell me about your brother," Gunn said, his gaze intense with an emotion Gabriel had seen before.

"Azrael," Gabriel said. "He is an archangel as I am, but even the Father fears him. It is said he serves time itself, an even older god than the Father. Or goddess. Azrael brings death even to the immortals. Some say the Angel of Death serves the Holy Spirit."

Gunn looked at Slim. Slim grunted. "Tell him, Gunn."

"Slim and I served together in Vietnam," Gunn said. "Army Rangers. Special Ops. Covert Operations. Black Ops. We were into some pretty deep shit."

"The Father had us doing other things during that time period," Gabriel said, "but I remember hearing about Vietnam."

"Figures," Slim snorted in contempt. "Hell on Earth and the old geezer decides to take a nap!"

Gabriel's bristled in anger, his wings betraying the emotion he kept from his face. No matter how much the Father let him down, Gabriel's first instinct was to defend the Father, protect him, make excuses for him. He was slowly recognizing that the Father was fallible, was occasionally cruel, capricious, vengeful, thoughtless, but it still goaded him to have it rubbed in his face. They were talking about … _the Father_!

"Go on," Gabriel said, keeping his expression flat and unreadable.

"The CIA ordered us to move some supplies up into Cambodia," Gunn said. "Pol Pot was officially communist, but on the side he was taking kickbacks from the CIA to let our troops move freely through Cambodia to hit the Viet Cong on their backsides. We moved a lot of shit up there."

"What did you see?" Gabriel asked.

"We always had a Khmer Rouge escort," Gunn said. "One day the supply convoy we were in was hit. Artillary. The VC figured out Pol Pot was double-crossing them. Slim and I got separated. I ran for cover into a rice paddy and saw something I hope as long as I live that I'll never see again."

"What did you see?" Gabriel asked again.

"The Khmer Rouge always wore these red scarves around their arms," Gunn said. "When the VC hit, the Khmer Rouge herded a bunch of civilians out of some buildings over to the edge of the rice paddy. They shot some of them, but a lot of them they just hit 'em over the head to incapacitate them and then semi-decapitated them using a piano wire. These weren't just men. There were women and children. They killed them all."

"What did you do?" Audrey asked.

"We were trained to just hunker down and observe," Gunn said. "But one of them grabs this little girl and then his … arms … got all long and one of the soldiers actually _bit _the little girl. Like his arms and jaw were dislocated or something. The soldiers were yelling things at the civilians in Cambodian. I don't speak much Cambodian, but it sounded like they were yelling that the civilians were sinners."

Gabriel looked at Audrey, then at Lena and the Reverend. They all nodded in recognition of the symptoms. As Gunn spoke, his face flushed with the memory and his breathing becoming faster, his eyes haunted. As he spoke, he was no longer in the room with them, but back _there._ Flashback. Gunn was reliving the memory of a brush not just with Azrael, but also the heavenly host, the same way that Audrey was forced to relive her first memory of _him_ bursting through the door to kill them or the future 'memory' of an event that had not yet come to pass.

"I couldn't take it anymore," Gunn said, struggling to keep his mind in the present moment. "I burst out of my cover and machine-gunned down the Khmer Rouge. But they didn't die. They just kept coming at me and started yelling at me in English. Screaming every bad thing I've ever done in my life and telling me I was going to burn in hell. One of them bit me in the throat. Here."

Gunn moved his collar and pointed to a large, ugly scar on his neck.

"The heavenly host," Audrey said. "They killed my father. How did you survive?"

"Bullets wouldn't stop them," Gunn said. "It got me pretty bad. Lost a lot of blood. I thought I was a goner. But then there was this … angel. Like him. He grabs the thing and it screeched at him that it was doing the will of the Father. Fought like a Banshee. The angel said something to it in a language I couldn't understand and just snapped its neck like it was nothing."

"Azrael left you alive," Gabriel asked. "Why?"

"I could feel the life leaving my body," Gunn said. "I'm pretty sure I died. But then the angel touched me … here." Gunn pointed to the center of his forehead. "He didn't speak English, but I understood every word. He said 'you must bear witness.'" Gunn was shuddering, sweaty with emotion. Just like Audrey during one of her flashbacks. Or visions.

"I found him, near death, at the edge of the rice paddy," Slim interjected, giving his comrade a squeeze on the shoulder. "Was nothing but bodies piled up at the edge of the rice paddy. I hauled him out of there and called in a medivac unit. We told our commanding officer what we'd seen … the bodies. Told them it was the Khmer Rouge who did it, not the VC like the CIA claimed. Gunn didn't dare tell him about the angel or he'd have been pink-slipped for sure."

"They told us we were mistaken and ordered us to shut up," Gunn said, looking down at his hands. "But I know what I _saw_! The soldiers who did the genocide were the people's _own _army, and there was something wrong with them that I'd never seen until the apocalypse happened last year."

"I always thought Gunn was hallucinating," Slim said. "Blood loss. Trauma. All that stuff. Humored him 'cause I'm his friend and I know sometimes in the heat of things you can crack. I didn't believe it until the night the apocalypse hit and the people of this town turned into the exact same thing Gunn had described."

"What do you think the Angel wanted you to bear witness to?" the Reverend asked.

"That the Khmer Rouge were killing their own people?" Gunn said, more a question than a statement. "That some unearthly force was driving them to do it? That the thing driving them thought it was doing the will of God? I don't know. The only thing I know is that, when I walked outside and saw the people of this town going crazy, their joints dislocated and killing people, oblivious to bullets, I knew how to kill them."

"Gunn shouted us we had to decapitate them or snap their necks," Slim said. "It's why most of our club is still intact, while the rest of the town burned."

"The machetes," Audrey said, understanding dawning on her of the weapons the bikers carried in their saddlebags. They had finally been able to kill the crazy old lady who had tried to kill Charlie by shooting her in the head with a hollow-point bullet that left an exit-hole large enough that it had blown her brains out the back of her head.

"The heavenly host are not like us," Gabriel said, his expression emotionless. "They have no physical form. The Father created them to torment sinners in Sheol, but sometimes he unleashes them upon your world when he wishes to wipe an area clean and start over. The central nervous system of the host must be intact enough that the remaining body can receive messages."

"What kind of God would do such a thing?" Gunn exploded in anger, standing up in a fighting stance and glowering at Gabriel. "What kind of God would send … angels … to possess soldiers who are supposed to _protect _their people, and use them to kill children?"

"A fucking asshole who none of us are going to follow anymore," Audrey said, Gunn's anger resonating with her gift of truthful blasphemy and helping her react appropriately. "God sucks. That's why his Son defied him and came back to help us. God wouldn't let him keep his promise and come back, so the Savior decided to defy him and come back anyways."

"And sent angels to sing praises of a virgin birth and promises of salvation and forgiveness?" Gunn snarled.

"He sent me to kill him," Gabriel said softly.

"What?" Gunn said.

"The Father was furious," Gabriel said. "He sent the heavenly host to destroy your world and he sent _me_ to kill his own son."

Gunn shuddered. Gabriel could see the information overload in the former combat-vet's mind. It was too much to wrap his brain around. Gunn sat down and put his head in his hands, not to weep, but to clench his own head between his hands so it wouldn't explode.

"So the Savior is dead?" Slim asked.

"The Savior lives," Gabriel said. "No thanks to me. Walking the Earth protecting the Savior's Prophet and paving the way so the Savior has a chance of assuming leadership this time around is penance for my sin."

"Why did the Angel of Death want you to bear witness?" Audrey asked. "I mean … really … Gunn saw one angel kill another one and it wanted him to see?"

"Azrael does the bidding of the Father," Gabriel said, "but he is not beholden to him. I know little of him other than he started his life as one of us, but when the Father asked us to become his armies, Azrael took a different path. Even the Father fears the Angel of Death."

"Black Ops used to use a lot of shadow-corporations to pull the strings," Gunn said thoughtfully, getting his anger under control. "You'd get a feel after a while when you were doing a mission that something just didn't feel right. You could almost _feel _there was somebody up higher, somebody hidden, pulling the strings. The minions would give the appearance of being in control, but the minute they stepped out of line, the _real _power would step in and slap the upstart down. That's what it felt like when the angel told me he wanted me to bear witness. It was like in the Godfather when the mob sends a hitman to knock off a lower-level thug who's double-dealing and leaves one guy alive to go back and give a message to the upstart."

Gabriel had no idea who this 'godfather' was, but he understood the concept of an empire setting up puppet rulers in the territory they conquered and then assassinating them when the leaders got out of line. Had the heavenly host gotten out of line and Azrael been sent by the Father to deal with it? Or had it been _the Father _who had gotten out of line and an even higher authority, this Holy Ghost, perhaps, sent Azrael to send him a message?

"I'm just an ex-soldier," Gabriel finally said, his wings slumping in frustration, "just like you. It's been brought to my attention how woefully little I knew about what was really going on within the hierarchy I served."

Both Gunn and Slim looked at him with a sympathetic expression on their faces. Fellowship. Three ex-soldiers swimming in the same polluted cesspool.

"Soldiers are like mushrooms," Slim jibed. "Kept in the dark and fed nothing but shit."

"Here, here," Gunn said. He raised his beer mug for a toast. "To mushrooms."

The others raised their glasses and tinkled them together in fellowship. Gabriel looked at the glass of alcoholic beverage before him. He had never had a beer before. Drinking alcoholic beverages was forbidden to his kind. He glanced up at the others around the table who waited for him to participate in the toast. Audrey looked at him expectantly, giving him a nod. She knew of his prohibition and urged defiance.

"To mushrooms," Gabriel said, raising his glass, firmly clanking it against the other steins in the human symbol of fellowship, and then relished the taste of the cold beer sliding down his throat.

Defiance.

Never before today had he enjoyed the taste of a mortal beverage. It tasted … sweet. He exhaled a satisfied smile, slamming the beer mug down upon the table with a 'thud' exactly as their hosts had done.

Audrey smiled.


	35. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Audrey glanced across the room at Gabriel, sitting at the table surrounded by hairy biker dudes, scratching their butts, picking their noses, and looking totally at ease with one another as the men toasted whatever thing it was they were discussing and gulped down another round. Bikers. Who'd have thought?

"Can I have this dance, Miss?" one of the Sons of Armageddon asked politely.

"I think I can fit you into my dance card," Audrey said, smiling as he whirled her out onto the dance floor to tear up some hardwood. She hadn't had a chance to rest her feet all night, the Prophet of the Savior being a hot commodity.

Up on the stage, several bikers and what appeared to be a classically trained musician were jamming away with steel guitars, a beat up old piano, a drum, a fiddle and a banjo playing an old Brad Paisley song that made her want to kick up her spurs and dance. To gain passage through Alamoosa, they'd had to pay a 'toll,' something of value to contribute to the town. Audrey felt satisfied that value beyond satiating their curiosity about Gabriel had been rendered. The Reverend had garnered a standing ovation with his Elvis impersonation, tilting and gyrating his hips like the King himself as he sang and patrons twisted and shouted across the dance floor. The Purple Pig was filled beyond capacity, townspeople gathered through the bar and out into the parking lot beyond, laughing and having a good time.

Bikers mixed with church folk, college professors, teenagers and even pre-teens all drawn to the bar for some rare professional entertainment. With the Sons of Armageddon now being the 'law' in this town, who was going to tell the kids they couldn't accompany their parents for a toe-stomping good time? Piggy appeared to be pretty diligent about not giving the kids anything but soda. In a town of 627 residents, everyone knew everyone else and whether or not they were 'legal' to drink. The Sons of Armageddon had flaunted their nose at the former Colorado state drinking age of 21, declaring that if a young man or woman was old enough to serve their country, they were old enough to drink. Piggy allowed anyone over the age of 18 to have a beer, which the town seemed to have in endless supply thanks to their primary cash crop of barley and the micro-brewery up the street. That meant Audrey was allowed to have a beer, as well. She'd drunk many times before to spite her parents, but now that it was allowed, suddenly being considered old enough to legally drink just seemed … anticlimatic.

"Thank you," her current dance partner said, bowing politely as the song finished.

Audrey gave him a smile and spun back to the sidelines, glancing at Gabriel. Fat chance she'd ever get _him _up here to dance.

"And now we have another special treat," Molly announced over the loudspeaker. "Miss Lena from Salt Lake City, Utah, will now perform her signature act."

The crowd clapped as Lena took the stage, resplendent in her glittering blue evening gown which she carried with her everywhere so she'd have it when it was time to 'sing for Saint Peter.' The boa had been left behind, but Lena had managed to scrounge up everything else she needed from the women of the town to put together a suitable act. Several of the bikers who were in on the conspiracy shooed patrons from the stage so they'd have room to maneuver while Molly pulled down a white movie-screen. Audrey winked at the biker who had borrowed Gunn's long black oilskin coat and donned a set of revolvers and black hat. Two others quickly lay out a couple of poles with shorter poles across them on the floor and a rope. 'Black Hat' self-consciously adjusted his fake villain moustache.

"I'd like to dedicate this song to my friend, Gabriel," Lena announced, her voice assuming that husky jazz-singer tone she used when she performed. "Our hero." She leaned to the band, whispering conspiratorially, and counted off to begin the song.

Gabriel looked up, wings twitching upwards in surprise at suddenly being the subject of attention. His new brothers-in-arms slapped him on the shoulder since his wings prevented them from slapping him on the back. It was the first time Audrey had ever seen Gabriel really appear to be enjoying himself.

Audrey knew what Lena was up to. This was their third and final night in Alamoosa, the compass rose having appeared upon her hand once more pointing south-east. They'd been cooking up a little mischief to tweak Gabriel's too-serious nose and have a little fun at his expense. Lena was a drag queen. She knew a thing or two about over-the-top entertainment and the town folk had been only too eager to conspire along with them. Audrey scooted into position and opened her flowery parasol stage prop, ready to play her part in the entertainment.

Lena sang, her voice so husky and low it sounded like a plea:

_Where have all the heroes gone, and where are all the gods?_

_Where's the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising storm?_

_Isn't there a white knight, upon a fiery steed?_

_Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need…_

As the band paused while Lena held the note for the word 'need,' the piano player interjected a couple of bars of an insidious old silent-film piano accompaniment while a jumpy old Charlie Chaplin black-and-white film skit of a bad man chasing a lady flashed onto the movie screen. On cue, Audrey stepped out near the area they had laid out the 'tracks' while Lena belted out the refrain.

_I need a hero! I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night._

_And he's got to be fast, and he's got to be strong, _

_and he's got to be fit for the fight._

_I need a hero…_

While Lena sang, the three 'bad men,' led by 'black hat,' rushed out to surround Audrey highlighted by the backdrop of the bad man doing the same thing in the old Charlie Chaplin movie. Like the woman in the film, Audrey made a big deal of hitting the men with her parasol. The bar patrons laughed. As Lena sang started through the second verse, 'Black Hat' pulled out the enormous fat rope and began twirling Audrey around and around like the woman in the movie.

_Somewhere after midnight, in my wildest fantasy,_

_Somewhere just beyond my reach, _

_There's someone looking back at me,_

_Racing with the thunder and rising with the heat,_

_It's going to take a superman to sweep me off my feet…_

On cue, the three 'bad men' picked Audrey up over their heads like she were someone body-surfing at a rave and quite literally swept her off her feet. She wriggled slightly for dramatic purposes, but had learned the hard way at this mornings' rehearsal not to wiggle too hard or the men would drop her. As Lena sang through the second refrain, the 'bad men' carried her over to the 'rail road' tracks in time to the old Chaplin movie villain doing the same thing and deposited her upon the 'tracks.'

She couldn't see how Gabriel was reacting to all of this as the men had spun her around so much she was dizzy and now she was laying on the 'tracks' waiting to get run over by the train coming at her from the movie screen. As the music played on, Lena sang the lines:

_up in the heavens and the mountains above, _

_where the lightning splits the sea, _

_I can swear there's someone, somewhere watching me._

The men who had been acting as bouncers cleared a path between her and Gabriel. She could tell from the expression on his face that he didn't have a 'clue.' Lena, being experienced in performing stage showmanship with a potentially reluctant audience, had altered the script and enlisted audience support to provide the appropriate positive reinforcement to get Gabriel to do something he otherwise wouldn't get caught dead doing. Participate. The music held a long note just after the song finished up the lines and the pianist went back to playing the sinister old silent-film piano accompaniment as the train on the screen came at the maiden. Tension permeated the room as Gabriel still didn't pick up that this was a cue for him to _do something _as Audrey lay writhing on the 'tracks' about to get run over by the train.

Luckily, they had planned for this contingency.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Molly announced as the piano accompaniment rose to a crescendo. "We've decided to take a vote from the audience. Save the girl? Or let her die?"

"Save the girl, save the girl," the bikers and performers who were in cahoots started to chant. Within moments, the audience was chanting it as well.

"And who is brave enough to save this fair maiden?" Molly asked over the loudspeaker. Molly's eyes were sparkling with happiness as she made her announcement. Lena had immediately won over Piggy's wife by giving her what she most desired, to be the center of attention.

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" their conspirators chanted. Within moments the audience was chanting it as well.

Gabriel sat there, the puzzled look upon his face showing he didn't understand he'd been set up.

"Help, h-e-l-p!" Audrey squealed in her best falsetto, writhing on the tracks tied up in her rope. "Help me!"

Gun and Slim both gave Gabriel a shove, slapping him on the back to get him moving. All of a sudden, Gabriel 'got it.' The ceiling was too low for him to fly and the bar was too crowded for him to even fully extend his wings, but the pathway had been cleared for him to rescue her. He jumped forward, flaring his wings just a little for balance, and scooped her up off the tracks into his arms. The audience cheered. Lena signaled the band and they finished the last refrain of the song.

"_I need a hero…"_

"You always seem to be getting yourself into trouble, little Prophet," Gabriel said as the audience clapped, trying to appear to be serious but unable to hide his small smile. "Perhaps I should leave you all tied up to keep you out of mischief?" He raised his eyebrows in a question.

"Don't you dare!" Audrey said, laughing. "Put me down and untie me!"

"What if I don't want to let you go?" Gabriel asked, his gaze becoming intense as his voice deepened. The question stretched between them, unanswered, as the sound of the other patrons in the bar faded into the background, the tension in his feathers indicating this was a question he really wished to know the answer to. Lena shifted gears into a twangy classic country song. Alcohol had loosened his formidable control and Gabriel was in a mood to speak his mind.

"What if I don't want to _be _let go?" Audrey finally answered, her voice strangely breathless as her heart beat in her ears. Gabriel's breath hitched in his throat, his unearthly ice-blue eyes deepening to a more earthy cerulean blue. The moment stretched out longer, Gabriel still holding her in his arms.

It was a dancing patron bumping into them that finally brought them both back to reality. They were standing in the middle of a crowded dance floor making a spectacle of themselves. Gabriel reluctantly put her down and helped her untie the rope. Lena and the band shifted gears again into a toe-tapping, boot stomping square dancing tune. Around them, patrons paired off into couples and squares, whirling around them like dervishes.

"Thank you for saving me," Audrey said, putting on a bright face that didn't match the tangle of emotions inside.

"It was _you_ who saved me," Gabriel whispered, reaching out to touch her cheek next to her lips, his eyes intense with emotion as he brushed his thumb across her lips.

Audrey inhaled sharply. She was disappointed when, reluctantly, he tore himself away and returned to his seat.


	36. Chapter 35

Chapter 35

"We should go around," Gabriel said, glancing at the compass rose on the Prophets' hand and then at the map which rustled in the warm desert wind. "Every major city we've come to so far has been a death zone."

"We have Gunn with us now," Audrey said without even looking up from the map. "The burden to protect is not yours alone."

Defiance. The Prophets gift.

"Just because something is possible," Gabriel chided her, "does not mean it is wise. Every time we've gone into a city, we've been attacked."

"The fourth disciple is here," Audrey said, turning finally to look at him, her eyes distant and haunted. "Time is growing short. Even as we gather the disciples and sow support amongst the people to defend the Savior, the Grigori are gaining strength. The day of reckoning approaches. We are running out of time."

A chill went through Gabriel's soul, making its presence felt by making his physical shell shiver even though the late-spring sun warmed the desert. Last night's vision had been a particularly bad one, the Prophet inconsolable even once dawn had re-awoken her from her second, natural sleep. She had scratch marks on her arms, even his embrace unable to protect her from the wounds of the future she was forced to bear witness to each night from reaching through and scarring her in the present. She never revealed to him the exact nature of the event which had her sobbing his name each night as her vision ended, but he knew. He knew each night she was forced to witness his death and that it caused her grief.

"I will fly above the city to survey potential threats," Gabriel said, reaching out to touch her cheek next to her beautiful, velvet-blue eyes that, although so very young, had begun to carry the weight of years far beyond the knowledge that could be attained during a dozen mortal lifetimes. "Gunn will stay behind to protect you."

Within the past week Audrey had turned nineteen. Although they still joked that she was very young and he an old man in existence for billions of years, at some point they had all begun to realize that the consciousness which worked through her made him look young in comparison. It was a weighty burden for such a young woman to bear.

He slid his palm down her cheek and brushed her lips with his thumb, the gesture he now used when he wished to communicate to her that if things had been different, at that moment he _would _have kissed her if it hadn't meant his control would break and cause _her _soul to be condemned to eternal suffering in the Keep of Sheol the way he knew in his now-mortal bone marrow that _his _had already been condemned. It was only fitting that when his mission to protect her was finished, he would receive the same punishment as the brother he had obediently thrown into the pit. The punishment he had believed at the time to be … just … even though losing Lucifer had broken his heart.

Hope. His only hope was to protect the Prophet from suffering the same fate as Lucifer's mortal wife and offspring, to be condemned to suffer inside the walled city of Sheol, to watch the ones you loved be tormented again and again and again by the heavenly host until nothing but insanity remained, to watch their physical form become twisted and deformed by the foul vapors which exuded from the Keep until they become unrecognizable. It had not been obedience preventing Gabriel from defying the heavenly Father and taking Audrey to be his wife for quite some time now. It was fear of having the same thing happen to _her_.

Hope. Audrey's visions only confirmed what he already knew. His death and condemnation was inevitable. His only hope to prevent that which he feared most was to help her line up the pieces she led them to find so that, when the Savior matured enough to assume the mantle of leadership from the Father of this world, the Savior would protect her. It was too late for _him, _but it was not too late for her.

Hope. That fateful night on the cliff, he had asked the young man why he continued to fight, to protect a condemned child that was not even his, when he knew there was no hope. Gabriel now had his answer. He understood.

Audrey reached up to touch his hand and hold it to her face, sliding her fingers down the back of his hand and brushing her thumb across the thumb he had just brushed across her lips. Although they never spoke of the gesture, he hoped in her mind that she was returning his kiss. Warmth spread through his heart. Although Audrey had never said the words, he knew she now bore him at least _some _small affection. It was not entirely a one-sided love.

"Be careful," the Prophet said, breaking away from his gaze and looking once more at the map. "People around here still seem to have ammunition for their guns. You're an easy target when you're airborne."

"I will," Gabriel whispered. Reluctantly, he tore himself away from her presence and cast himself into the sky, taking to the lazy New Mexico currents which carried him aloft above the ruined city of Santa Fe.

Endless suburbs spread out beneath him, a hideous urban sprawl of burned out houses and strip malls, abandoned and devoid of greenery. They had ridden the train from Alamosa to the end of the line at Al Veda, several days hike north of the city. The heavenly host had seen fit to compel those they possessed to destroy the system of reservoirs and dams which flowed from the foothills, denying the cities below their only source of water. Some survivors had fled north to the rails which now existed to shuttle trade goods between rural areas such as Alamosa and the refugee camps which had sprung up along what few supply routes remained, but most in the cities had simply died. If not by the hand of the heavenly host, then of the starvation, sickness and thirst which had followed.

Petroleum no longer trickled through to this area in trade, the desert cities containing no natural resources post-apocalyptic humanity valued. Knowledge. The Reverend had explained that Santa Fe was a city which had sprung up to support the knowledge nurtured in the nearby top-secret government laboratory at Los Alamos. Scientists. Engineers. Physicians. A city with the highest IQ of any city on the planet. Genius aimed at one common goal, to create weapons that destroyed. Santa Fe had sprung up to provide distractions to nurture that knowledge, allowed those who created weapons to dabble in the arts and pretend the work they did had a purpose other than to kill.

Genius hadn't helped humanity. They had caught glimpses of Los Alamos nestled in the little valley of the mountain road they had travelled and decided avoiding the blackened impact-crater of a town would be prudent. No survivors had trickled into the refugee camps to the north, only whispers of the possessed unleashing the weapons they had created upon the residents of the town. Los Alamos was not where the compass rose directed them to go, so they avoided it.

Boy-men with guns patrolled the rooftops in one section of the city, the colorful blue clothing they wore declaring their allegiance to a gang. Further into the city, a rival gang wore purple. One of them took a pot-shot at him from the distance and missed. Gabriel made a mental note of where the ruffians appeared to be most concentrated so they could avoid those sections of the city. He banked his wings to the left, relishing the feel of the warm wind whistling through his feathers at different rates of speed as he turned, and headed back to their party. Never could he remember the simple pleasure of flying feeling so … real … in all his years as an agent of the Father.

Of course that was the area of the city the Prophet led them straight into…

"We're being watched," the Reverend said. "I can feel their eyes upon my back."

Gabriel sniffed the air, the senses of even a mortal angel still far superior to that of humans. "I can smell them," he said.

"I hope they don't smell like the ones back in Al Veda," Lena chipped in with forced cheerfulness. "It doesn't matter how much after shave you wear. If you don't bathe, you stink."

"Shhh…" Gunn hissed, the forward set of his shoulders and intense way his eyes scanned the low, burnt-out commercial buildings they walked past now indicating that he, too, sensed the threat. Gabriel felt a sense of approval. As a combat veteran, Gunn had been a valuable addition to their group.

"Water is scarce here," the Reverend whispered. "No water to bathe or dispose of human waste. Only to drink and water small gardens."

Gunn moved into position as point man, his hand reaching down to slip the safety off his holstered revolver. Audrey, Lena and the Reverend huddled in the middle. Gabriel took his customary position at the back and loosened the straps holding his mace.

Weapons weren't their only defense. The Reverend had taken to wearing his ministerial vestments, his plain black shirt and small white square on the collar quelling the instinct of many people they met to simply shoot them all on sight and be done with it. It was a tool which had served them well, but the gang barrios were a godless bunch. Gabriel wondered why _they _had been spared by the heavenly host when so many hard-working, god-fearing innocent people had been killed.

It was a question the Prophet had been obsessing over lately. Why so many seemingly godly people had become possessed, while other ungodly people such as herself had been spared.

The wind shifted and brought the musky stench of unwashed bodies to Gabriel's nostrils closer this time. A slight rustle to his rear betrayed the position of the hooligans creeping along at his rear, watching them, but not yet acting. Human behavior had remained unchanged for as long as humanity had existed. Whoever stalked their position now would report to the alpha male and gather their forces before striking.

"What, exactly, are we looking for again?" Lena asked nervously.

"The fourth disciple is a Messenger of the Lord," Audrey recited the message which had come after her vision the night before. "For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

"That's pretty cryptic," Lena replied. "We're looking for a lightning bolt?"

"Mathew 24:27," the Reverend said. "Perhaps a sign or corporate logo of a lightning bolt?" The Reverend then turned to Gabriel. "Gabriel … did any of those gang signs you saw have a lightning bolt on it?"

"No," Gabriel replied. "Not that I was able to see."

"Maybe lightning will strike close to where we're supposed to find this disciple?" Gunn asked, adding his two sense into the speculation.

"All of Audrey's messages so far have sounded cryptic when we've first heard them," the Reverend said, "but they've all turned out to be quite mundane. We should look for a literal meaning first."

"But keep our minds open just in case …." Lena added. She then made an eerie sound old B-grade movie soundtracks used to make when a UFO was about to land.

"Shhh…" Gabriel warned. "Footsteps. A lot of them. Up ahead. We're about to have a showdown."

A showdown occurred every time they encountered another human being, whether they were alone or in a group. Humanities trustful nature had been irrevocably shattered. Whether it was a store clerk at a still-operating trading post, a little old lady at a house they were drawn to, or a group of people within a settlement or refugee camp, humans were now prone to shoot first and ask questions later. The first few moments of any showdown were critical to determining whether they would find friends who would aid them in their journey, or foes who would mow them down out of greed or fear.

A group of around 30 boy-men and a few young women cockily strode around a street corner around 300 feet ahead and then stopped, as if posing for a photograph. Behind them, a similar number shuffled out and did the same thing. Most of the youth were Hispanic, with a few African-American and white kids thrown in. All wore some accoutrement of royal blue clothing and ranged from their mid-teens to mid-20's.

"The alpha male," Gunn whispered, cocking his head slightly towards a twenty-something young man in the middle who the rest of the gang kept subtly glancing to for direction. "The gang leader."

The group of disciples froze and assumed a ready stance, not too threatening, but ready to move into any fighting position that proved necessary. Gunn kept his hands in plain sight, but was poised and ready to pull his revolver, having scrounged up some bullets for it in La Veda. Gabriel ever-so-slightly flared his wings. An implied threat. Alpha-male making itself known to alpha-male.

"You's all infringin' upon Surenos territory," the gang leader said, making an odd gesture with his hand that the Reverend had explained was a type of shorthand gang members used to communicate amongst themselves. A challenge.

"We come seeking the Messenger of the Lord," the Prophet said, stepping forward. It was not just her mortal voice Audrey spoke with now, but that spark of the divine Gabriel had recognized and clung to the first time she had ever spoken to him and told him to 'get up, you jackass.'

"You their leader?" the gang leader asked, looking at Audrey, and then at Gabriel, and then at Gunn. He made another signal of some sort with his hands. There was subtle movement amongst the gang members, but no obvious threat.

"We lead each according to the task each one is capable of performing," the Prophet said cryptically. "For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

"You wear the insignia of gang signs," the gang leader said, making a hand movement for the others to stay and then taking three steps forward towards Audrey and stopping. "What gang you'all follow?"

"We serve the Savior," Audrey said, also taking three steps forward and stopping, "who came back into this world one and a half years ago."

Gabriel fully flared his wings, ready to pounce at a moments' notice and protect her if things headed south. Audrey had begun taking the lead more and more since leaving Alamosa when initially meeting new groups of people, but this was the first time she had done so with a group that was so blatantly dangerous.

"You see anyone getting saved around here?" the gang leader scoffed, making another sign with his hands. Behind him and also the second group behind theirs, the gang members twittered as if on cue.

"You survived the heavenly host," Audrey stated, gesturing towards the burned out buildings which surrounded them, their broken, blackened windows staring at them like the eyes of a skull. "Intact," she added.

The gang leader made another subtle hand gesture and then stepped another five steps closer to Audrey before stopping and posing once again, a pose of defiance, but the young man was now close enough that Gabriel could read the emotions upon his face. Fear.

"What do you know of the heavenly host?" the gang leader asked, glancing first at her, and then at Gabriel.

"The Father grew weary of mankind," Audrey said, taking five steps closer to the gang leader and stopping. "He sent his heavenly host down to torment the weak and turn them against the strong."

"Angels," the gang leader spat out. "Like _him!_" He took one step back. As if on cue, the gang members in both groups crouched, ready to strike.

"Not like him," Audrey said, standing her ground. "The heavenly host possess no physical form. Their only power is to torment the minds of the weak and compel them to attack the strong."

"Didn't look that way to me," the gang leader snarled. "People's limbs dislocated and they started walking up walls and shit. Killed everyone around them!"

"And yet you survived," Audrey said, taking two steps forward. "Your sanctuary was unharmed, wasn't it?"

The gang leader regarded her carefully for a moment. "Yes."

"That is because a disciple of the Savior resides amongst your midst," Audrey said. "The heavenly host cannot enter the sanctuary of those chosen by the Savior to walk at his side."

Gabriel knew this last tidbit of information was merely a guess. He had been sent to kill the Savior after Charlie had given birth to him because the heavenly host was unworthy to bask in the presence of the Savior. No host had entered the Reverend's chapel, Lena's gay bar, or Gunn's biker headquarters where they had been when the host had struck. Only an archangel could enter their presence, a spark of divinity he could sense, even now, even though he had fallen from grace.

"Where is this Savior of yours?" the gang leader sneered, taking another step back. He wasn't buying it. Although the young man was in a position of authority, Gabriel could not hear that hint of the divine. This was not the person they sought.

"You declare I wear the signs of a gang," Audrey said, shifting tactics and pointing to the tattoos visible on her forehead and arms. "What do these signs say of this Savior to you?"

"I cannot read them," the gang leader said.

"But you have seen them before, yes?" Audrey said, taking another step closer.

"Yes," the gang leader said.

"The Messenger of the Lord resides in your midst," Audrey said. "You must take me to him. He will be able to tell you the meaning of the signs."

Audrey and the gang member both stood there, several feet from one another, not moving. The other members of the gang shifted nervously behind the gang leader. Gabriel crouched, ready to take to the air, and subtly shifted his mace so he could pull the handle in one movement. Gunn's fingers clenched, ready to pull his gun and knife. The Reverend lost his 'ministerial preacher pose' and moved into a fighting stance. Lena … Lena couldn't fight worth a hill of beans.

The gang leader made his decision. He shifted his position, making another one of those subtle hand signals, and then took the last three steps forward to meet Audrey in the middle, extending his hand to offer a strange handshake, not hand-to-hand, but forearm to forearm.

"I will take you to meet my brother," the gang leader said.

Behind him, the gang members relaxed. Behind Gabriel, the second group of gang members relaxed. The gang leader gestured finished some sort of handshake with Audrey, which she fumbled with a bit but managed to complete, and then gestured for them to follow.

Gabriel relaxed somewhat, but not completely. Audrey walked trustingly next to the gang leader, but the Reverend signaled for the rest of them to trail a distance back from the two chosen to represent each group, obviously some kind of gang protocol the Reverend had learned during his prison ministry at the Clark County Jail. Keeping his wings flared in case he needed to pounce and carefully scrutinizing the lesser gang members for trouble, they followed the gang leader to go meet the fourth disciple.


	37. Chapter 36

Chapter 36

"Manuel," the gang leader said, introducing himself to Audrey. "Carnale of the local chapter of Surenos 13."

Every movement the gang leader, and most members of the gang, was exaggerated to convey more than what was being said verbally. The words Manuel spoke were in perfect English, but his speech patterns had a cadence similar to Spanish. Gang tattoos were scratched all over Manuel's body, from the three dots on his fingers, to the Spanish words tattooed across his wrists, to the writing she could see above the collar of his shirt on his neck. They were alike, she and Manuel. Both had permanently written, for all the world to see, exactly who and what they were on their skin.

"Audrey," Audrey introduced herself. "And this is Gunn, the Reverend, Lena, and Gabriel."

"We heard rumors," Manuel said, glancing back at Gabriel. "My brother insisted this is all part of the rapture, but we did not believe him. It didn't seem very … rapturous … to us."

"Not the rapture," Audrey said. "But an extermination. Extermination without the possibility of salvation. Humanity is only still here because the Archangel Michael convinced the Father to give us more time."

"How many angels you got hangin' around you, lady?" Manuel asked, shooting Gabriel another glance. Although the young man had a tough stance, she could see the fear in his eyes. The other gang members walked circling around them, acting tough, but none dared draw close to Gabriel. Or Gunn, for that matter. Gunn was nothing to sneeze at.

"At the moment," Audrey said. "Just one."

They wound their way through a labyrinth of side streets and back alleys that she sensed was not necessary, but designed to confuse the location of their headquarters should they decide to come back later with reinforcements. The neighborhood went downhill as they entered some abandoned warehouses, gutted and burned. The headquarters bore the external marks of fire, but as soon as they got inside, it became obvious the gang headquarters itself had been untouched by the heavenly host.

The building was filthy, dilapidated, and run down, but Earthly fires had been quickly put out using earthly means and no darkened stains marred the floor where people had died. The gang members who had followed Manuel out into the street had been mostly young men, but inside the gang headquarters were hundreds more people, overwhelmingly young women and even younger children. This was more than a simple gang hideout.

"You live here?" Audrey asked.

"We do now," Manuel said. "But for most of us, the Surenos was our family, anyhow. The apocalypse just made if official."

"How old are you, Manuel?" Audrey asked.

"Twenty-two," Manuel said. "I'm the leader now."

"Now?" Audrey asked.

"We had lots of gang members in the barrios," Manuel said. "The neighborhoods. Most of the bro's get sent up to Pen for one thing or another and end up getting conscripted by the Mexican Mafia once they get out. Hanging out with the initiates was beneath the Mexican Mafiosos, so none was here when the apocalypse hit us. None survived."

Audrey knew from speaking with the Reverend that the Mexican Mafia was a multinational crime syndicate straddling both sides of the US-Mexico border, similar to the Italian mafia, which recruited from 'feeder gangs' such as the Surenos to smuggle things over the border, deal drugs, cook up methamphetamines, and 'take out' any threat to their criminal enterprise. To an impoverished kid growing up in a poor neighborhood with no hope, a trip to the state penitentiary and graduation to a larger umbrella gang such as the Mexican Mafia was a badge of honor. The Reverend had spent a great deal of time counseling young adults in the Las Vegas prison system, urging them to break the cycle.

"Where are all these children's parents?" Audrey asked, noticing how many young children were present. She knew gangs recruited young, but not _this _young.

"Dead," Manuel said, his eyes becoming distant and haunted the way everyone they encountered did when remembering the night the world had ended. "The people went nuts. Most of us Surenos, we don't have nothing to go home for anyways, so most of us not there when it happen. We just in here minding our own business, hanging out, when we start hearing gunshots and screaming outside. At first we think it's a raid or something, or a driveby by one of the west side gangs, but when we get outside it's like church ladies or something all freaked out screaming we was sinners. And then this dude's arms got long and started climbing up the wall."

"But nobody inside this building was possessed?" Audrey asked.

"Nobody," Manuel said. "A lot of us got families. We ain't close to them or nothing, but they're family. You know? So a lot of us run home to make sure our families is allright and find out the same things happening at home. Our parents and brothers and such get all freaky, trying to _bite _us like they was dogs or something."

"Where was your brother at the time?" Audrey asked.

"He was here," Manuel said. "Mama'd get all pissed off when Jose' would follow me down here an tryin hang out with us. Didn't like us … using him … Jose's a good boy. Don't bother nobody. He's a little … different."

"Different?" Audrey asked. "Like in … religious or something. Like the Reverend?" She glanced back at the Reverend, who appeared to be intently interested in speaking to several very young children playing in the gang headquarters and speaking to them in fluent Spanish.

"No," Manuel said. "Different as in … different. You'll see."

He led them through the gaping cavern of a warehouse, up a rickety set of steps, and into some sort of office positioned to overlook the warehouse below. Inside were dozens of computer monitors and servers. All up and running. It appeared every ounce of electricity the Surenos had was being routed up into this room.

"Jose'?" Manuel called, his voice suddenly cautious and gentle. "You've got some friends come to visit you. You okay with that?" Jose' was not visible, but Audrey could detect somebody standing behind a metal shelf loaded with computer parts.

"Friends," Jose' muttered, his voice nervous and twitchy. "I got friends. I like friends. Manuel going to bring me some new friends. Friends. Friends are good."

A painfully thin young Hispanic man stepped out from behind the shelving, one hand lifted in the air trembling as though waving 'hi,' the other hand facing down and twitching as though he were shooing away a dog jumping up on his leg. Although the young man stepped cautiously closer, he held his body somewhat sideways, as though making physical contact would be painful for him.

"This is Audrey, Jose'," Manuel said. "She's come a long way to meet you. She's come to talk to you about those dreams you keep having."

"The Rapture is here," Jose' said, rocking slightly and speaking in a singsong voice, his eyes wild and out of focus. "The Savior is here. He's a coming. He's coming to save us all."

"Schizophrenic," Manuel whispered to her. "Or autism. Or maybe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mama ain't never got no health insurance, so we'd go to a different quack doctor at the low income clinics every few months to get medicine to keep the craziness at bay and they'd give him a different label every time."

For the first time, Audrey looked around the darkened room at something _other _than the bright lights of the dozen or so computer screens that were all lit up and noticed the papers that were pinned to the walls all over the room. Her eyes widened with surprise.

"Gabriel," she whispered, pointing to the symbols scratched onto the paper. They were symbols she recognized. They were the same types of symbols which were tattooed all over her body.

"I see," Gabriel said.

"We ain't been able to get no reliable medicine for him since the apocalypse," Manuel said, regret tingeing his voice. "We cleaned out all the free local barrio clinics, but the big hospital is over in West Side territory. Jose's not so bad when he takes his medicine. You'd almost not know he was sick or nothing. He's the smartest kid in the entire barrio."

"Signs," Jose' said, coming up to Audrey and then backing away. "Signs. She's got the signs. She's got the signs sent by the Savior."

"That's correct, Jose'," Audrey said, swallowing her apprehension and doing her best to address their latest disciple like he was a normal human being instead of a schizophrenic. "I've got the signs. Do you want to tell your brother what they say?"

"Prophet," Jose' said. "You are a Prophet of the Lord."

"That's right, Jose'," Audrey said, heaving a small sign of relief. Had they gotten here and Manuel's brother been unable to recognize the signs, she worried what the gang would have done to them. "What else are you able to read?"

"The angel protects you," Jose' said, his eyes slightly in and out of focus as he wrapped his arms around his thin chest and rocked back and forth. "It says it was your hands that welcomed the Savior into the world. It says it was your voice the Saviors' ears first heard. It says you have the gift of truthful blasphemy."

"You said you think the reason we're all still here is because Jose' somehow … protected … us all?" Manuel asked, his eyes widening as it became apparent the rantings his mentally ill brother had been spouting for the past year and a half had some basis in reality.

"The heavenly host are the lowest order of angels," Audrey said. "They were created by the Father to torment souls condemned to Sheol and compel the damned to repeat their crimes over and over and over again. The Father grew angry at us and unleashed them upon the Earth. But for some reason, some people are immune to them, while other people drive them away. We're not sure why … yet."

"The Chosen must rally to the Savior," Jose' said. "The Chosen must not let the Grigori trick the Father a second time."

"What do you know of the Father?" Gabriel asked, his feathers twitching with interest as his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"The Father was lied to," Jose' said, starting to rock back and forth and become very agitated. "The Father is angry. The Father is very … sad."

"Why is the Father sad?" Audrey asked gently.

"The Mother is angry at him," Jose' said. "Angry. Angry angry angry. The Father is angry because the Mother is angry and won't come back to him. Angry angry angry. Angry angry angry Ahhhhhh!"

Audrey jumped back as Jose' screeched and then ran to a cluttered desk, pulled out a stack of papers, and started throwing them in the air.

"Angry! Angry angry angry! The Father is very angry!" Jose' chanted.

"Jose'," Manuel coaxed. "It's okay. It's okay. Nobody is angry at _you._ Everything's going to be okay."

"Angry angry angry," Jose' continued to chant, his voice getting louder. "Angry angry angry. The Father is very angry." The young man sat down on the floor, clutching the papers to his chest as he rocked back and forth, and started shuffling through the papers, chanting 'angry angry angry' as he did so. Every single one of the papers contained the same heavenly symbol. Rage.

"Audrey," Gabriel said, nodding his head towards the symbols scribbled on the papers.

"I see," Audrey said.

"I think you all better go back downstairs for a while," Manuel said. "Let me get him all calmed down and stuff and then we'll talk."

Audrey nodded at Gabriel. They backed their way down the rickety steps to where the Reverend sat, surrounded by a gaggle of very young Hispanic-looking children while Lena entertained a group of pre-teen girls. Gunn silently stood sentry, carefully watching the 'colored' (color wearing) gang members who filtered in and out of the gang headquarters, giving them a curious glance, but otherwise leaving them alone.

"Not what I expected," Audrey said when they got to the foot of the stairs.

"John the Baptist suffered from a similar affliction," Gabriel said matter-of-factly. "He even has the same name."

"John?" Audrey asked.

"Jose' is Spanish for John," Gabriel said, a hint of bemusement in his voice. "Didn't that Dominican nun Sunday school teacher of yours teach you that?"

The slightest hint of a smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth, his unearthly ice-blue eyes sparkling with mirth. He was beautiful when he smiled. Ever since they had spent time in the town of Alamosa, Gabriel had lost some of his habitual seriousness and begun to embrace life as a mortal creature. Finding Gunn and his biker brothers-in-arms had been good for Gabriel. It had provided something he must have sorely missed. He was _even _being a bit more flexible about embracing new experiences, such as beer or touching her flesh for a reason other than to protect her. He reached up to do so now, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear for her, his fingers lingering on the flesh where her hair met her bare neck.

"We can't drag some poor crazy kid across the country with us while we piece together whatever it is the Savior needs," Audrey said apprehensively. "You saw what happened when we simply asked him a simple question. If we take him away from his comfort zone, he's going to go nuts."

"John the Baptist did," Gabriel said. "And they didn't have modern medications back then to keep the rantings down to a minimum."

"Wait a minute…" Audrey asked, questions that had gone unanswered as a child suddenly making sense. "Are you saying that John the Baptist was … insane?"

"Madder than a March hare," Gabriel said, the smirk upticking further into a full-blown smile. "He was a genius. An absolutely _brilliant _preacher. Baptised and coverted thousands of people to Christianity. But he was nuts."

"But…" Audrey asked, her voice trailing off. Talk about truthful blasphemy!

"Let's just wait and see what happens with the brother," Gabriel suggested, his voice becoming deeper as his smile disappeared and his eyes became serious, darkening from ice-blue to cerulean.

Audrey realized his hand had lingered where he had tucked the strand of wayward hair behind her ear, radiating warmth down into her neck. Ever since Alamosa, Gabriel had been crossing a lot of lines and breaking a lot of barriers that he had previously considered forbidden, but there was still one line Gabriel would not cross. It had begun to dawn upon her that it was a line she very much wished he _would _cross, the Father be damned!

'_Do not tempt him unless you are capable of loving him as much as he loves you,_' the Reverend had said to her after she'd surprised Gabriel by kissing him. _'He fears the Father will punish –you.-'_

Was she even _capable_ of the devotion Gabriel had shown to her? Was _she_ willing to suffer eternal damnation to be with him? Was she willing to make _him _suffer eternal damnation? Each night, she dreamed of his death. When it finally happened, whether or not they ever consummated whatever this thing was that they had between them, losing him was going to cause her great sorrow.

'_We will be reunited in heaven,' _he said each night in the vision with his dying breath. _"My love…'_

She looked down, suddenly ashamed. Who was _she_ to have earned the love of such a beautiful, heavenly creature? Nobody. Just a mouthy kid from Los Angeles. She didn't blame the Father for getting pissed off when his children went slumming with humans like her. The Father is angry. Of _course _the Father was angry. Gabriel deserved better. A single tear suddenly escaped the corner of one eye and trailed down her cheek.

"Audrey?" Gabriel asked, his expression puzzled. "What's wrong?"

She threw herself into his arms, burying her face into his chest, and pressed her ear against his heart, listening to the reassuring sound of his heartbeat.

"Nothing," she murmured, his shirt muffling her words. "It just wasn't what I expected…"


	38. Chapter 37

Chapter 37

"Go," Gabriel hissed, using the hand signal Audrey had first taught him from the old yellowed Army Survival Manual left in the trunk of the police cruiser.

Six Surenos slunk up to the forward position Gunn had taken only moments earlier. Gunn glanced at him and gave the signal for Gabriel to come forward as well. Gabriel flattened his wings level with the ground and slunk forward.

"How many?" Gabriel asked.

"I count three on the roof," Gunn said. "At least two sentries at the door. Can't tell how many are inside once we get past the sentries."

The men Gabriel could see were all wearing purple, the mark of a rival gang. Although he had infinitely more experience battling an infinite number of horrific creatures over countless millennia, Gunn possessed specialized Special Forces training to get in and out of a mission without starting an all-out war. Gunn also had more experience dealing with soldiers who could die and would _stay _dead, unlike the angels Gabriel had served with when the light of the heavenly Father had still flowed through his veins. Gabriel wasn't _used _to having to deal with the concept that he could actually _die _on a mission before, thereby leaving his little Prophet undefended. They'd decided it would be better if Gunn took the lead.

As Audrey had told Manuel, each of them led according to what they did best. Gunn was a wraith who slipped in and out to complete an objective. Gabriel was a sledgehammer.

"West Side bandas always got at least a half dozen guys hanging out together," Manuel said, pulling his gun.

"No killing," Gabriel said, giving him a warning glare. "You gave your word."

He kept his expression unreadable and his voice flat, but he was annoyed by the way the Surenos appeared to have no qualms about killing a rival gang member to obtain something so trivial as a few pills. He suppressed the old contempt for humanity he felt creeping up into his breast now, reminding himself that this contempt had caused him to make the biggest mistake of his very long life. To obey the Father's extermination order without question. Audrey and the majority of the people they had met along the way had proven to him hundreds of times over just how wrong Gabriel, and the Father, had been to write humanity off. Manuel was doing the best he could with next to nothing, and making sure those whose lives he was responsible were taken care of to the best of his ability.

"Hey," Manuel said, old hatreds lighting up his eyes, "these West Side bandas, they knock off my big brother when I was only five."

"You don't know that it was _these _bandas," Gabriel said, twitching his wing in annoyance. "No killing."

"I give you my word," Manuel said. "No killing unless it's me or them."

Somehow, Gabriel didn't find that very reassuring.

"Any way you can drop one of these skinny kids up on the roof to help you deal with those three?" Gunn asked. "Three guys with guns at once is a little much. Even for you."

"I haven't tried carrying another person since I fell," Gabriel said. "I'm not sure I _can_ anymore."

"Probably not a good time to find out," Gunn said, and then turned to Manuel. "Do you know of any way to get up to that rooftop?"

"I'll send someone around to take a look," Manuel said. He made a series of hand signals that were _not _military in origin to one of his fellow gang members and then pointed to the roof. Gang hand signals. The young man he had spoken to with his hands nodded, and then disappeared around a corner. They waited.

Gunn was aware that Gabriel was now mortal. The gang members, however, did not. It was a secret he did not care to divulge. They were launching this raid to obtain the medication the fourth disciple needed to function so they could get on their way, not to tilt the balance of power in this city in favor of one gang or another. After the apocalypse had hit, those who had any financial means whatsoever had evacuated to someplace else. Only the poorest and most desperate were left behind. The ones who had no place to go.

The Surenos sheltered over 300 young children in their gang headquarters as well as 80 regular gang members. They survived by banding together into large enough groups to forage the vacant buildings left behind by those killed by the heavenly host and preventing rival gangs from looting what little they had. Jose', as crazy as he was, had proven an invaluable resource to the Surenos because he had been able to create a satellite uplink to other areas of the country and download information the Surenos needed to set up and tend little sheltered subsistence gardens. Knowledge. The lightning which came from east to west. The internet.

Jose's knowledge only prolonged the inevitable. Someday soon, with very little water and no natural resources, the gangs would be forced to evacuate as well. Or die. Gabriel was certain the West Side bandas had a similarly desperate story. He would not pit one gang against another. Or kill any of them.

He _would, _however, break into the pharmacy at Saint Vincent's Hospital and steal some lithium so the fourth disciple could stop hallucinating holy visions long enough to come with them. Manuel had assured them that, when Jose' took his medication, he was lucid and brilliantly smart, if a bit high strung. Gabriel had no knowledge of mortal computer technology, but the intricate network Jose' had set up using nothing but salvaged (or stolen) technology in the Surenos headquarters spoke of the genius the Prophet hoped to uncover once they'd found Jose' some meds.

"No ladders or ways up that I could see," the skinny Sureno who had disappeared earlier whispered to Manuel. "They must be getting up through an internal stairwell."

"Looks like it's up to you, Gabriel," Gunn said. "Be careful. This area of the country doesn't seem to be in short supply of ammunition for those guns they're toting about up there."

"No problem," Gabriel said. "They already shot at me when we first came into the city."

"As soon as we hear you take out the first rooftop shooter," Gunn said, "we're going to storm the front door and get inside. Hopefully it will provide a distraction so you can take out the other two."

"You all be careful," Gabriel said, remembering how fleeing and frail human lives were. "The snipers have the strategic advantage."

"Until you take them out, that is," Manuel said, his dark eyes flashing in his brown skin as he gave Gabriel a confident grin. "Never done no raids with no angel before. You guys are like, indestructible. This should be fun."

For a twenty-two year old, Manuel was pretty hardened to the prospect of going into battle. All the Surenos were. The thought crossed Gabriel's mind about what a waste it was such talent had been cast aside due to lack of a proper upbringing and guidance.

If he didn't know any better, he was beginning to sound like the Savior…

"Not indestructible," Gabriel said softly, not wishing to tell the truth, but incapable of telling a lie. "I can be hurt just like anybody else. I've just been around a lot longer than you have."

"And you can fly," one of the other Surenos said.

Gabriel shrugged, and then followed the young Sureno around the corner he had scoped out earlier to move into position to fly up to the roof. The Sureno would provide what little cover he could from the ground, but it was a disadvantageous position. It was up to _him _to take out the three gunmen. The West Side banda seated at the corner of the building appeared bored, staring absent-mindedly off into the distance with a rifle leaning lazily against his shoulder. Gabriel moved to the side the banda was _not _looking and prepared to leap.

"Go," he whispered to his shadow and then flew straight up into the air, reaching the bandas position from underneath behind him and pulling the young man off the roof. The panicked young banda yelped, but was silenced as Gabriel slapped a hand over his mouth on the seven story fall to the ground. The gun clattered down to the ground before them. He _definitely _needed to work on increasing his wing strength if he ever hoped to carry a second person.

From the ground, he heard Gunn and the others charge the front door, distracting the other two snipers. Flapping ungracefully like an albatross, Gabriel none-too-lightly plopped the West Side gang member down in front of his Surenos shadow and hoped the young man hadn't broken anything, but he was alive. The Sureno immediately tied up and duct-taped the mouth shut of the shocked rival gang member. One down, two to go.

The other two snipers were now shooting at Gunn and the other Surenos. Gabriel and his shadow moved around the building to the rear. Gabriel easily leaped up to the roof, landing behind them. The West Side gang members were preoccupied with the gunfight they had from the ground. Gabriel decided which one to take out first. The sound of gunfire would hide the rustle of his feathers. He flew-leaped across the roof and grabbed the closest gang member, giving him a knock on the head with a pipe that he hoped would only give the man a rip-roaring headache. He glanced over the edge of the roof and gave his shadow the signal. Two down, one to go.

The third rival gang member was intently focused on the gunfight below, not watching what was going on from what he _thought _was a secure position behind him. Gabriel crept closer and then flew-leaped the remaining few yards. The young man was surprisingly strong and agile, twisting and screeching at him like a Grigori. He swung his pistol around and Gabriel just barely managed to knock it out of his hand before he got his face blown off. Grabbing the pistol, Gabriel pistol whipped the young man hard enough to knock him out, but not hard enough to kill him.

On the ground he could see Gunn had already taken out the two sentries at the door and were engaged in a firefight with a half dozen West Side gang members who had come pouring out of the building. Gabriel leaned over the edge of the roof to give the thumbs-up to Gunn about the snipers. He gave Gunn the 'all clear' signal.

The pain registered in his chest before he heard the gunshot. Looking down, he saw red erupt through his shirt. He gasped for breath and discovered his lung wasn't working properly anymore. Gunn looked up at him and they made eye contact, the look of horror on Gunn's face telling Gabriel what had just happened. There had been a fourth sniper somewhere on the roof of the hospital.

The world slowly went black as Gabriel fought to take a breath. Wordlessly, he lost his balance and fell forward over the ledge. Falling. He was falling. He was _not _resigned to his fate this time. He wanted to live! He tried to flap his wings so he wouldn't splatter on the concrete and they wouldn't work.

'Audrey,' he whispered right before he hit the ground.


	39. Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Audrey heard a commotion and shouting from the gang headquarters below. She moved over to the doorway to glance down

"The angel. The angel protected him. Protected him. The angel protected him," Jose' perseverated in the background as he clutched his arms around himself and rocked. The insane young disciple had become very agitated and started up the chant around 45 minutes ago, but no amount of reasoning could calm him down or get him to explain why he was chanting.

The angel? Gabriel? Was Jose' upset about Manuel making the raid to get him his medicine and knew Gabriel would protect him?

The Sureno gang member who had come running in and caused the commotion below glanced up and made eye contact with her, and then ran towards her. Her heart sank in her chest. Gabriel!

"You'all better come quick," the Sureno youth said breathlessly, his sides heaving as though he had run the entire way here. A young boy no more than 12 or 13 years old, already he had the 'marks' of a Sureno, the tattoos indicating he was one of them. The youth clenched his fists nervously, the three dots and cross on his fingers flexing and contorting to accentuate his emotion.

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked.

"He's been hurt, lady," the youth said. "Manuel said we gotta bring Jose' with us."

Behind him, several more youth burst into the room and began grabbing some of the computer equipment which littered the room. Laptops and other equipment that she wasn't sure what it did. By the way the young men and one young woman tore the equipment apart and stowed it in a bag, it appeared to be equipment they were at least _somewhat _familiar with.

"The angel protected him," Jose' continued to chant. "The angel. The angel protected him."

"Jose'," the young Sureno said, approaching the crazy young disciple carefully. "Manuel needs you. He needs you to take your medicine. Can you take your medicine for me?"

"M-m-medicine makes the voices go away," Jose' said, his hands trembling and moving from his sides, where he'd been clutching himself, hesitantly out to the young man before him. "M-m-manuel n-n-needs me."

Audrey's heart raced in her chest. Gabriel was hurt? "Take me to him!" she ordered the young gang member.

"Jose'," the young man said gently, taking Jose's hand and slipping two small white pills and a larger orange one into his hand. "This will help make the voices go away."

"The angel protected him. The angel. The angel protected him," Jose' continued to chant, taking the pills and swallowing them without water. Audrey grimaced. Ugh! How could he swallow pills without taking water.

"Yes, Jose'," the young Sureno said, taking Jose's hand and tugging him towards the door. "The angel protected him. He's alive. But Manuel needs your help or he won't be that way for long."

Audrey was so riddled with disbelief she couldn't even cry. Or rage. Or do anything. All she could do was stand there, her hands shaking with tremors the way Jose's had been only moments before, and shudder. Gabriel!

"C'mon, lady," a second Sureno laden with a backpack full of computer equipment snapped, shoving her towards the door. "We gotta go!"

At some point, the Reverend took her arm and led her. The streets. Somehow she was being hustled down a series of streets and hadn't realized she'd even been led out of the building. Her heart beat in her ears as the gang members led them down a series of roads littered with burned-out cars and gutted buildings with no glass in the windows. Gabriel was hurt and might not live.

He couldn't die! It wasn't time! He couldn't die now!

"He's going to be okay," some distant part of her mind that would not work heard someone say. The Reverend. The Reverend had her by the arm and was leading her as they went to where Gabriel had fallen. "They said another angel appeared and protected him until they could move forward to defend him."

The angel. The angel had protected him. What angel? Michael? Somehow, Jose' had known what had happened. Jose' had visions too. Just like her. Only his visions were of the present.

The gang members around her were chattering about the second angel which had appeared to shield Gabriel's body, but their words sounded too far away to hear above the racing of her own thoughts. Gabriel might die!

And she'd never told him!

She was so numb she couldn't even cry. She was vaguely aware of being hustled into some sort of building and down a series of heavily damaged halls and then shoved into a well-lit room where Gunn and a bunch of Surenos clustered around something. A table. An operating table. They were in a hospital, only there were no doctors or nurses. Just Surenos. Gunn took one look at her and opened up his arms to give her a hug, saying words that didn't make any sense. The Surenos parted from the table like the Red Sea, clearing a pathway for her to go to him.

"He's been shot in the chest," Gunn said. "Punctured a lung. We think it collapsed. He fell off a roof, but we don't think he broke anything."

"Gabriel?" the strangled little cry escaped Audrey's lips. Was that even her voice? Or somebody elses? Shaking, she went to his side. Pale. He was so pale. His bloody shirt had been torn open and someone had shoved some bandages onto his chest. His clothing and one wing was saturated with blood. Why hadn't he been wearing his armor? He'd said his armor wasn't built for stealth. He should have worn it anyways. Dammit! Why had she let him go without making him wear his armor? Shakily, she took his hand and touched his cheek. He stirred.

"Audrey," Gabriel whispered. He moved his head towards her, but did not open his eyes. His large, strong hand gave her small one a squeeze even as blood seeped from his lips. Typical Gabriel. Trying to reassure her even when _he _was the one who was wounded.

"Gabriel," she whispered. "I am here."

His lips moved, but no sound came out. More blood seeped out of his mouth. After a moment, he quieted down and became still. Audrey's initial reaction was panic.

"He's just passed out," Manuel said, touching the base of Gabriel's neck to make sure his pulse still beat. "He's alive."

"It appears to have been a through-and-through," Gunn said. "Missed the heart and other vital organs. But he's having trouble breathing. We think it caused a collapsed lung."

"H-h-h-he n-n-n-needs a d-d-d-doctor…" Audrey stuttered.

"You's sees any doctors around here?" Manuel said, gesturing around the room as he spoke. "We Surenos … we been taking care of our own for a long time now."

"I stitched up the bullet holes," Gunn said, his expression concerned. "Army field medic training. But I have no idea what to do about a collapsed lung. I'm only trained to patch 'em up enough to evacuate them to a _real _doctor."

"Jose'," Manuel said, turning towards his brother. "We need you to do that thing you do."

"Doctor," Jose' chanted. "A doctor. Gabriel needs a doctor."

"Help Jose' set up the uplink," Manuel said to the Surenos who had come to retrieve the computer equipment. "You … run a wire up to the roof. You … set up his laptop over there and aim the webcam over to the operating table. You … you're going to have to help him make contact with his friends he's been talking to and see if any of them has access to a real doctor. Explain to them Jose's off his meds. They've seen him like this before."

"Doctor," Jose' chanted. "A doctor. Gabriel needs a doctor. The angel protected him. A doctor. The angel protected him."

"How's Amando doing?" Manuel asked one of the other Surenos.

"Not so hot," the gang member said. "Gunn said it looks like it shattered his tibia."

"What's a tibia?" Manuel asked.

"His … um … leg bone," the young gang member said. "The bone just beneath the knee."

"We'll see who Jose' can scrounge up to tell us what to do," Manuel said, and then turned to everybody to shout. "All right peoples! We's got wounded. Everybody knows the routine!"

Around her, Surenos rushed around, gathering together whatever medical equipment they could and lining it all up on the table. Some of the equipment looked like things that had no relation to either wounded persons injuries, but they gathered it anyways. This was a situation the gang had obviously faced many times before. The two girls who had accompanied their group to the hospital took turns carrying the equipment over to the sink, which did _not _have any water, and pouring water from several canteens onto the most likely equipment to be used. Not sterile. But the best they could do under the circumstances.

"Gabriel…" Audrey whispered, caressing his cheek. His skin was deathly pale and his breathing was labored gasps, but his pulse beat strong and evenly in his chest. "Just hang on, okay. You're going to be allright."

His lips moved. Her name. He whispered her name.

Audrey bent down to kiss him on the lips, the kiss she had wanted to give him for weeks now but hadn't dared tempt him, and then leaned in further to whisper the secret she'd been hiding for months now in his ear so nobody but him would hear.

"You've got to hang on," she whispered. "You've got to hang on because I haven't had a chance yet to tell you how much I love you."

He smiled.


	40. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

"Audrey," Gabriel whispered, trying to force his wings to _work _for him moments before he hit the ground. He didn't _want _to go back to the bosom of the heavenly Father. He wanted to live!

Pain.

Darkness.

Gunshots.

The clank of steel.

"I've got you, little brother. You're going to be okay." Michael?

Darkness.

More pain.

"Gabriel! Hang on!" Gunn.

"Did you see that?"

"Get him inside!" Manuel?

Pain.

More darkness.

_He could feel the tug back to the Father. The Father was done punishing him. He had proven himself to be loyal by obeying the prohibition against tasting mortal love. The Father had forgiven him. All he had to do was give his assent and his pain would end. He could return home to the Father's love and have his former strength restored._

_Assent?_

_Why did he need to give his assent? Angels had no free will._

'_The Father gave you free will when he cast you down to make you mortal,' Michael whispered to him. 'It is your choice whether you return now or stay.'_

_Gabriel didn't –want- to return to the Father. Not yet. He loved the Father with all of his heart, but he had grown to love the Prophet even more. He refused._

_Rage. The Father cast him back down into the Earth._

Someone reaching their fingers inside his chest. Pain. It hurt. He screamed.

"The lung has collapsed." Gunn.

'_Follow your heart, brother,' Michael whispered. 'Give him what he needs, not what he asks for.'_

Darkness.

"Gabriel? You're going to be okay." Gunn.

"Audrey," he pleaded.

"Somebody go get Audrey!" Gunn shouted.

Darkness.

"Gabriel?" It was Audrey. He could feel her hand in his.

"Audrey," he whispered. He felt her kiss his cheek. It was wet. She was crying. Words wouldn't work. She didn't have to be afraid. He had chosen to stay. He would stay so he could protect her. He squeezed her hand.

Darkness. The sensation of being in between.

"Gabriel … you've got to pull through. I haven't had a chance yet to tell you how much I love you."

Was he dreaming? Audrey loved him. He smiled.

Darkness.

Pain.

Someone reaching inside his chest again. Pressure. It hurt! It hurt so badly! It hurt so badly he couldn't even scream!

_He could feel the holy fire calling to him, urging him to give up his pain and return home to the Father. The Father wanted him to return home. He refused. The Father had given him free will, and then changed his mind. Well Gabriel wasn't going to –let- him change his mind. Audrey loved him. He didn't want to go! _

_Another force reached out, prevented the Father from taking him from his physical form. Scolding. Anger. It wasn't time! The Mother would not let the Father defeat her by cheating. _

'_It is not your time yet, brother,' Azrael said, severing the holy fire from his body that tried to lure him home like a siren song. The angel of death shoved him back into his body._

Pain. He screamed in agony as pain combined with pressure in his chest, but he refused to let go. It lingered and lingered and lingered, but he hung onto his pain and cherished it. As long as he felt the pain, he knew he was still alive!

Darkness.

Drifting in between. A song. He could hear the sweet spark of the divine in her voice as she sang to him, to give him something to anchor him here so the Father couldn't take him from her.

_I can fly, but I need his wings_

_I can shine even in the darkness, but I crave the light that he brings_

_Revel in the songs that he sings, my angel Gabriel! *_

He could feel her touch his cheek as she sang, the song beautiful and sad as she stopped every few words to sob. His body wouldn't obey yet so he could let her know he was back. He was in a lot of pain. But he was alive. He could feel the spark of the divine permeating her song, willing it to speed his healing.

_I can love, but I need his heart_

_I am strong on my own, but from him I never want to part_

_He's been there from the very start_

_My angel Gabriel. My Angel Gabriel. *_

"Audrey," he whispered, at last getting his mouth to work at the same time as his lungs. His lung hurt. It hurt really bad. But he relished the pain because it meant the Father had not been able to take him from her. He slowly opened his eyes and forced them to focus.

"Hi," Audrey said with a sniffle, touching his forehead and running her fingers through his hair. "We thought we'd lost you for a few minutes there."

"I didn't want to go," Gabriel said weakly. It hurt to breathe. He could only take shallow breaths.

"Don't talk," Audrey said, bending to give him a gentle kiss on the lips. "Plenty of time later to talk. You just heal, okay?"

"I love you," Gabriel whispered, whispering the words aloud he had only ever dared whisper when she was in the throes of her nightmarish visions. It hurt his damaged lung to say them, but it hurt his heart even more _not _to say them.

"I know," Audrey said, tenderly kissing him, longer this time. "I love you, too."

His heart filled with joy. He smiled and drifted back to sleep.

*song 'My Angel Gabriel' by Lamb


	41. Chapter 40

Chapter 40

He could feel the warmth of her body snuggled into his, the same way she had done more than a year and a half ago when he had fallen from grace and she had decided she would do what it took to prevent him from leaving. She had shared her warmth even though she had hated him back then. Things were different now. Now … she loved him. His little Prophet loved him. He pulled her sleeping form towards his and relished the ease with which she instinctively molded her body into his. As though she were a part of him. Separate … and inseparable.

"Hey," a voice said. Not Audrey's. He resented the intrusion into his happiness, but he opened his eyes. He was in some sort of hospital room. Audrey stretched out alongside him on the narrow bed too small for even his wings to fit, sound asleep, her face blotchy and red from crying. And beautiful. She was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen in 14 billion years of existence.

"The angel came and protected you," Jose' said, his demeanor twitchy and odd, but relatively lucid. "Protected you. Eduardo said he shielded you from more bullets with his wings."

"Michael," Gabriel said. The memory was ethereal and vague, but he had felt Michael's presence. "My brother."

"Wh-wh-why did his wings shield you b-b-but yours did not?" Jose' asked.

"I am fallen from grace," Gabriel said, no longer sad when he said the words. In fact, when he said them, he felt … proud. Defiant. "Cast out to pay for the sin of blind obedience to the Father."

"The Father is angry," Jose' said, his hands twitching nervously as he got caught in the repetitive feedback loops of one of his schizophrenic behaviors, and then made an effort to break it. "Angry. The F-f-f-f-father is angry you didn't come home."

"Michael told me to follow my heart," Gabriel said. "My heart is here."

With that thought, he curled his wing inwards to tug his 'heart' even closer and covered her with his downy warmth. Audrey stirred and sleepily murmured his name. How long had he been out? Had she weathered her nightmares okay?

"I see my patient is awake," a disembodied voice called out from the ethers. The voice had the slightest hint of a non-English accent that Gabriel could not quite place, not Spanish.

"Awake," Jose' said, not even turning towards the voice. "He's awake."

"This is the first patient I've ever had who had wings," the disembodied voice said. "Can you adjust the webcam?"

"S-s-s-s-sorry," Jose' said, moving aside and enabling Gabriel to see the laptop sitting on the table behind him with a live webcam broadcast of a man. "F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-forgot."

"It's okay, Jose'," the webcam man said gently. "I'm just glad to see your brother found you some more medication. How are you focusing?"

"O-o-okay," Jose' stammered, his hands shaking in rhythm to his stuttering and his expression frustrated. "Sssss-still hear the voices."

"It's only been three days," the voice said. "It's going to take at least two weeks before the medicine can build up enough in your system to fully alleviate your symptoms."

Three days. Gabriel realized that meant he'd been out of it for three days. No wonder Audrey was exhausted.

"Who are you?" Gabriel asked.

"Doctor Maneesh Pasala from Bethesda Naval Hospital," the voice said. "Jose' called me when you were shot down to guide your medic friend through the proper procedure to re-inflate your lung. They didn't have any anesthesia. I'm amazed the trauma didn't kill you."

"I'm not easy to kill," Gabriel said, and then remembered human social customs. "Thank you."

"We've been hearing rumors one of your species walked the earth," Doctor Pasala said. "Quite frankly, the Pentagon thought it was mass hysteria after … whatever it was that happened."

"Your government still exists?" Gabriel asked. He knew from having spearheaded the heavenly host for the Father that the various government agencies and militaries of the planet had been specifically targeted for extermination.

"Bits and pieces," Doctor Pasala said. "Not much. But those of us who are still alive are trying to do what we can to help the survivors."

"Most areas we've travelled through believe the government is dead," Gabriel said. "Some are making due. Others are not."

"It is dead," the Doctor said, his face growing weary and defeated. "We've got infrastructure, but nobody left alive to run it and no way to get the resources people need to where they need them. If humanity is going to pick itself up and start over, they need a way to talk to one another."

"The lightning that travels from east to west," Gabriel said, remembering Audrey's cryptic message.

"Problem is," the Doctor said, "nobody knows to think to even try uplinking to the government military satellites. The big cities where most of the people were computer savvy are dead. All that's left is a few hackers … kids like Jose' who'd think of something so outrageous as hacking into a military spy satellite and using it to piece together a communications network."

Gabriel was silent for a few minutes.

"I-I-I-I m-m-m-must follow the P-p-p-prophet," Jose' said, his face intent with concentration as he tried to ignore the voices and focus. "Wh-wh-wh-what iffff I t-t-t-teach them to c-c-c-c-communicate?"

"The angel?" the Doctor asked.

"The p-p-p-people on the w-w-w-w-way," Jose' said. "T-t-teach them how to d-d-d-do it." The young man was having great difficulty getting out the words, but he was shaking with more than tremors from his mental illness. Gabriel could tell the young man was extremely excited.

"Maybe you could teach people how to set up an uplink in each city you travel to?" the Doctor suggested. "Most people these days have computers. They just have no idea how to communicate using them once the internet goes down."

"Most areas we've travelled to have sporadic or no electricity," Gabriel said.

"Electricity can be generated a variety of ways," the Doctor said. "Jose' has been trying a few of them out in Santa Fe."

"S-s-s-solar and w-w-w-w-wind," Jose' stammered. "W-w-w-we don't have any w-w-w-water."

"I know nothing of these topics," Gabriel said. "I'm just a soldier who's a long way from home."

"But Jose' does," Audrey whispered sleepily, stirring at last in his arms.

"Good morning, little Prophet," Gabriel said, a small smile lighting up he face as she stretched and opened her eyes. Her beautiful, velvet-blue eyes.

"It's still the middle of the night there," the Doctor said, and then added, "good morning, Audrey. I see our patient is finally awake."

Audrey sighed and groaned as she stretched, slipping her hand comfortably along his torso and then burying her fingers into the downy under-feathers of his wings. "He needs to rest. Stop putting ideas into his head."

"I think it's time we take a hint, Jose'," the Doctor said, a knowing smile on his face. "Why don't we finish this conversation in the other room so our charge nurse can take care of her patient?"

'O-o-o-o-o-o-okay…" Jose' stammered.

After several minutes of fumbling with wires, Jose' shut down the terminal and removed it, along with a long wire that fed up to a makeshift satellite antenna on the roof, leaving them alone.

"Good morning," Audrey said, blushing. She looked at him through veiled eyelashes as though not sure what to say next.

Gabriel reached up to touch her cheek with the palm of his hand, sliding his hand down to rub his thumb across her lips. He heard her ragged intake of breath, and then she rubbed her thumb across his. She waited for him, her eyes expectant. She was waiting for him to make the first move.

Reaching up, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for the first true kiss he had ever given. Their lips touched, awkward at first as he gently explored the butterfly light softness of her lips. Warmth filled his heart as the kiss exquisitely lingered, and then he grew bolder, tasting down to the corners of her mouth. Taste. Before he had fallen, he had never truly known taste. Her lips tasted salty, with a lingering taste of sweet.

"Gabriel," Audrey murmured, nibbling on his lower lip, causing a curious sensation to build in his core. He felt as though he wanted to wrap himself around her, to wrap her physical body in his own heart so he would never be separated from her. He wanted to taste her. She gasped and opened her mouth. He wanted to taste every inch of her. Tentatively, he licked the edge of her lips and was surprised when the tip of her tongue darted out to meet his. The sensation in his core began to build.

For millennia he had watched the ancestors of humans kiss and engage in intercourse for procreation, but never before had he been able to _feel _it. Never before had he been able to _taste _it. Never before had he felt any _desire. _Now, however, the feeling building in his core grew more insistent, exquisitely urgent, telling him to _do something._ It felt like … hunger.

Rough. Where her tongue met his, it was rough and wet, with a lingering taste of sweet. Her mouth. He wanted to taste the inside of her mouth. Cautiously he darted his tongue inside to taste the inside of her mouth and sucked his breath in sharply when her lips closed around his tongue and sucked it inside, her tongue wrestling with his, trying to taste _him _even as he tasted _her. _ She tasted so good. He didn't ever want to stop.

His breathing was ragged and uneven. His lung hurt, but he didn't care. He'd been waiting a very long time to kiss her and now that he was, he didn't want to ever let her go. Hunger for something more, like a coiled spring centered in his chest, sent shivers through his body. He wrapped his arms around her tighter, pulling her entire body on top of his and shifting his weight so he could wrap her in the protection of his trembling wings. His lung hurt, but he didn't care. Pain blended with pleasure to spread the most pleasurable warmth he had ever felt down to his loins.

Some part of his mind whispered that what he was feeling was human desire. He wished to consummate their relationship, to make love to her and bind her to him forever. He wished to make love to her so bad it hurt. He shuddered with all the repressed emotions he had been bottling up since the day he had met her, wishing to find release in her arms. Although angels had supposedly not been created to feel, to exist in the material realm, for some reason his body knew what to do and clamored for him to just _do it! _He could feel her body as it melted into his and he knew that Audrey wanted to consummate their relationship as well.

His lung hurt. It hurt really bad. But he didn't want to stop. Now that he had her, not even death would keep him from her. But he was weak from blood loss and the wound to his lung. The room was beginning to grow far away and spin, lending an ethereal feel to their kiss. He realized he had forgotten to breathe and gasped for breath, his breathing ragged and hoarse with desire. He winced as the stitched-up hole in his lung made itself felt. He felt himself sliding towards unconsciousness, his hand loosening its grip even though his mind commanded it to stay.

"Easy," Audrey whispered, giving his lower lip a playful nip and then slowly breaking off her kiss. "Not too much at once. You've been mostly dead for days."

"Mostly dead?" Gabriel asked, feeling disappointed.

"It's a line from the Princess Bride," Audrey said, smiling at him. "A movie."

"Oh," Gabriel said. "I've never seen this movie."

"It's a movie about true love," Audrey said, leaning in to give him one last kiss, and then snuggling back into his embrace, her cheek pressed against his chest so that she could listen to his heartbeat.

"Maybe I should see this movie sometime," Gabriel said. "Perhaps I will gain some wisdom from it?"

"You've already mastered how to give a perfect kiss," Audrey murmured. "What else is there to need to know?"

Audrey drifted back to sleep in his arms. With a contented sigh, Gabriel did the same. Audrey loved him. Never in his entire, very long existence could Gabriel ever remember feeling so happy.


	42. Chapter 41

Chapter 41

"Pssst! Audrey…" Lena called, peeking into the room.

"Shhhh…" Audrey whispered, gently twirling her fingers through her beloved's hair and relishing the feel of the thick, silky strands slipping between her fingers and thumb. "He's sleeping."

"Manuel and the Reverend are requesting your presence," Lena whispered. "Something about a showdown with the West Street gang. The ones who shot Gabriel."

"But what if…?" Audrey asked.

"I'll sit with him for a while," Lena whispered. "In case he wakes up."

"Thanks," Audrey whispered. She reluctantly moved her hands down to caress the broad, high cheekbone that she had once thought brutish and whispered into his ear. "I'll be right back, my love. Lena will be right here if you need anything. Okay?"

Gabriel murmured something in his sleep, reaching for her and grumbling as she slid out of his embrace, and then settled back down. She tucked another blanket around him. It was warm in the room, but she didn't want him to miss her body heat. They depended on the window to provide sunlight and air during the day, while they used a string of LED Christmas lights run off a car battery Jose' charged with a solar panel the Surenos had scavenged from one of the abandoned houses for lighting at night. Like everything else in Santa Fe, Saint Vincent's Hospital had no electricity or running water.

Audrey straightened out her hair and headed down to the lobby of the vacant hospital where the Surenos had set up a sizeable guard to protect their newest territorial acquisition … and the wounded angel who lay recovering inside. The lobby was abuzz with nervous activity. Not the usual rhythm she'd come to expect from the Surenos. Gunn was embroiled in the middle of an intense conversation with Manuel, the Sureno leader.

"What's up?" Audrey asked the Reverend.

"The leader of the West Street gang has requested a meeting," the Reverend said. "He sent an envoy to set up a time and place."

"Possible retaliation?" Audrey asked.

"The envoy insists the meeting is in good faith," the Reverend said. "But who knows? These kids think absolutely nothing of knocking each other off because somebody's great grandfather dissed somebody else's great grandmother a long time ago."

"What does this have to do with me?" Audrey asked.

"They've asked to see Gabriel," the Reverend said.

"That's impossible," Audrey said. "It's all he can do right now to get to the bathroom on his own without passing out. He lost a lot of blood."

"It's been five days," the Reverend said.

"And he was unconscious three of them," Audrey said firmly. "Tell them I will meet with them first. If they have something worth saying, then we'll arrange a meet with Gabriel when he's feeling a little stronger. I'm not going to set him up for a potential showdown unless he's strong enough to take care of himself."

The Reverend moved over to pass along the information to Manuel, who was upset. The Surenos, having seen Gabriel take out three gunmen like it was nothing and then Michael just suddenly appear with his bullet-proof steel-laced feathers to shield his brother's body, had a hard time believing Gabriel was as mortal as they were. Stronger, yes. Faster, yes. With enhanced senses, yes. But still mortal. Michael on the other hand … Michael had been welcomed back into the bosom of the Father and was immortal once more. It was difficult explaining the difference to the gang members.

She'd finally just told them angels couldn't exist in this realm for more than brief periods of time unless they became mortal. She had no idea if the lie was even remotely true, but Michael had become mortal when he had come to protect the Savior and then resumed being immortal after he was killed, so maybe it was true enough? Tact. The lesser truth so the bigger one did not confuse the larger truth. The fib had been something the gang members could wrap their brains around. All had seen how diligently Gabriel protected her and knew he would not wish to do anything as inconvenient as dying and being forced to leave.

Whatever the purpose for the West Side gangs' request, the meeting was set up in neutral territory, a vacant city square with good visibility. The 'showdown' went remarkably similar to when their little group had first entered Surenos territory, only it was two groups that came out from different sides, donning their picture-perfect pose with their competing gang colors and peculiar hand signals, each side attempting to look as threatening as possible to the other side. If it hadn't been so darned potentially deadly, Audrey would have found their rituals to be comical. Like one of those exotic birds on the Discovery channel that performs a bizarre mating dance in order to attract a mate.

"Whats you's all want with the Surenos?" Manuel asked his opposing leader, gesturing to the opposing leader, and then himself, in an exaggerated point as he spoke.

"You's all took our hospital from us," the West Side leader said, a young African-American male of around 27 who Manuel had informed her was nick-named Booker after Booker T. Washington. "There's stuff we need in it."

Audrey noted the way the two leaders hands 'spoke' many of the words they uttered. The larger group of Surenos didn't need to be within earshot to get an idea of which way the conversation was going. They could see from the hand signals what the two leaders were talking about and read their leaders feelings about it in the exaggerated pose each leader took as they spoke. Jose' had been teaching her a few of the hand signals, which were neither military nor American Sign Language in origin.

A comical image of two bantam roosters flaring out their colorful feathers and fighting over a hen popped into her mind. Words from a little-known trilling, bird-like song from a musical her high school had put on, _Hair, _popped into her mind. _"There is a peculiar notion that eloquent plumage and fine feathers are not proper for a man, when actually, that is the way things are in most species…"_* Gabriel. Whenever Gabriel walked into a showdown, he always instinctively flared his enormous wings as an implied threat. The gang leaders didn't _have_ wings, so they used their exaggerated body poses and colorful gang clothing instead. Audrey could almost picture the two gang leaders flaring their plumage and scratching the ground as each staked out their territory.

"You's weren't all concerned about letting _us_ get access when _we _needed stuff from the hospital," Manuel shot back.

"You's all wanted drugs and stuff," Booker said. "We's ain't givin away the only thing we got to trade with the caravans. You's all got that brother of yours to bring you help. We's on our own."

"That's not our problem," Manuel shot back. "You's all keep raiding our gardens and stuff, stealing our food. Why we wanna help you'all?"

"Your brother ain't gonna die if he ain't got no crazy pills," Booker said. "We's just trying to even the odds. We's ain't got no guru tellin us what to do to make no electricity or other stuff."

"He's my _brother_, you fucking asshole!" Manuel shouted, making a hand signal. The Surenos behind him instantly crouched into a fighting stance, ready to rumble. The West Side gang immediately did the same.

"What is it you want, young man?" the Reverend interrupted, attempting to defuse the situation. "I'm sure you didn't request this meeting simply to rehash old disputes."

"My little sister," Booker said, his pose softening. "She's really sick. Got bum kidneys. We's been bringin her to Saint Vincent's three times a week ever since the apocalypse to hook her up to one of them dialysis machines they got to make her blood all clean. It's why we's not let you's anywhere near it."

"That's not our problem," Manuel said, making a dismissive gesture with his hand and then turning his body in an exaggerated pose of someone dismissively turning away. The Surenos behind him changed poses to a similar position.

"How long has it been since your sister last had dialysis?" Audrey asked, stepping forward.

"You's that tattooed lady everyone's saying is the gang leader for the Savior?" Booker asked. "The one that's guarded by an angel."

"I am," Audrey said.

"Where's your friend?" Booker asked.

"Recovering," Audrey said. "Angels don't take any more kindly to bullets than people do."

"My homies claim a second angel came and had bulletproof wings," Booker said. The sentence was phrased as a statement, but Audrey could sense the question stringing out between them.

"Michael," Audrey said. "Gabriel's brother." She noted recognition of the names on the young West Side leaders face. The young man was not totally unfamiliar with the names in the bible. Despite the tough body posture, she sensed fear in the young man's eyes.

"You's tellin me that angel we shot is the same one my Momma tell me about when she used to preach to me all the time?" Booker asked, his hands making a sign Jose' had told her meant something along the line of 'bullshit.' Behind him, the West Street gang twittered. Clarity came to her even as the young man crossed his arms to signal his disbelief. The young man was here because he _wanted _to believe. He needed proof.

"If you didn't already suspect that was true," Audrey said, "you wouldn't be here. Would you?"

Booker regarded her carefully, and then softened his pose.

"You's says we can't see the angel 'cause he's shot," Booker said, "but my homies tell me the other angel was bulletproof. Why you's tellin us two different stories?" It was an accusation that they were lying, that they couldn't really produce Gabriel, but Audrey could tell it was also meant to be a question. The same question she had such a hard time explaining to the Surenos.

"Your homies also told you the second angel was here in a flash, defeated them, and then was gone," Audrey said, instinctively modeling the speech, cadence, and posture of the rival gang leader. She remembered what had happened to her father when surrounded but not possessed by the heavenly host. "In their natural form they're made up of holy fire. If they stay near us too long, your skin will boil, your brains will fry and make your eyeballs will burst out of your head. That's why the Savior comes to us both times in human form. So he don't make our brains explode."

"That's crazy!" Booker said.

"Why you think in the bible god appears to Moses as a burning bush and tells him to look away when in his presence?" Audrey asked, guessing by the rival leaders demeanor and reference to his Momma that he'd probably had more than his fair share of getting preached to in his lifetime. "The apocalypse came and wiped everyone out. Do you still doubt the Father's power?"

"The angel," Booker said, regarding her carefully. "The second one. After he uses his wings to deflect bullets and knocks down my homies, he tells them the Surenos ain't our enemies. He tells my homies we all got a bigger, badder-ass enemy we supposed to be scared of."

This was the first time Audrey had heard this tidbit of information, but it sounded like Michael. Likely he had only addressed the gang members he had chased off from killing his brother. From what Gunn had told her, Michael had been in and out in a flash of brilliant light so fast the ones further back had only caught a glimpse of him.

"The Grigori," Audrey said, deciding to take what little she knew and embellish it to get through to these two groups of knuckleheads that they needed to knock off the gang bullshit and start working together if they wanted to survive. "Nasty things. Kinda like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. Only they got wings and are as smart as a human. They escaped from hell during the apocalypse."

"You didn't tell me nuthin about no demon things," Manuel said softly, leaning back to her.

"Been kinda busy," Audrey said. "Would have gotten around to it eventually. Why you think we're traveling around the country gathering support for the Savior? He's the only one can defeat them, but to be here he's got to be in mortal form, too, or he'll make our eyeballs boil out of our heads. He came in as a baby, the same as last time. The kids got to live long enough to grow up."

"This tame angel of yours," Booker asked, changing the subject. "Can he heal my sister?"

Aha! The real reason for the requested meeting. Audrey scrutinized the opposing gang leader, looking for the underlying motivations for this meeting and what truth would turn him to her purposes while not crushing the hope he held out now before her like a fragile glass unicorn.

"To walk amongst us," Audrey said, "the creatures of heaven must make their power smaller so the holy fire does not accidently destroy us. Gabriel cannot heal your sister in his present form."

She watched the hope crumble in Bookers face, and then his posture stiffen back into that of the hardened gang member.

"Then we's done here," Booker said, making a hand signal she knew to mean something along the line of 'retreat.' "If the angel ain't gonna help her, than fuck him!"

"But we still have the only working dialysis machine in the city," Audrey said. "And your sister still needs to have her blood cleaned."

Booker paused, as though uncertain, and then assumed another pose, making a hand gesture signaling the others to wait.

"We's not going to _kiss _you's all asses!" Booker snarled. "We's going to _take back _what is ours!"

"Nobody _asked _you to kiss our asses," Audrey said gently. "We walk the earth asking the people the Father forgot to join a _new _gang. A gang that will stand behind the Savior the way your homies are standing behind you right now and _fight _to protect what is ours."

Even as she spoke the words, she knew they were not just her own. That consciousness that sometimes spoke through her was enhancing her words as she spoke them.

"We ain't turning into no sniveling church ladies," Booker snarled contemptuously.

"The church ladies are all dead," Audrey said flatly. "Killed by the heavenly host. The Savior needs warriors who know how to fight this time around so he doesn't get nailed to no more crosses, not pussies saying prayers."

Booker regarded her carefully. "You's sayin' if I convince my homies to join this new gang of yours, you gonna let my little sister use that dialyses machine?"

"I'll even let her meet Gabriel," Audrey said, deliberately moving her body into an exxagerated posture she had seen Manuel use when he wished to signal his gang he was giving assent for something. Behind her, the Surenos shifted and relaxed. Manuel glanced between her and the gang, but remained silent even though it must have dawned upon him that Audrey had just usurped his leadership of the gang.

"You's all gots a deal," Booker said, assuming a similar pose. The West Side gang also relaxed. The showdown was done. The two rival gangs had just reached an accord.

* song _My Conviction _from musical _Hair_


	43. Chapter 42

Chapter 42

"Put her here," Audrey said, pointing to the special chair next to the dialysis machine. "Jose' will be finished running the satellite uplink into this room in another 10 minutes or so."

"I know how to take care of my baby sister," Booker snorted, shifting the position of the emaciated child he carried in his arms. "I been taking care of her even before the apocalypse."

The tone of his voice was tough and conveyed the tough gang leader took offense, but the look in his eyes was pure fear. His sister was extremely ill. The only reason the little girl had survived the apocalypse was because Booker had decided he wasn't going to let his little sister die and had been doing whatever it took to keep her alive. It was a sentiment Audrey could respect. Once … it had been _her _coaxing a certain reluctant angel laying at the base of the cliff to survive.

"You're the only reason she's still alive," Audrey said gently. "But sometimes, willpower isn't enough. Doctor Pasala is a good man. He may know something that we don't."

"I'm just going to start setting up the equipment," Lena said to the little girl. "I'm Lena. What's your name?"

"Serafina," the little girl said, giving Lena a beautiful smile, her large, crooked white teeth and dark glittering eyes showing the inner light that shown through the sickness-riddled shell of her mortal form. Booker had said Serafina was twelve, but she appeared to be a child of no more than nine, a side-effect of the kidney disease which stunted her growth.

"That's a pretty name," Lena said, gently touching the girls arm to reassure her, and then beginning to move the various hoses and tubes they would need to hook up the dialysis equipment over to the special chair.

"My Momma said it means heavenly angel," Serafina said. "She said one day Jesus will come for me and make me one of his angels in heaven."

"That's right, Sera," Booker said, his eyes misty. "We's all just gets to borrow you for a while. You just remember us all once you get to meet Jesus. Gotta put in a good word for the rest of us."

The gang leader sniffed and pretended to cough, and then covered with a grimace, trying to hide the tears that threatened to erupt from his eyes. He glanced at Jose' and his two helpers as they came into the room, wires trailing behind them, and wired up the laptop with the webcam. The West Side gang leader eyed the opposing gang members warily, standing between them and his little sister and puffing up his posture as though he were flaring an imaginary pair of wings to appear more threatening. Like Gabriel did when he was protecting _her._

Several more Surenos came in hauling an assortment of car batteries, jumper cables, and wires, which Jose' orchestrated like a maestro conducting an orchestra. Whatever deficit riddled Jose's brain with voices, crippling him when it came to interpersonal relationships, it did not seem to extend to the electronics equipment he used so well. Savant. Jose' suffered from a terrible illness, but he had gained something in return.

"I g-g-g-got Doctor Pasala," Jose' said, his hands shaking as he attempted to focus, the medication making him more lucid every day. "He'll t-t-tell us what to do."

While Booker deftly finished inserting a series of needles and tubes into his sisters arm, two of his 'homies' automatically went over to a pair of bicycles he had jury-rigged at some point in the past with gears hooked up to what appeared to be a couple of car generators. Booker tussled the little girls' nappy hair, which had fallen out in places, giving her the appearance of a mangy dog, and then gave the order for his underlings to start pedaling. The dialysis machine sprang to life, the gauges lighting up.

"Jose'," Doctor Pasala said in the background. "I want you to look for a piece of equipment that looks like…"

In the background, the naval doctor prattled off a long list of unfamiliar equipment and supplies he wished for them to search for in the abandoned hospital. Gunn came in at some point, competently, if a bit hesitantly, using the supplies the doctor ordered to perform a series of tests the doctor would normally handle himself or have a trained nurse do. Booker sat at his sisters' side, squeezing her free hand and talking to her about mundane things that little girls liked to talk about. Lena bustled about, a mother hen herding the gang members from both gangs like chickadees, admonishing them to wash hands before touching equipment or not to trip over the wires crisscrossing the floor.

"You have funny tattoos," Serafina said to Audrey. "Like my brothers. Only yours are a lot prettier. Do you belong to a gang, too?"

"Yes," Audrey said, giving the little girl a smile. "See this tattoo right here? The one that looks like a cross with a crown and dove wings? That one says I'm a prophet of the Savior, the one you call Jesus Christ. He came back, you know? He came back to help us."

"If I die now," Serafina asked, her eyes concerned, "does that mean I won't get to see Jesus?"

Audrey didn't have an answer for that question. She knew she had died when Jeep had slammed on the brakes, but could remember nothing between her last agonizing moment of pain when she had been aware of Gabriel wrapping her in his arms and wings in a futile attempt to bear the brunt of the impact, and the feeling of warmth she had sensed just before opening her eyes and finding Michael crouched above her.

"I don't know, honey," Audrey finally said. "Gabriel said the soul never dies, it just changes form. But I don't know what happens if you go to heaven and the Savior is still down here. Maybe it will be _you _who gets to help _him _get to heaven this time?"

"I'd like that," Serafina said, giving another big smile. "Booker said you're going to let me meet the angel after we're done."

"Yes," Audrey said, giving her hand a squeeze. "He's _from _heaven, so perhaps he can answer your questions."

The child was emaciated from the vomiting and nausea that came with end-stage renal failure, her skin and hair an itchy patchwork of ebony and ash-grey, her joints swollen and puffy from fluid retention. But when she smiled, it was though heaven itself shone through her eyes. Audrey could see why the West Side gang fought to keep the child alive. She was the only spark of the divine they had left in this god-cursed, dead city. And now, the child had brought two rival gangs together and was forcing them to play nicely. The accord they had in place right now would only last so long as the child survived which, by the looks of her, would not be long.

"You have the symbol of Ishtar on your right hand," Serafina said, pointing to the compass rose. "My Momma read to me once a picture-book of myths. It said Ishtar went down into the underworld to free her husband after he was killed."

"Really?" Audrey said. "We thought it was a compass rose. It tells me where I need to go and who I need to meet."

"Princess Ishtar went to the gates of hell and demanded to be let inside," Serafina said, pleased to know something that Audrey did not. "Do you want to hear the story?"

Audrey looked at Gunn, who had several large needles Doctor Punjabi had asked him to use to draw blood and various fluids to run some tests. Very _large _needles. Audrey decided a tale would distract the little girl from her discomfort.

"I'm not familiar with that legend," Audrey said, settling into a chair next to her. "I'd love to hear it."

"Ishtar's husband was killed in battle," Serafina said. "Ishtar decided she didn't like that, so she went to the gates of hell and pounded on them to let her in, and do you know what she said?"

"What?" Audrey asked.

"She told the gatekeepers to the underworld, _'__Here, gatekeeper, open your gate for me,__Open your gate for me to come in!__If you do not open the gate for me to come in,__I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt,__I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors,__I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living. The dead shall outnumber the living!_"

The little girls' eyes sparkled as she spoke in a great, booming voice, as though _she _were Princess Ishtar pounding upon the gates of hell and making the descent into the underworld until, at last, she had freed her husband. Audrey could understand why, to a child whose spirit clung to its mortal shell as tenuously as hers, why the thought of someone being able to batter down the gates of hell would be appealing. As Serafina finished her tale, Audrey was smiling.

"That's a wonderful story," Audrey said. "I had never heard it before. So now I know this symbol on my hand is more than a compass rose." They paused a moment, listening to the sound of the two West Side gang members huffing as they pedaled the bicycles and the quiet whir of the dialysis machine purifying Serafina's blood. At some point, the original two gang members had been replaced. Two fresh cyclists struggled to pedal fast enough to generate enough electricity to keep the dialysis machine running.

"What's this symbol mean right there?" Serafina asked, pointing to another of the symbols on Audrey's forehead. "The little lamb by a crown of thorns? Booker has the crown of thorns tattooed around his wrists."

"Those symbols say I sacrificed my life to save the life of the Savior," Audrey said. "There was a car accident and I was killed."

"You were dead?" Serafina asked, her eyes owlish and wide. "Did you see Jesus?" By the way she asked it, the idea didn't seem very far-fetched to her.

"I had _already_ seen the Savior," Audrey said. "He has returned to us. I helped his mother give birth to him … see this symbol right here with the hands and a dove? That's symbol says it was my hands that first welcomed the Savior into the world. And this other symbol … it means song. I was so happy that I cried."

"Did Jesus bring you back, like he did with Lazarus?" Serafina asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

"The Savior is now a tiny baby," Audrey explained. "Like in the bible the first time he came. So he sent the Archangel Michael to bring me back, instead."

"Not Gabriel?" Serafina asked.

"Gabriel was sent to … protect me," Audrey hedged. Tact. Serafina did not need to know the complicated undercurrents which permeated heaven at her age and frail state of existence. "See this tattoo right here? The one that looks like a cross with a hand pointing to the left? That says whoever messes with me has to deal with Gabriel. His nickname is the Left Hand of God."

"I can't wait to meet him," Serafina said, leaning back into her seat while the blood pumped out of her body, through the dialysis machine, and back in again. "A _real_ angel. I wish I had _my_ own angel to watch over me." Tired. The poor child looked exhausted. She shut her eyes.

"You do, sweet child," Audrey said, squeezing her hand before handing her back over to her brother. From the look on Booker's face, he knew his sister didn't have long to live, but so long as she was here, he would do whatever it took to protect her. It was a look Audrey knew well. On a whim, she reached over and gave the rival gang leader a squeeze on the shoulder. Here, amongst the darkest, most violent underpinnings of post-apocalyptic life, she had found grace. She just hoped the Father was paying attention.

"Audrey," Serafina asked when her brother stepped away to speak to his rival gang leader, Manual, her voice weary and small. "When I die, who will protect my brother?"

"Your brother protects _you,_" Audrey said.

"Before she died," Serafina said, "Momma got real angry at Booker and started screaming at him. She said a bunch of terrible things he did and said he was going to hell."

The heavenly host. The heavenly host must have possessed the poor girls' mother and screamed damnation at those around her just as had happened everywhere else the heavenly host had invaded. Audrey suppressed the urge to scream obscenities at the Father. Tact. The dying girl didn't need to know the Father was a flawed god.

"A lot of people got very sick just before the world ended," Audrey said. "It made them say things they didn't really mean."

"I'm so tired, Audrey," Seraphina whispered. "I'm so tired that all I want to do is go and be with Momma in heaven. But I'm afraid if I go, Booker's going to be sent to hell and I won't be here to bust him out. Like Princess Ishtar. Who's gonna bust Booker out of hell if I die?"

Hell. The fear that had kept her and Gabriel apart for so long. Not that _they _would go to hell, but that their actions would cause the _other _to be condemned to hell. Booker was no angel. He needed to spend at least _some _time making penance for his actions. But if _she _could forgive Gabriel, then god should be a big enough man to give those creatures who were less than perfect, but still contained some hint of grace, a chance to redeem themselves. Just as Gabriel had proven he was capable of redeeming himself.

Anger boiled in her veins at the Father who abused his power to condemn others to hell. She was _done _being afraid of hell! Defiance. Audrey could feel the fire of holy blasphemy boil in her veins, but ever since her confession that she knew she was as capable of misusing power as the Father, she'd had better control of her gift. She opened her mouth and carefully let the gift of holy blasphemy flow through her.

"The Savior will bust him out of hell," Audrey said, her eyes glittering with anger. "The Savior will bust out anybody who agrees to follow him and make amends. Like he did for me."

"Booker don't believe in Jesus," Serafina said, sorrow in her eyes.

"But Booker believes in _you,_" Audrey said. "And _you _believe in the Savior. You must _make _him believe. You must _make _him promise to serve the Savior so he can make amends!"

Serafina settled back in her chair and sighed. Not a sigh of regret, but a sigh of relief. In that moment, the child looked so small and frail it appeared she would simply break. Only her will had been holding her together all this time. Will … and the fear that when her will finally broke, it would be her brother who would pay the price.

"Audrey," Serafina said. "You must make him believe. You must make him serve the Savior when I am gone. Please."

"I promise," Audrey said.

After they had finished with the dialysis, Booker settled his little sister into a hospital bed. Audrey could tell by the look on Gunn's face when he came back into the room several hours later that the news was not good. Manuel came in behind him, but was silent. Audrey had usurped his place as leader of the Surenos as far as this temporary accord was concerned and, oddly enough, Manuel did not seem to mind. Leadership was a heavy burden for one so young to bear. The young gang leader didn't seem to mind stepping back and letting Audrey take the lead so long as she took care of his brother and didn't step on any toes.

"We ran those tests Doctor Pasala asked," Gunn said, the compassion in his eyes a stark contrast to his outward, bearded, fierce biker appearance.

"She's dying," Booker whispered, his shoulders slumped. "We's kinda already knew that. The Doc at Saint Vincent's said the same thing just before the apocalypse hit. I told 'em I'd give her one a mine, but the Doc said it was too late and gave her six weeks to live. Ha! She outlived him by more than a year and a half!"

"She fights to stay here because she knows you need her," Audrey said gently. "She has a strong spirit. But her body is failing her. She clings to stay because she loves you."

"She ain't scared, you know?" Booker said. "She ain't scared of dyin'. She's a tough little shit. She tell you that story she's always tellin' about pounding down the gates of hell and springing someone from there?"

"Yes," Audrey said gently.

"She thinks I'm some kinda hero gonna come and get her," Booker said. "She tells me all the time she believes in me. She believes in _all _of us. But –I- don't believe in me!"

"She doesn't stay because she fears where she'll end up in Sheol when she dies," Audrey said gently. "She stays because she fears _you _are the one who's going to need busting out from Sheol. In her mind, she's Princess Ishtar surviving the 60 plagues, and she needs to stay so she can bust you out."

Booker placed his head down in his hands and began to weep. "Whats' we's all gonna do when she leaves us an we ain't got no more heavenly angel tellin us Jesus gonna come make everything okay?"

Audrey squeezed his shoulder as the fierce gang leader broke down and wept. Gunn looked on, uncomfortable, his eyes full of sorrow. Gunn had lost more than his fair share of brothers-in-arms in Vietnam, many who'd lingered and died after being injured. He could relate to the gang leader. Manuel came over, hesitant, and then placed his hand on the rival leaders shoulder to give it a squeeze.

"Seraphina can come here for treatment as many times as she needs," Manuel said, for once not making the strange gestures gang members so often made to accentuate their movements. "We's all work something out to share the place. Ain't many of us left in this city no more. Don't do nobody no good if we all's die out cause we's too stupid to share."

Booker reached up to squeeze the hand Manuel offered on his shoulder, and then turned to Audrey. "Isn't there anything that angel of yours can do to help her?" Booker pleaded, tears in his eyes.

"Gabriel became mortal in order to remain here and protect me," Audrey said. "He is very strong, but he gave up his heavenly powers. Only the Savior has that kind of power, and he is still too young to use them."

"Cherish your sister while you still have her," Gunn interrupted. "But do what you can to ease her mind that you're going to all be okay."

Booker appeared to digest that suggestion for quite awhile.

"Seraphina keeps tellin me she can't wait to go to heaven and see Momma again," Booker said, wiping his eyes and trying to resume some of his previous toughness. "Maybe … maybe if I knews she was gonna be okay…"

"Gabriel has agreed to come speak to her," Audrey said, deciding that she would impose upon Gabriel to answer questions for the brother, as well. Not just the little girl. "Angels will often withhold the truth, but they cannot lie. Just remember that when you ask questions of him in front of your sister. There are some truths she doesn't need to hear."

Booker nodded. Audrey left the odd trio, two rival gang leaders and an ex-special-forces biker, together in the room to talk while she went to fetch Gabriel. It was an odd little ménage-au-tois. She hoped a way could be found for the two rival gangs to come to a permanent accord. Without each other, neither gang would survive.


	44. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

"What are current human customs when you wish to form a permanent union with another of your species?" Gabriel asked the Reverend, deliberately schooling his face into an unreadable expression in what he knew was a futile attempt to pretend the question was being asked for informational purposes only.

"It's gotten a lot more liberal in recent years," the Reverend said, a shit-eating grin lighting up his face, "but most couples still prefer to get married."

"What is the proper procedure to bring this marriage about?" Gabriel asked.

"Anyone we know?" the Reverend teased, deliberately baiting him.

"The procedure?" Gabriel asked, his expression dead-pan.

"Do you want the simple procedure?" the Reverend asked, raising his eyebrows and giving him a knowing smirk, "or the one guaranteed to make the female's heart flutter?"

Gabriel regarded him carefully, weighing the question in his mind. He had never been a creation prone to excess of any sort, always choosing the simple, practical, and pragmatic path to achieve an objective. It was this tendency which had made him such an effective 'enforcer' for the Father all these millennia. Audrey, however, seemed to have peculiar notions, what Lena referred to as a 'romantic streak.' It was out of his comfort zone, but then, _nothing _about his experiences as a mortal creature the last 18 months had been within his comfort zone. For Audrey…

"I wish to know the procedure most guaranteed to achieve the desired objective," Gabriel stated. "To gain the females consent."

The Reverend spent the next 45 minutes enlightening him about all the ways he had witnessed humans 'get hitched' as he called it. As a former Elvis-impersonating wedding minister, the Reverend's knowledge of potentially winning strategies was both elaborate, and exhaustive. By the end of their conversation, Gabriel had come up with a plan. Having waited 14 billion years to have another creature whisper those 3 magical words he'd never dared hope he'd hear whispered about _him_, not the Father, he wasn't willing to take any chances with botching the execution. The Reverend gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder and left him with his thoughts.

Gabriel was mulling his plans over in his mind when he realized he wasn't alone. He suppressed a rare chill of fear.

"I can feel your presence, brother," Gabriel said. "It doesn't become you to lurk."

Azrael appeared in the room, his beautiful ebony skin and even blacker wings sucking the very sunlight out of the room. Death.

"I do not wish to go," Gabriel stated evenly. "Not yet. Not until the Prophet reaches the end of her natural life."

"I am not here for you," Azrael said, his expression stern.

"You bear a message for me?" Gabriel asked.

"A warning," Azrael said.

"I do not fear Sheol," Gabriel said, an instinctive sense of fear gripping his gut even as he said the words. Not fear of Sheol. Fear for how he now understood the Father had taken to misusing Sheol to punish his creations for even minor transgressions ever since Lucifer had defied him and might potentially extend that punishment to the woman he loved.

"What do you remember about the Mother?" Azrael asked.

"Nothing," Gabriel said. "Only vague memories. Of a time, before the Father granted us our awareness, of the Father being very happy."

"Do you remember her at all?" Azrael asked.

"Nothing," Gabriel said. "It is forbidden to even speak of her. It is rumored you serve both the Father _and _the Mother."

"You defied the Father," Azrael said, neatly avoiding the subject. "He asked you to return and you refused."

"I love the Father with all of my heart," Gabriel said. "I will serve him faithfully whenever he is in need. But it is time for the Father to let me live my own life."

Azrael smiled. Suddenly the black pallor of the death he brought lifted, giving Gabriel a glimpse of the beautiful brother he had known when they had still been spirits frolicking at the Father's feet. Even wearing the dark vestments of death, Azrael was beautiful. Loss of the companionship of his brother made Gabriel feel suddenly sad.

"You sound like her," Azrael said softly. "She is very proud of you."

"Who?" Gabriel asked.

"The Mother," Azrael said. His smile disappeared and, with it, the glimmer of the innocent creature he had once been. His brow furrowed with concern.

"What do you know of the Mother?" Gabriel asked.

"I am in the uncomfortable position of serving two masters," Azrael said. "I am not permitted to advocate for one or the other no matter what my personal thoughts are on the matter. Only to carry out their wishes."

"You're not supposed to be here right now, are you?" Gabriel asked.

"I am here to bring home another," Azrael said evasively. "It is not my fault you sensed my presence."

"You come for the little girl," Gabriel guessed. He had spent the afternoon speaking to the child, telling her tales of frolicking in heaven at the feet of the heavenly Father and all their adventures, as well as tales of great battles only hinted about in the ancient texts. The child was a rare and beautiful spirit, the kind of soul the Father looked forward to welcoming into the Garden when Azrael brought them home. The child was also very, very tired.

"She has refused my offer to alleviate her suffering many times already," Azrael said, his wings fluttering in frustration. "Soon, she will have no choice. Free will can only go so far."

A strange sensation flooded through Gabriel's veins, the urge to fight his brother and prevent him from taking her, but he suppressed it. Death was not an enemy to be fought, merely a change of scenery that temporarily separated mortal souls until they could be reunited in the next phase of their evolution, like a parent stepping off an escalator moments before their child. Sometimes, a soul might wish to wait so they could step off the escalator as close to a loved one as possible, but death was not an enemy. To a creature that had existed as long as there had been a universe, such separations were but the blink of an eye.

"She fears for her brothers' soul," Gabriel said.

"Her fears are not without justification," Azrael said. "The brother has done some very bad things."

Gabriel now understood how painful the separation felt to mortal creatures disconnected from the Father who had no assurances they would ever see their loved ones again. Time moved differently down here. What appeared to be milliseconds in heaven caused years of suffering. Given the ease with which the Father had been condemning souls to purgatory lately, Gabriel couldn't blame the humans for being afraid.

"Do you believe the idea the Prophet has instituted contains a solution?" Gabriel asked. Audrey had disclosed to him this morning that she wished to help the two gangs reconcile and then send them out into the area to trade the communications technology taught to them by Jose' for things their people needed.

"I can divulge nothing," Azrael said evasively. "You know it is forbidden."

Gabriel was silent. The words 'I can divulge nothing' was a code amongst immortals to look deeper when the Father prohibited discussion of a topic.

"What will happen if I consummate my union with the Prophet," Gabriel asked, understanding the real reason Azrael was making his presence known.

"The Father has already given you your answer," Azrael said, sorrow registering in his eyes. "Youare a paradox."

"I was supposed to die," Gabriel guessed. "The Prophet was not supposed to save me."

"Michael pleaded intervention by the Mother on your behalf," Azrael said. "Only when the Mother and the Father disagree can I avoiding obeying a direct order from one of them. Ever since the Mother and the Father separated, the procedure they use to resolve such a dispute is a wager."

"What kind of wager?" Gabriel asked.

"I am not permitted to tell you," Azrael said, his expression miserable. "It is the nature of the game they play."

"He will condemn my soul to eternal damnation in Sheol," Gabriel said, his tone uncharacteristically defiant. "I've been to Sheol. It's not so bad once you get used to the fumes from the Keep."

"The Father ordered Michael to trade your life for hers as a peace offering to the Mother," Azrael said. "The Prophet was supposed to see you breathe your last painful breath at the base of the cliff, be satisfied that justice had been done, and go about her merry business."

"Only Michael knew something the Father didn't," Gabriel guessed. "He knew about her dog. He tricked them."

"Yes," Azrael said. "You don't remember the Mother, but the spark of her burns strong in the Prophets soul. She is passionate and feels very strongly, but she is also much more forgiving than the Father. The Savior inherited the best of both parents without many of their faults."

"I recognized the spark of the divine in the Prophets voice as I lay broken at the bottom of the cliff," Gabriel said. "It is what kept me here when all I wanted to do was leave. The Prophet commanded me to live, so I obeyed. I thought at first it was the Father because it was so familiar, but I now recognize the energies are different."

"The Father felt he was doing you a great honor by selecting you amongst the flock to be his peace offering," Azrael said. "You are indispensible to him. The Mother never dreamed that _you_, the most loyal and obedient of all the Father's angels, and what they _both _also mistakenly assumed to mean unfeeling, would fall in love with her agent or she would have sought different terms for their wager."

"Why does the Father forbid our love?" Gabriel asked. "Is it not good that I protect the Prophet and her mission to help the Savior with my life?"

"The Father would have welcomed you back into his bosom as soon as the Prophet was satisfied," Azrael said. "Neither the Mother nor the Father realized the Prophet carried enough of the divine spark to compel you to override their will, or that you possessed the willpower to continue to exist in mortal form once you had been separated from the Father. The Father is very upset he has permanently lost his left hand. Sacrificing your life was only meant to be a gesture"

"A month in a coma was an experience I would have rather skipped," Gabriel stated, rare sarcasm lacing his voice. "I don't understand why Michael was able to recover so quickly once he separated from the holy fire, while it took _me _nearly a month simply to figure out that I needed to breathe."

"Michael has been asked to assume human form many times," Azrael said. "You have never done so before. Michael also _flew _down to Earth and _then _cut off his wings in defiance to sever his link to the holy fire. His defiance gave him strength. _You _had your holy fire severed on the way down from the cliff and were already mortal when you hit the ground. The Father sacrificed you without your knowledge or consent."

"Only the Prophet wasn't satisfied," Gabriel said, "and I didn't die."

"Your continued existence and the Prophets continued defiance have created a paradox," Azrael said. "The Mother and the Father have been forced to repeatedly come together to amend the terms of their wager. They are being forced to communicate directly with one another for the first time since Eve ate the apple."

"Oh," Gabriel said. What else could he say? The rumors were true. He had a Mother. She had left the Father. The Father was both very angry and also heartbroken she had left and wasn't behaving rationally. Now … because he and Audrey had done something unexpected, the Father and Mother were being forced to talk.

'_You gave him what he asked for,'_ Michael had said that night at the top of the cliff. _'I gave him what he needed.'_

"Oh," Gabriel said a second time as memory of his brief time 'in between' when he had sensed the Mother prevent the Father from luring him back to heaven, something about not letting the Father win by cheating. Although he still did not know the nature of the wager, it began to dawn upon him what Michael had done. Michael had tricked both deities.

"You, the most obedient and loyal of all the dogs of heaven," Azrael said, almost a whisper, "have proven even a wild spirit such as the Prophet can be gentled. She is very much like the Mother. Even as the Father condemns you to burn for all eternity in Sheol, he is intrigued, and he is torn, for you offer him hope."

"You said you come with a warning?" Gabriel asked.

"A reminder," Azrael said. "Do you remember why the Father recalled Lucifer from Earth in the first place?"

"The Grigori broke free after Eve ate the apple and Father fractured the heavens by casting mankind out of Eden," Gabriel said. "It was rumored that only the Mother had kept their power at bay."

"Lucifer refused to come and fight," Azrael said. "His wife was with child and begged him not to go. We lost. Badly. Because we were short 200 angels. It is why the Father was angry enough to condemn not only Lucifer and his men to the Keep, but also to send the flood and condemn their wives and offspring to Sheol, even though they were innocent of any wrongdoing."

"Whether or not I marry the Prophet," Gabriel said, "I know the consequences if the Grigori break free. The Prophet and all I have grown to love here would expire under the reign of the Grigori. Father would have no choice but to send another calamity."

"Just remember that," Azrael said. "Learn from our brothers' mistake. Lucifer had no idea the Father had limitations on his power to defeat the Grigori. You do."

"I love the Father," Gabriel said. "If he needs me for a _real _reason, not just because he wishes to win a wager, than I shall fight for him. Even if it means my own death. But never again will I simply give him everything he asks for, without question, unless it also feels like the right thing to do."

Azrael nodded in agreement, but not speaking the words because, as he had stated at the outset, it was forbidden for him to voice an opinion.

"Will you allow me to warn the Prophet that you come for the child?" Gabriel said. "She will be heartbroken the child wishes to leave, but she acknowledges it is time for the child to go."

"The child will refuse me … again … unless the brother takes some step to demonstrate he is on the path to redemption," Azrael said, his ebony wings drooping with sadness. "I fear that if she does not come willingly before her mortal shell fails her completely, that she will become lodged in limbo and unable to move on."

It was something humans often couldn't understand, that death was could be a mercy. It was the ultimate irony that Azrael, the Angel of Death, was the second-most-beautiful of all the angels, second in beauty only to Lucifer. Azrael was also exceedingly sensitive, even more so than Michael. Azrael felt each life he took very deeply and rejoiced when one he called home was worthy to re-enter Eden. It pained him to watch Serafina suffer.

"Perhaps the Reverend will have a solution," Gabriel said. "I find, for a human, that he is very insightful."

Gabriel heard voices outside the door to his room. Audrey.

"I will return," Azrael said, and then disappeared.


	45. Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Gabriel got the unpleasant job of breaking the news to his little Prophet. The Reverend, however, as always, had a solution. Booker had come to recognize that it was time to let his little sister go, and Manuel, it turned out, both sympathized with his pain and also did not wish to be left out.

"Will it hurt?" Serafina asked Gabriel.

"No, child," Gabriel said, a tear escaping one eye as he held her hand. "Azrael has promised to have your Momma waiting for you at the gates, even before you enter heaven, so that you don't have to be scared."

Gabriel had witnessed innumerable passings in his very long existence, even escorting many of the worst of the worst to the gates of Sheol, but this was the first time he had ever lost someone he had come to care about while wearing a mortal shell. Humans felt everything so deeply. The feeling of heartbreak and loss was almost more than he could bear, and he had only known the child a few days. What would it feel like if he ever lost his little Prophet and were forced to remain behind for a lengthy period of time before he, too, could be called home? It was a pain he hoped he'd never have to experience.

"Reverend?" Gabriel asked. The Reverend had performed the last rites for Serafina earlier that morning. The way the child had sat back and given a sigh of relief had been very moving.

The Reverend, wearing his black ministerial vestment as he had not packed fancier attire, but with Lena's lavender mohair scarf with a makeshift cross hastily tacked onto each end around his neck to signify a sacrament robe, gestured for the two rival gang leaders to step up to the rickety table and small vial of precious water they had managed to scrounge up in the desert summer heat for the occasion. Since Manuel had been raised loosely Catholic, Booker Presbyterian, the Reverend was Methodist, the only bible they had was the Anglican King James version Michael had given Audrey, and Gabriel's presence as a bona-fide angel who had informed them that the flesh-and-blood 'Satan' so often renounced as part of most Christian rites was little more than an elemental force of physics, and everybody's reluctance to pledge allegiance to a deity who had ordered the genocide of their species, they had finally settled upon a hybrid ceremony, reasoning that the apocalypse and real-life birth of the Savior the two gang leaders were about to pledge allegiance to now negated any past disputes about which ceremony was 'right.'

"What do you both ask of the church of the Savior?" the Reverend asked. They had decided to base their strange little patchwork of post-apocalyptic faith on the foundation of the Savior, with the Mother and Father as secondary spirits. The Mother had abandoned them, while the Father was fickle and prone to wiping their species out every now and then. Only the Savior had proven himself a reliable foundation upon which to base faith by the very fact that not only had he kept his promise to come back a second time, but he had also defied the Father to do so.

"Faith," the two young men stated together, remembering that part of the ceremony.

"What does Faith offer you?" the Reverend asked.

"Um…" the two men hemmed.

"Life everlasting," Audrey whispered.

"Yeah … life everlasting," the two men repeated.

"If then you desire to enter into life, keep the commandments 'thou shalt love the Savior with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and thy whole mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,'" the Reverend said, making the sign of the cross 3 times in front of each young man and muttering, "Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito." The Reverend then dipped his thumb into the vial of water and made the cross on each young mans' forehead stating, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Serafina smiled, the white flash of her crooked teeth against her ebony skin showing how very proud she was of her brother, and gave a content sigh.

"Enter thou into the temple of God, that thou mayest have part with the Savior unto life everlasting," the Reverend said, reaching out to embrace both young men.

"Amen," they both said, looking awkwardly at each other. Getting baptized along with your opposing gang leader was something _neither _of the tough young men had ever anticipated doing.

"See, Booker," Serafina said. "That didn't hurt at all."

Booker choked back tears and moved over to his sisters' side, kissing her hand. "I'm sorry I caused you so much pain, little sister."

Gabriel could sense his brother had arrived. He signaled the Reverend, who hustled everyone out of the room, except for Booker.

"Gabriel," Serafina asked. "I'm scared. Could you please stay?"

"Sure, little one," Gabriel said. He couldn't recall his heart feeling so heavy since the night he had misconstrued Audrey's 'gentle rejection' of the young Mormon boy. "There's nothing to fear. But I will stay if it brings you comfort." He gave Audrey, who was already crying, a reassuring hug as she passed him on her way out the door.

"Do you think it would be okay if Booker sees the angel too?" Serafina asked.

Azrael had made himself visible to Gabriel upon his arrival. Gabriel shot him an inquiring look. Azrael nodded and made himself completely visible, his feathers glossy and black and his beautiful ebony skin shining with an internal light. For Azrael, this was a joyous occasion. Serafina, 'heavenly angel,' had been aptly named by her mother.

"You's better take good care of my little sister," Booker said, stepping protectively in front of his little sister and puffing out his stance to look menacing even though Gabriel could clearly see terror in his eyes, "or yous'all gonna answer to me. You got it? I just take a oath I don't do no bad shit no more but serve the Savior, so's ya mess with her, you's all gonna have to answer to _him!_"

Gabriel had to admit the kid had guts, standing down the Angel of Death, who even the Father feared.

"I come to bring your sister home," Azrael said gently, no annoyance in his voice, but a hint of amusement registering in his stern, glittering black eyes. "I am glad the Savior has just gained so bold a holy warrior to carry out his will."

"You hear that?" Serafina asked, unafraid. "You're a holy warrior now. For the Savior. You'll have made up for all those sins in no time."

Azrael smiled, a beautiful dark smile, his white teeth glittering in his ebony skin the same way that Serafina's crooked white teeth glittered in her sickly, ashen-black skin. For some reason, it put Booker at ease.

"So hows you's all do this thing?" Booker asked. "You's just touch her and she … dies?"

"No," Azrael said, his expression one of joy. "The Father has been waiting for Serafina to return home to him for a very long time. She gets to fly."

Azrael knelt on one knee, as thou making a marriage proposal, and held out his hand. "Come with me, little one. Your mother awaits."

Serafina cautiously reached out to take his hand, and he pulled her to stand. Gently, the Angel of Death bent down and gently kissed her on the forehead. As he did, her skin transformed from its sickly ashen pallor to a healthy milk chocolate color, pink tinted the ebony skin of her cheeks, the fluid retention and dark circles disappeared from her eyes, and her hair grew in curly and healthy. With a huge grin on her face, Serafina held his hand and danced effortlessly around the Angel of Death, squealing with delight at the simple pleasure of being able to walk on her own without exhaustion or pain.

"See, Booker," Serafina said. "I's all better now. I can tell Momma what good care you done taking care of me while she's been gone." The little girl ran up to her brother and gave him a joyful hug.

"I love you, little one," Booker said, sobbing unabashedly. "You's all put in a good word for us all whens you get to meet that Savior of yours, okay?"

"It will be _you _who need to put in a good word for _me,_" Serafina said. "He's here now on the Earth. It's your job to help him. Just like Audrey and Gabriel. Promise?"

"I promise," Booker said through his tears.

"Come, little one," Azrael said gently, holding out his hand. "Your Momma awaits, and then we get to go into the Garden of Eden and play."

"Do they have unicorns there?" Serafina asked.

"Yes, little one," Azrael said. "All creatures that are good and pure eventually get to reside in the garden."

"I love you, big brother," Serafina said cheerfully. Like all children, she was ready to run off into the next great adventure without so much as a backwards glance. "Remember your promise."

With a flash of blinding light, Azrael and Serafina were gone. It was then Booker looked over and saw his sister's sickness-ridden mortal shell had never left the chair. Azrael had allowed her brother to see his sister as she left the Earth as she truly was, a perfect heavenly creature. Booker shakily walked over to his sisters empty shell, an expression of utter peace upon her face, and wept.

Gabriel had witnessed countless passings in his very long existence, some beautiful ascensions into heaven such as this, some violent with the spirit kicking and screaming as Azrael snapped their necks to pry their soul from their mortal shell and dragged an evildoer such as Gunn had seen straight to hell. But this was the first time Gabriel had ever _felt _what it was like to witness a human pass. It felt like … his heart was breaking … and he more than anybody _knew _what paradise the little girl now resided in. How could humans, cut off from the light of the heavenly Father, bear the pain?

Somehow, Audrey had sensed his need and ended up in his arms. He hadn't even realized he was crying.


	46. Chapter 45

Chapter 45

_A Grigori lunged at her, teeth and claws bared as it aimed for her throat. The Savior cried out in terror, but it was no longer the cry of an infant, but a young boy. Nephilim circled the Savior, chittering their hatred of the Father who had cast them into Sheol to suffer when the sin of disobedience had not been theirs, but their parents. The Father was vulnerable. Weak. Open to attack. _

"_The Savior!" she screamed. "He's in danger. We must defend him at all costs!" She pulled her knife, Gabriel's knife, and assumed a fighting stance, her heart racing in terror._

_The Reverend, Lena, Gunn and Jose' rushed to the Savior's side to defend him, turning back-to-back to face the oncoming threat. In the background she became aware of a larger battlefield. The fallen who could relate to the disciples were beginning to rise up and fight the Grigori, who were so numerous they teemed like a great plague of locusts._

"_This was once –our- world, human!" the Grigori snarled as it lunged at her throat, knocking her to the ground. It sneered at her and shouted obscenities the same way the heavenly host did, but the Grigori could become as corporeal as their angel cousins could. Its claws sliced through her abdomen like daggers. She screamed for help._

"Gabriel!"

"Shhhh, little Prophet," he whispered into her ear as he slid in behind her as he did every night. "Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

_She stabbed the creature in the eye. It howled in rage and retreated, trumpeting in a thunderous voice to its friends to come help it. The Grigori circled, egged on by the chittering Nephilim. It was joined by a second, and then a third Grigori. She could not defend against three at once. They attacked._

"Gabriel … help me!" she screamed.

"I am here, my love," he whispered, gently gathering her in his arms. "I will protect you with my dying breath."

_The Grigori began to tear her apart. She could –feel- the pain of each wound as it sliced her flesh. She screamed. Gabriel leaped into their midst, mace drawn. The Grigori trumpeted their rage, drawing even more of their kind to their aid. _

'_You will not defeat us –this- time, Left Hand of God," the Grigori leader snarled. "We inhabited this world while your kind were little more than drooling infants. We shall destroy you, and then we shall destroy the Father himself."_

"_You will do so over my dead body," Gabriel growled, his expression menacing as his fingers clutched the mace. He flared his wings, ready to fight._

_Gabriel was beautiful in his battle armor, but he was now mortal. The light of the heavenly father no longer flowed through his veins as it had the last time he had done battle with the enemies of the Father. His wings were no longer a weapon. Even Gabriel had his limits._

"_You must survive, my love," Gabriel told her, his eyes filled with a combination of love and regret. "No matter what happens, so long as your spirit endures, -I- will endure. Uriel will bring you to safety."_

"No!" she cried. "Gabriel! Don't do this! Please! We must do this together!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered into her ear, his hand gently caressing her cheek. "I am here to protect you."

"_You must survive," he repeated, grabbing her and giving a kiss, all the love he bore for her ringing through her heart as he kissed her goodbye and then shoved her into the arms of his waiting brother. "I must atone for my sins by completing this task my Father has left undone so –you- are not punished in my stead. This is –my- job to finish."_

_Out of the corner of her eye, one by one she saw the Reverend and Lena fall to the Grigori and be torn apart. Jose' rallied some of the anonymous, teaming faces to their side, but there weren't enough. First Jose', and then mighty Gunnlaeif fell, swinging his machete to decapitate a Grigori even with his dying breath. Michael flew in and pulled the Savior to safety, removing the Savior from the presence of the humanity he had incarnated in to save. She screamed as another angel pulled her into the air, away from Gabriel. The Grigori suffered massive causalities, but eventually even Gabriel succumbed to the sheer number of gigantic lizard-creatures which attacked. Gabriel took as many of them with him as he could._

"Gabriel!" she screamed, her voice anguished as she keened. "Don't leave me!"

"I am here, little Prophet," he said. "Whatever is to come, we will face it together."

_She fought the angel who held her pinned in his arms, preventing her from going to him, kicking and screaming, but she was not strong enough to break free. Mortal flesh was no match for flesh imbued with the holy fire._

"Let me go!" she shrieked, half in anger, half in anguish as she struggled against the arms which surrounded her. "We must fight together! He's not strong enough to do this alone!"

_He atones for his sins!" Uriel sneered at her with contempt. "If only the Father had punished –you- in his stead and left you dead at the side of the road!"_

"Shhhh… little Prophet," he whispered. "Do not fight me. I am here to protect you."

_Off to the side, Lucifer wavered between following his brethren and helping the fallen angel who still fought on the side of the Father even though the Father had cast him down. She looked across the smoldering landscape and their eyes met. His eyes were filled with indecision and sorrow. Lucifer understood Gabriel's sin and it and it made him hesitate, but it wasn't enough!_

"Help him!" she screamed, reaching out to the Fallen who wavered. "Please!"

"Shhhh…" he whispered, strong arms gently holding her as she struggled in her sleep. "I am here."

_Uriel held her until the Grigori had finished him off and retreated before letting her go. He sneered in hatred at Lucifer, taunting him in his arrogance. Lucifer's face hardened in hatred before he turned and left. He was joined by humans. Humanity saw fellowship with the other creatures the Father had condemned and followed him. The Savior was gone, with no promises of a third coming. The tide had turned against not only the Father who had caused this crisis by fracturing heaven in the first place, but also the Savior, who had run out of time to finish his work. The opportunity to turn Lucifer was lost forever._

_She ran to Gabriel's side. He was mortally wounded, gasping in pain as blood ran out his lungs, his mouth, his ears. His belly had been ripped open and chunks of flesh torn out of each limb. There was nothing she could do to save him._

"Gabriel," she sobbed. "What have you done?"

"Shhhh…" he whispered in her ear, gently pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "I will always protect you."

"_We will reunite someday in heaven," he whispered, his eyes focusing on some distant light that only he could see as he squeezed her hand. "My love…"_

_The light went out of his eyes. As she sobbed, his body turned to light and dissipated. _

"_He wanted to live as one of you," Uriel said flatly, no expression in his eyes, "and now he has died as one of you. The Father gave his word you would not be punished, but he will make sure Gabriel never joins you. He has been condemned to an eternity in the fiery pit of the Keep." _

"God damn you!" she screamed, shaking her fist at the sky. "This is all your fault. YOU caused this! YOU did this to him! YOU did this to US!"

_She kneeled in the blood-stained dirt where the blood Gabriel had shed was all she had left of him, tearing out her own hair and keening, clutching the bloody dirt to her chest as she cried out his name until she was so exhausted all she could do was moan._

"Gabriel," she sobbed, her voice so hoarse it was little more than an exhalation. "I failed you."

"I am right here, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered in her ear, gently tugging her sweaty hair out of her face before kissing the spot he had just cleared. "I am not dead _yet._ We still have time to change the shadow of the future you see each night."

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered weakly once her body had finally stopped shuddering so badly that she couldn't speak. "He spoke to me this time."

"Who?" Gabriel asked.

"The Grigori leader," Audrey said, fighting to stay awake despite her exhaustion. "There were millions of them. Like locusts. This is much larger than I first imagined."

Gabriel tugged her gently into his body, nestling her deeper into his wings and ruffling his downy under-feathers to increase her comfort, before he spoke.

"The Grigori are as numerous as all the angels in heaven," Gabriel said. "The Father elevated us to replace them, but we always lacked their ferociousness. When my brother defected, there were no longer enough of us left to fend them off. All of heaven was nearly destroyed. It is why Lucifer was treated so harshly for his transgressions."

"I could physically _feel _his claws tearing into my flesh," Audrey whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I can feel the wounds still."

Gabriel gently felt down her arms to the front of her torso, carefully lifting her shirt to examine her abdomen, and hissed with displeasure, muttering a string of words in the unknown heavenly language that Audrey had come to regard as the angelic version of curses.

"You have scratches again," Gabriel said, his voice a low growl. "Somehow, the future is reaching through to the present and manifesting itself upon your body like stigmata."

"Why does the Father torment me with these terrible visions?" Audrey asked, beginning to cry. "Why doesn't he just come down and tell me he wants me to go to these cities and gather these disciples to help the Savior?"

"I don't think it's the Father sending the visions," Gabriel said. "It is the spark of the Mother which burns brightly in your breast. But the Mother left before I became fully self-aware. I don't know enough _about_ her to have insight into her motivations."

"Gabriel," Audrey said. "I'm scared."

"I know, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered. "You know I would give my life to protect you from harm."

"I … know …" Audrey cried, great sobs wracking her body as memory of the despair she would feel when she finally lost him for good flooded her senses. She had already come close to losing him two weeks ago and, although he was rapidly on the mend, the experience had rattled her cocky 'I-don't-give-a-fuck-about-anything' attitude to the core.

Whoever sent the visions had been merciful enough to temper them while Gabriel had been too weak to comfort her, shrouding them in a fog so that they were not unlike a regular dream, but several nights ago they had come back in force. Tonight's vision, however, had been especially horrific, the scope of the war and insight into the creatures they would battle adding another layer of urgency to her visions.

"Sleep, Little Prophet," Gabriel said gently, pulling her into the intimate embrace she now awoke to find herself in every morning. "We will face the future together."

Audrey loved to nestle in along his muscular torso, her head resting on his meaty bicep for a pillow, his heartbeat clearly audible through the brachial artery beneath her ear, her cheek resting on his chest as he wrapped her in his arms and wings. Ever since he had awoken from his near-death of a gunshot wound, Gabriel no longer left with the dawn, preferring to watch her face as she awoke each morning.

"I love you," she said just before sleep rose up to claim her.

"I love you more than my own existence," Gabriel whispered in return, so softly she wasn't sure it wasn't a dream. "I will protect you with my dying breath and, if that is someday not enough, then I will protect you with my immortal soul."

It was no surprise when she awoke the next morning to discover the compass rose had once again begun to display a direction. East. Their stay at Santa Fe was at an end.


	47. Chapter 46

Chapter 46

"Ya got em'all on that computer of yours, Jose'?" Manuel asked.

Jose' deftly keyed in a series of commands, dancing over the mountain of wires which crisscrossed the cafeteria of the former hospital like a pit of vipers in an Indiana Jones movie, and then gave his brother the thumbs up. Computer monitors of every ilk, ranging from cutting edge laptops to ancient 486 PC's, sprang to life. Audrey noted that while Jose's hands still displayed tremors, a permanent side effect of the medication which kept him lucid, and once in a while he would get caught up in a peculiar little feedback loop of repetitive phrases, otherwise, Jose' appeared to be as sane as she was. If a bit … strange.

"Yo, dot gov," Jose' said into the webcam. "This is Santa Fe. You's all ready?"

"Ten-four," an unfamiliar voice spoke through the speaker in the laptop. "Santa Fe has just gone online for live streaming webcast."

"Jimmy," Jose' shouted across the room at one of his rival, no, _former _rival West Side gang members, "you got your homies on the ham radio on the air?"

"Yo!" Jimmy shouted. "Just ran the roll call on 2 meters."

"Eduardo," Jose' shouted. "You got your homies on the citizens band radio on the air?"

"Ten-four," Eduardo shouted over the ruckus. "Theys all standing by for our broadcast."

"Dot gov, dot gov," Jose' called. "We's ready to rock and roll."

"Santa Fe," the voice called, "this is dot gov. Star wars is all yours."

"My own military satellite network," Jose' said proudly. "And I didn't even have to jack it."

"Actually, you did jack it," a second voice came over the webcast on a second computer. Doctor Pasala. "At least at first. But it's a good thing you did. It's useless to us right now as a missile defense shield. All the cities the shield used to protect are now dead zones. North Korea could detonate a 10 megaton warhead right in the middle of Times Square and nobody would even notice."

"How many people been loggin' on?" Jose' asked.

"The primary channel has been averaging around 50 hits per day," Doctor Pasala said. "Mostly hackers like you trying to find a signal and thinking to try formerly forbidden microwave bandwidths. We've put both audio and digital signals on all channels issuing the invitation to uplink to the satellite to get into the website."

"Fifty hits," Audrey said, remembering her dream and frowning. "That's not much."

"Give it a chance, Audrey," Doctor Pasala said. "It's only been three days. People are searching through the bandwidths looking for a signal that's got something broadcasting on it, and most of _those _people are groups who have banded together to share electrical power. As soon as people realize there's a regular nationwide broadcast, they'll keep coming back.

"Yo!" Jimmy called across the room. "I's gots another thirty old geezers on the net ons the ham radio from all over Santa Fe county. Theys all thinks everybody in the city is dead. They says if we send someones over to their ranches to wire up theys computers to the satellite, theys'll trade us some rations."

"I gots another 20 peoples on the old citizens band," Eduardo called across. "Theys not too far out from the city, but they says the same thing. Two of them says theys gots another half dozen peoples they can hear out of range that they'll be relaying the messages to as soon as we's done."

"Let the show begin," Jose' said, waving his arms like he were conducting an orchestra.

Audrey sensed his presence without turning, a pleasant little thrill shooting down her back as she felt his warmth nestle in from behind her. He nuzzled the back of her neck, his breath tickling her ear. Behind her. No matter where she was, she knew she could trust that Gabriel would always have her back.

"John the Baptist was similarly gifted," Gabriel murmured in her ear as though reading her thoughts about Jose'. "When he was lucid, which wasn't very often towards the end, he could move crowds to follow him like a modern rock star."

"Imagine what the Savior could have accomplished with modern communications and a few doses of Chlozapine," Audrey whispered back, tilting her head to capture his in the crook of her neck and reaching up behind her to touch his cheek. "He'd have had those pesky Romans tossed out of Galilee in no time."

"That's why they killed him," Gabriel said, a note of sadness tingeing his voice. "Rome was the Father's pet project. World domination through military strength with a token senate representing the elite. Subjugation and slavery were essential to Rome's economy. The Savior's notions of democracy and freedom for the common man were upsetting the Father's established order."

Audrey reached further to run her finger around the cartilage of his ear and then slipped her fingers through his hair behind it. Gabriel gave that cute little growl he sometimes gave when he knew she was deliberately teasing him and he wasn't sure whether he wanted her to stop or not. She knew from the day he had first kissed her that he desired her in more than a chaste way. Very _largely _desired her, she thought, her mind travelling down to a very naughty and dirty place. When he had pulled her against him, there had been no hiding _that _reaction. But although Gabriel had become downright affectionate, hungry for physical contact, he still kept a very tight grip on his desires.

Did he still fear the Father's prohibition tattooed across her pelvis? Or was it something else? Audrey knew better than to push Gabriel into anything before he was good and ready. Slow deliberation and careful consideration of all possible outcomes was just the way Gabriel's mind worked. Once Gabriel had pondered his way through whatever problem weighed heavily upon his mind, she knew he would be immoveable in his conviction.

"Is that why he chose to come to America this time around?" Audrey asked.

"I don't know," Gabriel said, remorse creeping into his voice as he pulled away from her. "I never took the time to ask what he was up to. I just obeyed the Father."

"Hey," Audrey said, leaning back into his warm torso before he pulled the rest of the way. "It's in the past. What matters is what you do from this day forward, remember?"

"The creedo of the Church of the Reborn Savior," Gabriel said, repeating the slogan the Reverend had come up with to publish on the government-sponsored church website. "The past is the past. What matters now is how you live your life from this day forward. All sinners are welcome here."

From the tone of his voice, Audrey could tell Gabriel was skeptical as to whether the Reverend's liberal recruitment policies would apply to _him_. Something had been weighing extremely heavily on his mind the past week. More so than the usual deep, brooding thoughts which perpetually occupied Gabriel's mind. Something he refused to discuss. So long as Gabriel lived, Audrey knew he would never forgive himself for attempting to obey the Father's order to kill the Savior, but it seemed to be more than that.

Perhaps it was finally dawning upon him that the Father was neither omniscient nor omnipotent and, therefore, fallible?

"Church dot gov," Audrey said, deliberately changing the subject. "So much for separation of church and state." Reasoning with Gabriel about his feelings of remorse was futile. The Reverends strategy was better. Put all that wasted energy into constructive work that would help the Savior quickly build his new world order once his mortal shell became mature enough to assume the mantle of leadership.

"Your defunct government has _never _been completely separate from religion," Gabriel said. "Or didn't you ever notice your Lady Liberty was a pagan aspect of the Mother and the Great Pyramid of Egypt and All-Seeing Eye adorned your currency?"

"We're ready," Manuel called out across the cafeteria. "Line 'em up."

"You's all got that?" Booker called out the door. "Line 'em up. We's gotta get you's knuckleheads all baptized so's you's can all become holy warriors likes me and Manuel!"

Former rival gang members trailed into the cafeteria wearing a combination of royal blue and purple, the new 'gang color' of the Santa Fe branch of the Church of the Reborn Savior. Gang members eyed each other warily and, in a few cases, one of the lieutenants had to step in and referee, but overall they were well behaved. For gangs. You could only expect so much from an inner city gang. When put in that perspective, the group was doing remarkably well.

"Santa Fe, Santa Fe," the government man at the other end of the uplink called, "we've got the image. Could you please move the webcams in a little closer so we've got angles of the Reverend, the gang leaders, and the Prophet?"

"Maria," Jose' called to one of the Surenos who he'd been training to replace him. "Go get a closeup of the Prophet."

Audrey blinked as she realized an image of herself, with Gabriel leaning into her back, was suddenly being fed live via the satellite uplink to the dozens of computer screens all over the lobby. And presumably also to wherever else in the world anyone was tapped into their live broadcast.

"Do you think maybe Gabriel could flare his wings for the webcam?" Maria asked, her brown face turning pink with embarrassment at addressing him.

"The Left Hand of God does not make a public spectacle of himself," Gabriel said flatly, his expression unreadable as he twitched his wings in annoyance and subconsciously flared them just a little. Audrey smirked. Gabriel couldn't have made a better first impression for the camera if he'd stood in front of the mirror and rehearsed it all night long.

"Thanks," Maria said, on her way to the next set of images Jose' had her running around capturing of the event.

"We make a cute couple," Audrey said, pointing to the computer screens at the image of the two of them together, Gabriel at her back. Gabriel stiffened. It was obvious from the image that they _were _a couple. She had no idea how he felt about that, making it known to the world that an _angel _had fallen love with a mortal woman, something that was forbidden.

"Yes, we do," Gabriel said, making his decision. He pulled her back into his torso, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as though to say 'mine.'

Audrey suppressed an ecstatic gasp and made a lousy attempt at plastering one of Gabriel's unreadable expressions upon her face. Failing that miserably, she allowed the pleased little smile that kept tugging the corners of her mouth upwards to blossom into a full blown one.

"This is a solemn occasion," Lena harped, tottering up and down the lines in her blue evening gown and a pair of too-tight high heels scavenged from an abandoned house. The shoes _had _to hurt. No _real _women's high heels were large enough for the male feet Lena had been born with. "Straighten up that spine. Get back into line. Stop picking your nose…." Lena proceeded to get the 650 or so 'candidates' into as respectable an order as was possible to make 650 street kids, young adults and orphans.

The Reverend signaled them to silence, a few sharp raps on the backsides and knuckles by a few of the gang 'lieutenants' stilling those who weren't as quiet as the Reverend wished, and then began the largest mass baptism ceremony he had ever presided over. Somewhat in unison, the gang members shouted back 'Faith!"

Behind the Reverend, Jose' orchestrated the communications network and cameras and fed it all into the satellite uplink which was broadcasting the image on every channel the government was capable of broadcasting on. No matter what mode of communication someone was using, if they happened to turn on their 'dead' radios or cell phones or CB radios or ham radios or television sets or any other piece of electronics equipment more sophisticated than two tin cans and a piece of string, they would get either the sound or the image along with a banner feed telling them what channel they could link into the .gov website Jose' had just set up.

The lightning which travels from East to west… The nerve center of the operation was in the basement of the defunct Pentagon, but the satellites circled the globe in geosynchronous orbit … clockwise … from East to West.

As they finished up the mass baptism, it was her turn. She'd been baptized Catholic and made her first communion, but had dug in her heels and refused confirmation. Everything that had happened to cause her to become a Prophet had just … happened. It wasn't like she had sat down and said, 'gee … I think I'd like to go flying through the windshield of a car for the Savior.' She didn't trust the Father, nor was she all that sure about the Savior she advocated for other than as the baby she had wished to save, but one thing she trusted was Michael. Michael had never let her down. If Michael protected the Savior, than that was good enough for her.

"Amen," she whispered as soon as the Reverend was done.

She could sense Gabriel at her back. Gabriel was the Left Hand of God. He served the Father. He had _always _served the Father. For nearly fourteen billion years … as long as the universe had existed. Asking him to do anything _but _continue to serve the Father was inconceivable. They hadn't even asked. That's why what he did next surprised her.

"Now it's my turn," Gabriel said quietly, kneeling on one knee in front of the Reverend and bowing his head. His wings stretched out behind him in a formation Audrey thought of as 'humble wings.' It was a posture she had only seen him assume once. The day she had brought him to the spot on the side of the highway where she had died to remind him of who she was and he had begged her forgiveness.

"Gabriel…" Audrey gasped. She understood the significance of what Gabriel was doing. He wasn't simply asking to be baptized, or even to be forgiven for his sins, which he felt he didn't deserve to be forgiven for. Gabriel was making it known that, from now on, his first loyalty lay with the Savior. The vow of baptism had been deliberately reworded to place loyalty to the Savior _above _that of the Father and Mother of the trinity.

"Gabriel," the Reverend hesitated. "Are you sure?" The question hung in the air, the cameras recording it and broadcasting it out into the heavens. This was definitely _not _part of the script.

"It has been brought to my attention that when one serves more than one master," Gabriel said quietly, "they can serve none of them well."

None of them had _any _idea what Gabriel was talking about. Not even Audrey. The Reverend looked to her for direction and she nodded. Whatever had been weighing heavily upon Gabriel's mind the past several days, he had obviously made his decision. The Reverend glanced at Jose'. Jose' nodded and refocused the webcams to catch the baptism on film. Behind them, members of the two gangs, who had been raucously cheering and roughhousing in high spirits after their mass baptism, became so silent that the only sound was the faint static from Eduardo's radio equipment.

"What do you both ask of the Church of the Reborn Savior, son?" the Reverend asked, touching Gabriel on the shoulder and giving it a squeeze. The Reverend _also _realized the significance of what Gabriel was doing.

"Faith," Gabriel said softly, the word coming out almost a plea. Audrey's heart hurt for him.

"What does … what does faith offer you, son?" the Reverend asked, choking up. Behind him, Lena began to cry.

"Life everlasting," Gabriel whispered.

Defiance. Gabriel was making it known that he did _not _accept the Father's condemnation of their love and would no longer blindly obey. Audrey found herself whispering the words along with him and realized, glancing at Manuel and Booker, that _they _understood the significance of what Gabriel was doing, as well. They whispered the words along with him as though trying to lend him their strength.

"If then you desire to enter into life, keep the commandments 'thou shalt love the Savior with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and thy whole mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,'" the Reverend said, making the sign of the cross three times on Gabriel's forehead. "Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito."

The Reverend hesitated, tears coming into his eyes, and then made the fourth and final cross on Gabriel's forehead.

"I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Enter thou into the temple of the Savior, that thou mayest have part with the Savior unto life everlasting."

"I am not worthy to beg either forgiveness or life everlasting from the Savior," Gabriel whispered, bowing his head in humility as a single, perfect tear escaped one eye and trailed down his cheek. "All I ask is that, by serving him without reservation, the Savior find it in his heart to not visit down my sins upon those I love."

"Amen," Gunn said just loudly enough to hear from behind the podium.

Audrey burst into tears. This was about _her._ The vision. Gabriel went willingly to his death to defend the Savior against the Grigori so that the Father wouldn't be able to punish _her_ for his sin of falling in love with her. He was doing this to prevent _her_ from suffering the fate of Lucifer's mortal wife.

"Enter thou into the temple of the Savior, that thou mayest have part with the Savior unto life everlasting," the Reverend said, reaching out to touch Gabriel upon his head, and then urged him to his feet. Gabriel paused, the entire hall holding their breath as he waited, and then rose to his feet.

The room erupted in cheers.

Audrey didn't feel very cheerful. Defiance. Gabriel had learned his lesson well, broadcasting his defiance out into the heavens so there could be no doubt as to his intent. But every single night, she foresaw the price he would pay as a result of it.


	48. Chapter 47

Chapter 47

"We should go around," Gabriel said, scanning the dead city which baked in the August heat like a mirage. "The Prophet has received no instructions about meeting a fifth disciple."

"We need to spread word of the Savior to as many people as possible," the Reverend said, enthusiastic to enter the new city and perform another mass baptism.

One of Jose's new contacts on the ham radio that ran parallel to the website had informed them about a section of railway resurrected to connect Santa Fe to the outlaying Tucumari, saving them nearly two weeks of walking through the hot summer desert. The group of survivors in Tucumari, who had grouped around an elderly ham radio enthusiast to listen to the live mass baptism in Santa Fe, had given them a warm welcome and also agreed to be baptized, increasing 's meager ranks by another 70 members.

"They's always _lots _of old computer equipment and satellite dishes in the cities," Jose' said. "We's can get them's all hooked up to the dot gov website and teach 'em how to hook up the peoples in the 'burbs." Jose' taught everyone he encountered how to splice together whatever mishmash of electronics and radio equipment they had to generate a bit of electricity and get connected. At the moment, was the only game in town.

"Make sure you impress upon them not to just walk in and _steal _it," Gunn added, giving Jose' a pointed look. One of the small settlements that had welcomed them had their enthusiastic teenage son wrestle a satellite dish from the roof of a neighboring house where there were still inhabitants without asking first. The Reverend had taken extra time teaching the young man about that portion of the oath of baptism that referred to 'following the commandments.'

"Ten basic rules for getting along with your neighbor," the Reverend said, adjusting his dark sunglasses and making a famous Elvis 'shooting' pose to accentuate his point. "Don't kill them, steal from them, accuse them of things they didn't do, or sleep with their wife, and everyone will get along just fine."

"You forgot keep the Sabbath," Lena reminded him.

"Which is … what?" Audrey asked sarcastically. "Friday if you're Jewish? Saturday if you're Orthodox Christian? Sunday if you're Catholic?"

"Gabriel?" Lena looked to him, looking for him to referee with some admonition about how the Father wanted things done.

"We should go around," Gabriel repeated flatly, refusing to get sucked into the debate and getting the conversation back on track to the issue at hand. Santa Fe had been a success story. Except for getting shot. But more than a year and a half on the road combined with millennia of watching man's inhumanity to man had taught Gabriel to avoid taking chances. Especially where his little Prophet was concerned.

"It would be nice to sleep in a bed tonight," Lena said, looking extremely wilted in the 116 degree heat, sweat plastering her hair to her head. "If I have to wake up with another scorpion crawling across my skin, I'm going to go insane." The heat had finally forced Lena to discard her wig. She was allowing her natural hair to grow out, but the heat plastered it so close to her skull that it highlighted her masculine features.

"I agree with Gabriel," Gunn said. "Why take chances when we don't need to."

"Myself, Jose' and Lena vote for a shot at a real bed," the Reverend said, forever the diplomat. "Gabriel and Gunn vote for another night getting eaten alive by mosquitos and sand fleas. Audrey? Care to cast a vote?"

Audrey looked at the compass rose on her wrist, which was little help since it pointed a little to the south and _beyond _the city which lay before them. Not enough off-course to rule the city out, but enough to cause doubt as to whether they were supposed to enter. Last night had been a particularly bad night for her, with fresh scratches all over her arms. Her eyes had begun to take on a hollow, haunted appearance from lack of sleep.

"We need to gather as much support as possible," Audrey finally said. "We would have completely bypassed Santa Fe if we'd listened to our fears instead of our hopes."

Hope. The emotion which kept the frail humans going, fighting to survive, long after faith had abandoned them. The frail emotion that Gabriel, after billions of years of ignorance, was only himself beginning to understand. Hope. Hope that by following the wanderings of the Prophet, the Savior would be able to prevent the dark future she foresaw. Hope. Hope that the Savior would protect Audrey from being punished for _his _sins.

'_For I am a jealous god, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me…" _

For some reason, humans always seemed to conveniently forget that portion of the Ten Commandments. Gabriel knew better than to assume the Father hadn't meant that portion of the sacred tablets he had given to Moses. He had _personally _escorted not only Lucifer to the Keep, but had also escorted Lucifer's mortal wife, his half-angel immortal children, and also the souls of Lucifer's fully mortal grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren as soon as each had expired. Even though they had been innocent of any wrongdoing and, in some instances, heroes.

"I'll provide backup while you fly reconnaissance," Gunn said with resignation. Absent-mindedly, he fondled his holstered six-shooter, currently flush with bullets, and his knife. Erik Gunnlaeif had proven to be an invaluable addition to their expedition. The former Special Forces biker was capable of handling almost anything another human threw at him.

Gabriel nodded affirmation and took to the air. Audrey had become more tactful since they had first met, but she still contained a defiant streak a mile wide. Arguing with her would prove pointless. She was frantic to gather enough support to change the dark future she foresaw and nothing short of cold, hard facts would dissuade her. It was up to _him _to gather those facts.

It was so hot out that even flying did not do much to alleviate his discomfort. The wind which slid through his feathers felt more like the winds of Sheol than the cool relief he usually experienced. Although he had formerly noticed temperature changes when he had still been immortal, never had even extreme temperature changes ever caused him anything more than mild discomfort. Now…

Ugh! The human phrase 'sweat like a pig,' came to mind. Although Gabriel had yet to get close enough to a swine to observe how badly the foul-smelling creatures sweated, he had to admit that, if the aforementioned domestic animals bodily excretions were as excessive as his were at the moment, then it would be an apt description for his current state of being. Gabriel finished his flyover of Amarillo and reported back to the others.

"We should go around," Gabriel informed them. "I did not like the appearance of what few humans I could see."

"Did you witness any acts of violence?" the Reverend asked.

"I witnessed very little activity at all," Gabriel said. "The city is a dead zone. Nearly every building has fire damage and there were no signs of cleaning up the aftermath. I surmised the bulk of any survivors have taken refuge from the afternoon heat."

"Any signs of any oil refineries in operation?" Gunn asked him. The petroleum the town of Alamosa received in a trickle via their rail network purportedly came from this area of Texas. They hoped to find a source of petroleum to power one of the thousands of abandoned cars they passed each day to enable them to gain more distance.

"None of these 'flareoffs' you described," Gabriel said. "I saw several of the iron pumps on the outskirts of the city, but none that were in operation."

"Any sign of cars being used?" Audrey asked, slipping her hand into his and lacing her small, slender fingers through his larger ones and giving him an endearing smile. "Perhaps they have fuel we could trade Jose's computer expertise for? Even one gas tank full of fuel would shave as much as two weeks through the desert." For fourteen billion years, Gabriel had avoided falling prey to feminine wiles. Now, his heart melted with a single, endearing look from the Prophet. And she knew it!

"There were several motor vehicles in use within the city," Gabriel said. "They appeared to be security patrols of some sort."

"Security?" Gunn asked. "Perhaps the survivors have been able to instill some sort of order? Like we did in Alamosa?"

"I didn't like the look of them," Gabriel said flatly. "We should go around."

"You didn't like the look of _us,_ either," Gunn reminded him, giving him a wolfish grin. "Appearances can be deceiving."

"The compass rose lead us directly into Alamosa and Santa Fe," Gabriel stated. "The night before each stop, the Prophet experienced a vision informing us a disciple was to be found. We have had no such instructions."

"We should go in," Audrey said. "We need gas. We need allies."

"And we need a real bed," Lena added.

Gabriel sighed. He was outvoted. Again. Per their usual protocol, they would enter the city as a group and request parley with whatever leader had emerged out of the ashes of the apocalypse. With visibility so good in the flat, arid plain, it took them the better part of the day to make the last few miles to enter the city limits. Ever since descending the Rocky Mountains, the best they'd been able to average on foot was eight miles per day.

Gabriel now realized how valuable the time they had spent travelling through the territories under the umbrella of the Mormon church had been. The Mormons were recovering from the apocalypse quickly through a combination of shared beliefs, a tradition of being prepared for emergencies and sharing resources when emergencies happened, and a communications network to get information back and forth to the central church. Wherever they went now, Audrey and the Reverend encouraged people to replicate that success.

"I don't like the looks of this," Gunnlaeif said as they got deeper into the burned-out city. "A lot of this fire damage appears to be recent, and that corpse is fresher than an 18-month-dead body."

"I told you we should go around," Gabriel reminded him, his tone flat, but the slight raised eyebrow signaling his brother-in-arms that he was paying him back some of the constant ribbing Gunn enjoyed dishing out at Gabriel's expense. Finding unburied, desiccated corpses was a fact of life since the apocalypse, as matter-of-fact as finding dandelions or dust, but fresh corpses were always a source of worry. They meant the continued presence of _human _predators, not inhuman ones.

"What's that sound?" Audrey asked.

"Security patrol," Gabriel said, listening carefully to the sound of a souped-up car engine. "It's moving in this direction."

"Let's prepare to meet the locals," the Reverend said, much less enthusiastically than when he had first proposed meeting the locals on the outskirts of the city. He tweaked the white square on his ministerial collar, making sure it was clearly visible. The entire group posed in a formation which had become second nature. Gunnlaeif at the front, Gabriel at the back, the others clustered in a ready stance in the middle. Weapons were visible and safety features clicked off, but the weapons were not drawn unless a threat escalated. As the Reverend put it, 'we're more likely to win friends and influence people if we don't point a gun at them first.'


	49. Chapter 48

Chapter 48

The 'locals' came chugging around the corner in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with some sort of machine gun crudely mounted on the roll bar. Five men rode in the truck, two in the cab, three in the back. Two of them had shaved heads with tattoos etched into their scalp, one sported a Mohawk, and the remaining two had spikey, wind-tussled hair. All wore denim or leather digs with spikes and rivets, but there was no mistaking the 'locals' for bikers.

"Swastika," Audrey whispered. "Skinheads." The man with the machine gun had a shamrock tattooed on his forehead with a darker swastika in the middle and the numbers 6-6-6 on three of the arms.

"Aryan Brotherhood," the Reverend answered, also in a whisper.

"Oh … yay," Lena whispered nervously under her breath. "Road warrior wannabe's."

The man in the back aimed the machine gun at them. Gabriel flared his wings and reached for the handle of his mace while Gunn prepared to pull his pistol. They waited for the 'security patrol' to announce their intentions.

"You four can stay," the man with the machine gun, obviously the leader of the patrol. "The 'Spic and the queer got 5 minutes to get the fuck out of here or they'll be shot."

"We are emissaries from the Church of the Reborn Savior," the Reverend said, launching into his sales pitch. "We seek parley with the leader of your people."

"Only racially pure folk are fit to walk in the presence of the Savior!" the leader snarled.

Behind them, two more similarly outfitted patrol vehicles pulled up and aimed guns at them.

"We don't wish to impose our view of morality upon any who choose to ally themselves with the Savior," the Reverend said in a coaxing voice. "We only seek allies."

"We _have _allies," the leader said. "God himself killed off the weak, the polluted, the unworthy. He left _us _in charge. Only the racially pure are fit to inherit the Earth!"

"W-w-we c-c-can help you set up a c-c-c-communications network to get government help," Jose' said, his tremors and slight stutter increasing due to his nervousness.

"Add mental defectives to the hit list," the Aryan leader snarled, aiming the machine gun directly at Jose'. "We don't _need _no government help. _We _are the government now. The new world order." For hoots, the leader aimed the machine gun at Jose's feet and fired off a few bullets.

"I would not do that if I were you," Gabriel growled, crouching to fly. The machine gun came around and quickly aimed at _him._"

"Mickey," the skinny spikey-haired kid standing in the truck next to him said. "Do you know who that is?"

"I ain't afraid of no winged freak," the Aryan leader, whose name was apparently Mickey, said. "If he's the real deal, then what's he doing walking?"

"It's an angel of god," the skinny kid said nervously. "You're always telling us we're doing god's work, cleaning the filth from the Earth and making it ready for when the Savior comes again. You _can't_ shoot an angel."

"I can't," Mickey asked.

Behind him, Gabriel noted the change in tone of the other 'security patrol' members. A kind of feral twittering. The hair stood up on the nape of his neck. He glanced at Gunn and tilted his head slightly towards the two cars behind him. Gunn nodded.

"No," the skinny kid said. "We're doing gods' work. Just like he is. We shouldn't be threatening him or nuthin."

"Billy, Billy, Billy," Mickey said, reaching out to give the skinny kid a hug. "Thank you for bringing that to my attention. What would I do without my conscious telling me what to do?"

A strangled cry escaped Billy's lips. In a heartbeat, Gabriel was in the air, headed straight for the Aryan leader with his mace drawn, while Gunn fired several shots rapid-fire at the two men manning the other two guns on the trucks. Lena gave a surprised little squeak, and then blindly fired the gun in the same general direction as Gunn. The Reverend pulled the rifle he loathed carrying and fired a few shots. Jose' … hit the deck. With hand tremors as bad as his and questionable sanity, they'd decided it was better to teach him to use something a little more primitive.

"Freak!" the Aryan leader screamed in rage as he pulled the knife he had just used to stab his underling in the belly for contradicting him in front of them and stabbed it at Gabriel.

Gabriel easily blocked the knife with a fan-hook block, twisting the man's wrist until the bones snapped and he was forced to drop the knife.

"Yield," Gabriel snarled, "or feel the wrath of the Left Hand of God!"

"Fuck you!" the Aryan leader shouted, reaching down with his other hand and pulling a gun, trying to get it aimed for Gabriel's chest. "You can go to hell!"

To mangle? Or not to mangle? That was the question. Gabriel looked over at Audrey. She was preoccupied in a knife fight with a skinhead who was sensible enough to stay out of range of the unearthly sharp blade he had given her. He glanced down at the dying young man the Aryan leader had just stabbed, the young man's eyes filled with betrayal as his mouth moved to ask why. Definitely. Mangle.

"I'll meet you there," Gabriel said, swinging his mace and effortlessly smashing in the Aryan leaders' skull. Adrenaline flowed through his veins, but he managed to resist the urge to swing the mace a second time. Bloodlust horrified his little Prophet. Instead, he took to the air and flew over to where Audrey circled an underling who circled and taunted her, but had enough common sense to stay out of range of her blade. The young man's moves were awkward and choppy, far less self-assured than Audrey, who had spent the better part of the time they had known each other learning to use the blade in theory, although never in practice. There was fear in the young man's eyes.

"You going to help?" Audrey snapped. "Or what?"

"You said you wanted to learn to fight," Gabriel said smoothly, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Here's your chance."

"Some help you are," Audrey said, putting on her fiercest face.

"A mother lion teaches her cubs to hunt by corralling the prey and letting the cubs make the kill," Gabriel informed her. He could read the fear in the young man's eyes and could tell exactly how the he would react.

"So now you're my …. mother?" Audrey asked angrily, stepping forward and giving the skinhead a frustrated jab. The skinhead jabbed back and then leaped back a few feet. Audrey was getting madder by the minute, a hint of the unfettered rage that underlay her gift of holy blasphemy that he hadn't seen since they'd left Salt Lake City making its appearance.

"You keep insisting you wish to learn," Gabriel said, deliberately schooling the outer bemusement he had witnessed Gunn exhibit so many times, but inside he was coiled like a too-tight spring, ready to decimate the skinhead if he proved to be a legitimate threat. "The only way to learn is by doing."

Gabriel watched as the young skinhead recognized Gabriel was playing a game of cat-and-mouse with him. If he managed to lay a cut with the female circling him with a knife, he would have to deal with her inhuman guardian. But in the circle of skinheads, mercy was met with the same response the Aryan leader had just given to the skinny underling who had dared question him. Death. Gabriel could almost read the young man's thoughts and knew the exact instant he was going to strike.

"EeeYahhhh!" Audrey shouted, striking down to slash the young man in the wrist as he awkwardly sliced at her, and then grabbing his wrist and twisting it up until he dropped the blade. The young man screamed in terror as she kicked out his leg from beneath him and threw him onto the ground in one of the first throws Gabriel had ever taught her. She screamed obscenities at the young man, the holy blasphemy making her strong and fierce, a dark death-goddess walking the Earth as the blood-lust of her first kill surged through her veins. She swung to give the young man a death blow.

Gabriel caught her wrist and stopped the swing mid-air. Audrey screamed obscenities at him in rage, struggling to get free.

"The quality of mercy is not strained," Gabriel said softly, bending down to whisper in her ear the quote Audrey had once spoken to _him _in a similar situation. "It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath."

Audrey struggled and then, realizing she wasn't strong enough to break his grip, stood there, panting as she glared at him. The young man moved to get up, but Gabriel shifted his position to stomp on the young man's chest, pinning him to the ground. The young man had enough common sense to stay there. Gabriel had trained many legions to do battle on the Father's behalf, both human and angel. Audrey's blood lust neither surprised him, nor appalled him. He could remember a time, before the Father had forced them to take the collar which increased their strength and stole their ability to feel, when _he _had felt such blood lust in battle. It was one of the few emotions not belonging to the Father that he could remember ever feeling.

"Let me go!" Audrey finally whimpered. "You're hurting my wrist."

Gabriel gently took her hand, pried her fingers off the blade, slid it back into the sheath she carried at her hip, and then opened her hand, laying a kiss upon her palm. Gently he massaged the wrist he held between his thumb and forefinger until he could feel she no longer pulled away. Audrey began to tremble beneath his fingertips. His own breathing grew heavier as he realized her anger had transformed into desire, her pupils growing wide and black in the velvet-blue sea of her irises.

"Would you like me to kill him for you, my love?" Gabriel asked gently, as though asking for a cup of tea, "or shall I show him mercy?"

Audrey threw herself into his arms, hungrily nipping at his lip until he acquiesced and gave her his tongue, tasting the inside of her mouth. Blood lust, some part of his brain registered, appeared to be an aphrodisiac for his little Prophet. A lioness who had just learned to hunt.

Audrey molded herself into his body, groaning with desire, as he fought to maintain control. That beautiful, powerful urgency to _do something _began to grow in his chest, spreading through his limbs and down to his loins. He was no idiot. He knew what _something _every nerve fiber in his body screamed at him to _do_. But Azrael's warning had, thus far, given him pause. Until the Savior had grown powerful enough to ensure his little Prophet would not suffer for _his _sin, he would resist throwing all caution to the wind. Much as it was killing him to wait…

Gabriel lifted up the foot holding down the skinhead, releasing him. The young man gave them both a confused look and then ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

"Gabriel," Audrey gasped, hoarse with desire. "Please…"

"It is forbidden," Gabriel groaned, pulling her closer and lifting her so her pelvis rubbed against his manhood which, after 14 billion years of snoozing happily under his breeches, had lately developed a mind of its own. He leaned her back against the hood of the truck the skinheads had come in on. The sudden involuntary flapping of his wings, as though trying to take flight with her to mate, surprised him. His legendary self-control was beginning to slip.

"Please!" Audrey begged, biting him so hard on the lip it drew blood and wrapping her legs around his torso as she molded herself to his body. He knew this was blood lust transformed to pure lust flowing through her veins, not merely her love for him, but it was contagious. Some instinct he could not name caused him to caress her not only with his arms, but also with the curve of his wings, relishing the feel of the curve of her back against the tiny sensitive feathers lining his metacarpus.

"E-hem, ahem, ahem, ahem," Lena coughed, trying to get their attention.

"We have an audience, little Prophet," Gabriel chided his love, more than a little regret tingeing his voice. "Might we continue this conversation at a later date?"

Audrey panted, still trying to capture his lips, and then gave him a good hard nip in the neck marking him as 'hers' before unwrapping her legs and sliding down his torso to stand. It wasn't until she was finally able to stop panting that it occurred to her to appear embarrassed.

"The young man who stopped the Aryan leader," Lena said, no recrimination in her voice as she regretfully broke them apart. "Gunn said he's not going to make it. The Reverend is giving him the last rights, but Gabriel. The young man is asking for you."

"I'll be right there," Gabriel said.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, mortified now that her blood lust had subsided.

"Soon," he told her, tenderly giving her a kiss before tearing himself away to speak to the dying young man.

The Aryan leader had stabbed the unfortunate young man in a prison move known as the 'shank.' The knife had stabbed into his soft belly, and then been aimed upwards under the ribcage towards the vital organs, piercing the lungs and heart. The young man was in a lot of pain, gasping for breath. They had no medical facilities to treat such a wound.

"I couldn't let him shoot you," the young man said. "Mickey always said we were cleansing the Earth for god. Tell god we got it all good and clean for him down here."

"Thank you for stopping him," Gabriel said, the muscle twitching in his jaw as he suppressed his urge to tell the dying young man what he thought of their brotherhoods purist ideals and focused on the one gratitude he had. His own life.

"Do you think I'll go to heaven?" the young man asked.

Gabriel's jaw twitched some more. Angels could not lie. But they _could _omit things.

"I will meet you there soon enough," Gabriel said honestly. It was the truth. Gabriel already knew the Father had condemned him to Sheol.

The young man gasped, and then the light left his eyes. The Reverend closed them for him.

"Azrael?" Gunn asked.

"My brother only comes personally for the very pure of heart, or the most evil of all the evil," Gabriel informed them. "It was an under-spirit who came for this one. Not even an angel."

"Will he be saved?" the Reverend asked.

"He is in Sheol now as we speak," Gabriel said flatly. "Soon enough, I will meet him there."

The Reverend reached over and squeezed his shoulder. Of all the disciples, the Reverend understood most _why _Gabriel resisted following his heart.


	50. Chapter 49

Chapter 49

"Not that I'm eyeballing your guy or anything," Lena chattered amiably, "but … damn girl! How can you resist?"

Audrey glanced over to where Gabriel and Gunn were practicing a new self-defense move Gunn wished to learn. Gunnlaeif had taken to braiding his beard into two long braids on both sides of his chin to alleviate his discomfort at the late-summer Texas heat, giving him an appearance of an ancient Viking. Both men had stripped down to the waist, sweat accentuating their muscular torso's rippling in the sun. The slight paunch Gunn had possessed when they had first met him was long gone, while Gabriel had never possessed anything _but _a six-pack of hardened piston-like abs and ripped-out pectoral muscles. Watching the two former soldiers engage in their daily practice was quite … pleasant.

"He fears the Father will punish _me,_" Audrey said softly. This wasn't the first time she and Lena had had this conversation.

"I thought Gabriel was getting over all that 'sin' stuff the Father preaches," Lena asked. "Thou shalt not this, and thou shalt not that."

"It's not about sin," Audrey said wistfully. "Gabriel now understands that loving another is not a sin. No matter _what _the Father says. It's about what they made him do to his brother."

"Michael?" Lena asked. "You said the Father made him kill him."

"Lucifer," Audrey whispered. "This is about Lucifer."

"Evil bastard," Lena said. "That's what happens when you turn into the devil. Gabriel's nothing like that."

"Gabriel's _exactly _like that," Audrey said. "The Father had them rewrite history to exaggerate what Lucifer did wrong. When the Father sent Lucifer to Earth to oversee humanity, he didn't forbid the taking of mortal wives. Lucifer hated us. It never occurred to the Father that his favorite son would fall in love."

"Oh," Lena said. "The bible kind of skips that part."

As they watched, Gunn got a good grapple on Gabriel and nearly threw him. Only the beating of his wings prevented Gabriel from being tossed to the ground. The two men broke apart and banged knuckles before crouching to get into another match. Had Gunn been eight inches taller and possessed wings, he would be a match for any angel in heaven.

"Lucifer is the key," Audrey said absent-mindedly, seeing the haunted angel who stared across the battlefield at her each night in her visions, all the sorrow in the world in his eyes, before turning away from his brother. "I don't know how, but he is the key."

"What do you know of Lucifer?" Lena asked, her bored oogling gone, replaced by curiosity.

"Gabriel won't talk much about him," Audrey said, "but the Father made him and Michael throw their brother into the deepest pit of Sheol as a test of their loyalty."

"Gabriel obeyed," Lena said. It was a statement, not a question. They all knew of Gabriel's former obedience, each member of their little group silently cheering each small act of defiance Gabriel now took, whether it be the occasional beer, or the infrequent occasions when Gabriel would let slip a curse in the ancient heavenly tongue.

"Gabriel loved his brother," Audrey said. "The same way he loved Michael."

"But he obeyed," Lena said, frowning. "It said Lucifer taught men to make metal weapons and women to be harlots."

"Lucifer taught his _children _to defend themselves," Audrey said. "The Father sent Lucifer to babysit us so we didn't self-destruct, so Lucifer taught us to create civilization. The Father was preoccupied with other issues at the time. He really wasn't paying attention to what Lucifer was doing. He didn't really _care _until he ordered Lucifer to return home and Lucifer refused."

"And now Gabriel has gone and done the same thing," Lena guessed. "But you two haven't …" Lena left the last statement unfinished.

Gunn rushed at Gabriel and then grunted an expletive as Gabriel flipped him straight up into the air like a WWF wrestler, and then brought him crashing down onto his head, pulling his punches at the last moment so Gunn didn't land hard enough onto the ground to do anything but knock the wind out of him. Gabriel still wasn't back to the level of bulk he had possessed when Audrey had first encountered him, but he'd been going out of his way to perform exercises which would help him regain his former strength. Since much of that training was opposite Gunn, the biker was _also _becoming increasingly muscular and hard. Like two gladiators training to someday fight lions.

Or Grigori…

"The Father didn't just punish Lucifer and his men for refusing to return home," Audrey said, turning back to Lena. "Lucifer's children didn't take too kindly to the Father taking their _own _father and throwing him into the nastiest pit in hell. They were half-angel. They were capable of accessing the higher realms. It started a war."

"So they nearly destroyed the Earth," Lena said.

"The Father was the one who nearly destroyed the Earth," Audrey said. "Not Lucifer's children. Lucifer's children _lived _here. The last thing they wanted was to see it destroyed. After a while, the Father's own angels began to question the Father. To eradicate them, he sent the flood."

"The one Noah survived," Lena guessed.

"Gabriel said a lot more than Noah survived," Audrey said. "Noah is a metaphor for certain tribes of people the Father cherry-picked to worship him. The rest, he condemned to Sheol. The Father killed so many people and condemned them all to suffer that he fractured off a third of heaven to create Sheol to contain them all. Sheol never really existed until then, just the Keep."

"Isn't, like, all-that-is, _this,_" Lena said, gesturing to the desiccated landscape that surrounded them, "really part of the Father's own mind?"

"I don't know _how _it works," Audrey said. "I don't think Gabriel does, either. We think of angels as these powerful creatures because they exist closer to the Father, but they're really not that much better off than _we _are. In many ways, they're _worse _off. At least _we _get to tell the Father to piss off and do what we want."

"And pay the price," Lena snorted.

"There's another deity involved," Audrey said. "The Mother. Gabriel knows very little about her, but it appears she prevents the Father from interfering with our ability to choose."

"But she _doesn't _prevent him from punishing us if we choose wrong," Lena stated, disgust lacing her voice. "Gods … can't live _with_ 'em, can't shoot 'em."

Gabriel's torso glistened with sweat as he paused to chug down water from one of the canteens. Drink. So simple an act. So difficult for Gabriel to learn. How far he'd come since she'd first encountered him broken at the bottom of the cliff. How far the _both _of them still needed to travel to get where they needed to be.

"I don't know _how _it works," Audrey finally said. "Gabriel thinks that whenever they disagree, they form some sort of wager to see how things will turn out. The Father doesn't like losing."

"Like Job?" Lena asked. "That book of the bible always gave me the creeps."

"I don't know," Audrey said. "I've never asked Gabriel about Job. Getting information about his past out of him is like prying open an oyster. He doesn't like to talk about it."

"Ahhhh!" Lena laughed. "But once you pry open the shell, there's all that sweet, gooey goodness inside."

Audrey laughed. "That describes Gabriel."

As though hearing her thoughts, Gabriel looked in her direction and smiled. Not a great big smile. Gabriel almost never allowed any emotion to register in his face, as though he was still uncertain about even _having _emotions in the first place, but more and more he appeared to be enjoying his stay here on Earth.

"So back to my original question," Lena said, her voice becoming husky and deep in her best lounge-singer demeanor. "When are you going to pin that boys' wings to the ground and have your way with him?"

Audrey glanced at Gabriel as he stretched like a great lion, his muscles rippling in the sun, ruffling his feathers as he stretched before crouching into another fighting stance opposite Gunn. Beautiful. Gabriel was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Beautiful … and strong. His wings were just … icing. She found it hard to believe she had once looked at the strong set of his jaw, the broad high cheekbones, the firm nose, and thought him to be brutish. His lips … were made for kissing. The soft lips of a lover.

"Soon," Audrey whispered.


	51. Chapter 50

_Note:__ My gratitude to those readers who have followed my little story so far, especially those who have gifted me with reviews. Here's a little gift to someone who requested a little sensual [pun intended] pleasure. A slice of life … a diversion from the road. Not exactly what you were looking for … yet … but a taste [pun intended] in the meantime. We'll get there … or as Gabriel says … 'soon.'_

Chapter 50

Sometimes it really … stank … to still have enhanced angel senses instead of limited human senses…

"What is that … _stench!"_ Lena protested, fanning her nose and pretending to swoon.

"Stockyards," Gunn said. "Although I've never smelled them get _this _bad. The USDA musn't be making the big corporate feedlots clean up their acts anymore."

"USDA?" Jose' scoffed, his body displaying the strange, nervous, tremors he often exhibited when addressing another homo sapien directly without the buffer of a webcam. "Doc Pasala said the heavenly host totally wiped out DC!"

"At least the Father did _something _right," Gunn said, giving Gabriel a wolfish grin. "Wiped out all the politicians."

Gabriel growled something noncommittal under his breath. Although he had formally changed his allegiance to defend the Savior, he still loved the Father with all of his heart. A deeply flawed, vengeful, often capricious father, but still the only Father he had ever known. A year and a half with the Prophet had desensitized him to blasphemy, but fourteen billion years of habit die hard. Bad-mouthing the Father instinctively caused Gabriel to raise his hackles, even when it was the truth. Gunnlaeif was aware of his conflicted feelings... and appeared to enjoy walking that fine line between ribbing Gabriel and arousing his anger.

"Amarillo was just another death zone," the Reverend pointed out, reminding them of their not-too-welcome reception. "No marketable natural resources for trade. Not enough land or water to feed people once the supply chain collapsed. No one left there but criminals and gangs."

"Santa Fe was just we's criminals and gangs," Jose' reminded him. "Maybe we's shoulda stuck around long enough to convert em'all?"

"You saw what they did to the gang member who told them to leave us alone," the Reverend reminded him, his eyes troubled. "I suspect anyone with a shred of human decency got the hell out of Dodge as soon as the Aryan Brotherhood rose to power. Between the neo-nazi's, the survivalists, and the Klan, this state is a powder keg waiting to explode."

After the mishap at Amarillo, they'd decided to avoid former cities and settlements unless the compass rose led them directly into those areas. Since then, they'd had numerous _similar _run-ins. The Lone Star state had some limited petroleum products, just not for the common man. Only predators using souped-up, heavily armed motor vehicles appeared to have found sources.

"Time grows short," Audrey said, her eyes hollow and haunted. Last night's vision had been another bad one, necessitating Gabriel seek out Gunn to administer first aid to a claw mark needing a couple of stitches. "Everything is accelerating. The Savior won't have time to physically mature before he needs our help. We have to get all the pieces of the puzzle into place before it happens."

"We're going as fast as we can, my love," Gabriel murmured, protectively raising one wing to shield her from the worst of the midday sun which pounded down upon them in all its September glory. "I saw railroad tracks at the edge of the city just past the stockyard. Dot gov said they've heard rumors of a working railway."

Gabriel was worried about her. Rain had not come to the land and settlements with a reliable source of water had been nearly as scarce _here _as when they had wandered the Mojave desert. Gabriel spent many hours each day flying afar to survey ahead and search for the precious liquid. His little Prophet appeared to be worse for the wear for his absence. There were some days it seemed as though, without him at her side, some succubus was draining the life force from her body.

"Klu Klux Klan and skinheads," Gunn said, referring to the roving gangs of neo-nazi's they seemed to keep encountering wherever they went. "Not your typical consumer of fine beef products."

"And I thought Salt Lake City was Intolerance-R-Us," Lena said. "The Mormon elders are practically spouting rainbow slogans in comparison. I'll never gripe about them again if I ever return there."

"I don't see why a stockyard would still be functioning," the Reverend said. "No way to get grain shipped in to feed the cattle. No way to get beef shipped out to market. Not all that many mouths left alive once you get them there to feed."

"The railroad?" Lena suggested. "I've seen lots of them big ol' longhorn cattle roaming around loose. Maybe some of the ranchers out here have banded together to ship them to one of the big cities?"

"The old Southern Pacific routes piece together as far as Louisiana and the Mississippi," Gunn said. "It's all local trains tying local markets that have been cobbled together so far. Jose'? Has dot gov gotten any word of any organized supply chains that would ship grain in to support a large scale stockyard out here?"

"Nope," Jose' said. "Just cattles coming out."

"I saw a lot of cattle compressed into a small area up ahead," Gabriel informed them. "Although I didn't see a train, the tracks appear to have seen recent use."

"Dot gov says someone's been shipping live cattle up the Mississippi River," Jose' said. "But they's got no connections to nobody who's in charge of things at the sending end. They's asked if we's find someone in charge, we set them up onto the uplink."

"Well _something _sure stinks!" Lena groused. "It smells like … baked … dead thing."

They discovered the source of the stench as soon as they got over the next rise.

"That's disgusting," Lena said, wrapping her scarf around her nose and mouth and looking away from the pile of bloated, dead cattle carcasses haphazardly piled into a hole in the ground.

"Burial pit," Gunn said. "A certain percentage of cattle never make it to market because they're sick or injured. They're supposed to cover it with enough mulch so the rotting carcasses don't stink."

"How are they feeding all these cattle?" the Reverend asked. "There's not enough natural forage for that many cows."

"Which is obvious by how many dead cattle there are," Gunn said, angrily gesturing to the burial pit. "We'd never crowd them in this much without adequate food and water!" Livestock had been one of the 'crops' raised in the Alamosa region, although never a major one. Gunn knew just enough about raising livestock to know that what they saw now was below normal standards.

"I saw no sign of human activity when I surveyed the area from the air," Gabriel said. "Just cattle."

"Somebody's taking care of them," Gunn said. "They're all fenced in. Which way are we supposed to go, Audrey?"

"This way," the Prophet said, pointing to the compass rose on her hand. Shortly after leaving Amarillo, the compass rose had swung to the south. She pointed directly towards the railroad tracks. As soon as they got there, the line pointing south disappeared.

"Now what?" Gunn asked.

"I guess we're waiting for a train," the Reverend said, dropping his backpack and plopping down to the ground with a sigh.

"Shit," Gunn said.

"Something will come along shortly," the Reverend reassured him. "Don't worry."

"No," Gunn said. "You just put your backpack down into a giant cowflap and then sat right down on top of it."

"Shit," the Reverend said, the aroma of the days-old cow patty belatedly wafting up to his nostrils.

Gabriel suppressed an inward chortle. Shit. How far he had come!

No train came that day, so they finally set up camp, gathering together some dried grasses, dried cow patties, and a few twigs from some dried out bushes to build a fire. Jose' wired up the portable satellite dish so he could uplink to the dot gov satellite and post his daily weblog. The talented young programmer recorded live video of their adventures during the day and then spliced it together each night into a broadcast which, according to dot gov, now had thousands of dedicated viewers all over the world. The ultimate reality television show.

"That's me!" Lena exclaimed at one point.

"The look on your face when you ever saw that pit full of dead cows," the Reverend teased her.

"It was like, eeeewwww!" Jose' teased, scrunching up his face and doing his best over-acted hoity-toity drag queen disgust act.

"Anybody want me to slice off a few steaks?" Gunn asked. "If you put enough chili powder on it, you won't taste the maggots."

"Eeeewwww," Lena said again, hitting Gunn in the shoulder.

It occurred to Gabriel as he soaked up the warmth of the small fire that the odd little group of disciples had become a family. _His_ family. Vague memories, of a time before the Father had elevated his species to awareness flitted into his mind. No female angels had been elevated to awareness to fight the Grigori, only males, but if he closed his eyes and tried to remember, the relaxed banter the group shared now resonated with some forgotten core of his psyche.

There had been female angels in the garden. He was certain of it. _Had _he once had a family? A family that, perhaps, had birthed his kind naturally as humans did, not 'created' them from mud as the Father claimed. The similarities between his species and the humans were too numerous for it to be pure coincidence. The Father had never allowed the elevated angels back into that area of Eden to see the ones who had been left behind. Not even rumors remained. Where had he come from, really? The thoughts he entertained now were a blasphemy so profound he would have cut his own brain out of his head rather than think such thoughts two years ago, but now, he wanted to know.

"How many logged on today?" the Reverend asked, the conversation intruding back into Gabriel's consciousness.

"Six thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven," Jose' said.

"That's not enough," Audrey said. "We're not going to make it."

"That's portals," Jose' reminded her. "Most people's still sharing there's computers. They's getting together as a family or town and watching."

"Like in the 1950's," the Reverend said, and then hastily added, "not that I'm old enough to remember."

The despondent tone to his little Prophet's voice disturbed him. It was a subtlety he would have been oblivious to two years ago, but which tugged at his heartstrings now. Gabriel sat on the ground and gathered her into his arms, adjusting his wings as best he could to not get too filthy in the Texas dust. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that his species had _not _been bred to spend the amount of time walking and sitting on the ground as he'd been doing ever since he'd fallen to Earth.

"Are you okay?" Gabriel asked her.

"We're moving too slow," Audrey said. "The visions are getting more urgent. We need to find the rest of the pieces of the puzzle or it we won't be able to change the final outcome."

"You never want to discuss it," Gabriel said, kissing the top of her head and nuzzling her hair.

Red fiery streaks reflected off her dark brown hair, reminding him of Sheol. Tormented. It hurt his heart to see her so tormented. Audrey still refused to discuss the outcome which had her sobbing his name every night, but he was certain she was forced to witness his death. If whoever was tormenting her with these visions had sat down and planned for millennia a way to torture her, they couldn't have come up with a better plan.

"They use that which I fear most to make me do what they want," Audrey whispered. "All they have to do is ask."

"Your visions started _before_ you began to care for me in the way you do now," Gabriel said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and tugging her back to rest against the front of his torso. "I do not think it is deliberate."

"The visions started the night I chased away the pack of coyotes," Audrey said. "Only in the beginning, they were just dreams. Barely remembered. A vague dis-ease which faded with the sunrise."

"I don't remember that night," Gabriel said. "You still hated me then."

"That was the night I decided you had suffered enough and I wasn't going to let the Father use you as his scapegoat anymore," Audrey said. "I didn't forgive you until later, but that was the night I realized you didn't deserve what the Father was doing to you."

Crickets chirped in the background, as well as the occasional mournful low of the cattle. The crescent moon had long ago chased Venus over the horizon, leaving nothing but stars in the sky unmarred by the light of human civilization.

"If he hadn't cast me down," Gabriel whispered, "I would never have known what it meant to love. Given what I know now, I would willingly suffer the same injuries all over again so long as it meant I could be with you."

"Why do you love me?" Audrey asked, turning to look into his eyes.

"When the Father ordered my species to bow down to humankind," Gabriel said, "I felt nothing but revulsion. The Father said he'd created you in his image, but I could not see it then. We were taught that believing the Father was anything but perfect and loving was blasphemy. I bowed down to humans because I loved the Father and wished to please him by being obedient, not because I cared for humankind."

"And now?" Audrey asked.

"I love the Father with all of my heart," Gabriel said. "That will never change. But I realize now he was correct when he said he created you in his image. He is every bit as flawed as humans. Perhaps even more so. How could I have missed the divine spark that was under my nose the entire time?"

"He took away your ability to feel," Audrey said.

"And _you_ gave it back to me," Gabriel reminded her, nuzzling the nape of her neck with his nose and inhaling her scent. Even with the lingering sweat and dust, he adored her musky scent. If his little Prophet were to roll in the cow patties that littered the ground they sat on, he thought, he would still adore the way she smelled. She smelled so … tempting … it wasn't until she giggled that he realized he had succumbed to his impulse and nibbled down her neck, licking the salt from her flesh.

"Gabriel!" Audrey giggled. "That tickles!"

"I like the way you taste," Gabriel said, nipping lightly on her neck. "Until I fell, I never knew what it meant to taste." He could feel his manhood beginning to rise in interest, responding to his mild level of arousal. Not yet. Until he had some sign the Savior he had recently pledged his service to would honor his request to protect the Prophet from his sins, Gabriel would not succumb to his own desire.

It might take a while. The Savior was still very young by Earth standards. And so was his Little Prophet. Gabriel had existed since the universe began. The passage of time meant little to him...

… But he _would _tease her just enough to distract her from the despondency which had lingered after last night's vision like a dark cloud.

"Gabriel!" Audrey giggled as he playfully gave her a low growl and nuzzled further down her neck to the ticklish spot near her carotid artery. He licked the salt from her skin, lingering to allow his tongue to feel her pulse. Feeling. Not just emotional feeling, but also the ability to fully sense the environment around him using his skin. The Father had stolen that from him as well. Why? It felt so _good _to feel.

"You taste like salt," Gabriel murmured, his manhood _definitely _interested in the fire sprite he held in his arms.

"Come to sleep when I do tonight," Audrey whispered, deliberately adjusting her back to brush against his arousal. She was aware of the effect she had on him. "Just this once, I want to fall asleep in your arms, not just wake up there exhausted from my visions."

"You are too tempting a fruit, little Prophet, for me to resist," Gabriel said, regret tingeing his voice. "It is not time. Yet."

"I want you to make love to me," Audrey whispered, searching his eyes. "I want to teach you how to _feel _what it's like to be loved so completely that you feel the Earth move."

He took her hand and placed it over his heart, flattening out her palm so she could feel his heart beat through the cotton of his shirt.

"I have seen horrors which you cannot imagine," Gabriel whispered. "Things that make the invasion of the heavenly host appear tame in comparison. Things the Father would visit down upon _you _to punish _me _for disobeying his direct command. If that were to happen, my heart would shatter."

"How can it be wrong to love?" Audrey asked, anger tingeing her voice.

"It isn't," Gabriel said. "But for the first time in my very long existence, I understand what it means to have hope. Soon. I am waiting for a sign that either the Father has changed his mind, or that the Savior has become powerful enough to protect you. Until then, I will not put you at risk."

"What if I don't care?" Audrey asked, defiance entering into her voice. Her shoulders stiffened as she sat up straighter, away from the warmth he offered to her. "What if I'm willing to suffer the consequences and take my chances?"

"Then when the Grigori come," Gabriel said quietly, "I shall offer my life in battle to smite his enemies in exchange for the Father's promise that he will not do to _you_ what he did to Lucifer's wife. So long as you are safe, I could endure all eternity in the Keep sustained by just a single memory of your touch. But if he did to _you _what he did to my brother's family and forced me to watch, it would destroy my very soul."

Audrey began to cry.

"Honey?" Gabriel asked.

She sobbed harder. The other disciples glanced their way. Gabriel gave them an 'I don't know' shrug and they looked away, actively pretending not to notice. Whatever the problem, they knew he would handle it.

"I don't understand," Gabriel said.

His little Prophet curled up in a fetal position in his arms, softly crying, until she finally fell asleep. In the dry autumn warmth, they had no need of tents or sleeping bags. Gabriel simply tugged her down alongside of him and covered her with his wing, waiting for the nightmarish vision to start. It _would _start. It _always _started. Whatever horror she saw in her visions each night, he understood it was nothing compared with the sorrow she was forced to feel for his inevitable death.

"There are some things worse than death, little Prophet," he whispered.

Nuzzling her neck, he inhaled her sweet, musky scent. His little Prophet didn't understand that, to a creature who had been given enhanced scent to hunt the Father's enemies, but had never before had the opportunity to _experience _what it meant to smell, the mere scent of her was enough to quell the hunger in his soul.

"Soon," he whispered.

Sometimes … having an enhanced angel senses was really … divine.


	52. Chapter 51

Chapter 51

"Train," Gunn said as the faint sound of a whistle cut through the air in the distance.

"Finally," Lena answered.

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked, looking across to where he was attempting to teach Jose' how to defend himself with a variety of grapples and throws.

"Umph!" Gabriel grunted without flinching as Jose' took advantage of his momentary distraction to land a punch in the gut.

"Gotcha," Jose' said triumphantly, the first time in months he'd been able to slip past his trainers defenses. Jose' was a bit slow to learn self-defense. The others had resigned themselves to the fact his natural talents lay in other directions, but Gabriel was an infinitely patient teacher. Every day, whether Jose' wanted to or not, Gabriel spent half an hour throwing Jose's skinny butt onto the ground.

Gabriel nodded and instantly took to the air.

"I'll start gathering our things," the Reverend said.

They quickly and efficiently stowed their shared mess kits and tarp which shielded them from the hot Texas sun and had their backpacks ready to go before the train chugged to the edge of the stockyard and screeched to a halt, great puffs of smoke and steam huffing out the engine like a fire-breathing dragon. Several men with rifles sat on top of the wood box and several boxcars, alert and guarded, but did not move to threaten them as the skinhead groups had done. The men closest to them touched the brim of their hats in greeting. Several other men stood with pitchforks on top of several cars loaded to overflowing with hay. As the train had approached, the cattle had obediently moved closer to the rails, lowing expectantly for food. Now they knew how the cattle survived.

Audrey glanced at the air and saw Gabriel circling overhead. He had already gauged the measure of the men and determined they were not a threat or he would have already been at her side, his sharp vision far better than that of any eagle. The minute Gabriel landed, they would be viewed as a threat to the men guarding the train. Gabriel was giving them an opportunity to get acquainted without the disruption caused by his presence.

"Howdy," an elderly man wearing an oversized Stetson and snakeskin cowboy boots greeted, coming out of the engine. "Ma'am, Father." The man cordially touched the brim of his hat in greeting, nodding to Audrey and Lena, and then to the Reverend, before looking to Gunn and Jose'.

"We've recently travelled from Santa Fe," the Reverend said. "We're travelling the country looking for bands of survivors."

"You'all them church folk we been hearing rumors of on the shortwave?" the elderly man drawled, his Texas accent thick and slow.

"Probably," the Reverend said. "I'm not aware of any _other _wandering church groups in this area."

The elderly man looked up at the sky, surveying it, and fixed on Gabriel circling lazily overhead. "Yup … you's them."

There was a pause, that awkward moment Audrey had learned to expect where any new group of people they met decided whether to deal with them, or run them out of town at gunpoint.

"Well," the elderly man said, "I expect you'all gonna ask me to take you to our leader or some such thing?"

"That would be appreciated," the Reverend said. "What's left of the national government has been trying to set up communications between colonies of survivors.

"Don't want no federal government breathing down our necks," the elderly man slowly drawled. "We was our own country back before the USofA annexed us from Mexico, and now we is again."

Jose' started to speak. The Reverend silenced him. The elderly man was a typical old 'cowboy,' prone to think things through before speaking. Kind of like Gabriel. His type didn't like fast-talking salesmen.

"But …" the elderly man continued. "Sure would be nice to be able to talk to people again. Don't hurt to be neighborly. Ain't up to _me _to decide. I'm Pete. Pete Wilson."

The Reverend introduced their group, except for Gabriel, who was still circling the air, and began to make small talk with the foreman about their efforts to gather up what cattle survived and get them to the east. As they talked, the men on the hay-cars had been busily throwing down hay to the cattle. Several other men had gone out to a hand-pump they had discovered earlier and begun to pump water into a couple of old bathtubs.

"Got a downer over here," one of the men shouted.

"Drag it to the pit," a second man shouted. As they watched, several men opened one of the boxcars and slid down a ramp. Two horses were led out and saddled. Within twenty minutes, the dead cow was dragged off and dumped into the burial pit.

"We usually cover them with at least three feet of straw," Gunn chided them.

"We used to, too," Pete drawled. "But straws scarce out here this time of year. No more trucks bringing it in from the Great Plains. It's all we can do to keep these guys fed and watered."

"Aren't you afraid of the neo-nazi groups that have been roaming the countryside stealing them?" Gunn asked.

"They's come and takes what they want," Pete drawled. "We don't stop 'em. But there's so many cattle roaming loose around the countryside with nobody to eat them that it don't make much of a difference. We lose more to coyotes and sickness than we do to those left alive."

While the men on the train finished up giving the cattle food, water, and tended them, the Reverend slowly coaxed information about how the railway-ranching operation had been set up. As Lena had suggested, some of the surviving ranchers had been forced to abandon their ranches and band together to avoid human predators, but were attempting to regroup and reclaim their livestock by herding them to the railways to ship them to market. The fact a market had re-established itself, however crude, was encouraging.

"I find it ironic that a bunch of gun-toting libertarians have set up what is essentially a communist government to survive," Lena whispered to Audrey while the Revered coaxed out the details of how the operation was run.

"I never _got _that whole communism is evil thing," Audrey whispered back. "I mean … Russia has been our ally, sort of, most of my life."

"You're not old enough to remember the cold war," Lena said. "Although, personally, I always thought 99% of was just corporate-industrial complex bullshit. Just more of the same old you're bad, I'm right propaganda to keep the masses quaking in their boots. I just find it amusing, that's all."

"So," Pete finally drawled as the men finished up their work and prepared to leave, gesturing for them to board the train. "That friend of yours we keeps hearing about gonna come down and introduce himself?"

"It's actually a positive reflection on _you,_" Audrey said, "that he _hasn't _come down to introduce himself. It means he took your measure and judged you were not a threat."

"I assume you're the one they say tempted him to fall from grace?" Pete asked.

"More like he was pushed," Audrey said, her hackles rising slightly at the implication. "Temptation had nothing to do with it. Gabriel is my protector."

"Been hearing all sorts of rumors," Pete drawled, his eyes turning inwards and taking on that haunted look they all knew so well. "Been a good church-going man my entire life. Then one night we's just sittin' in front of the television and the missus starts screaming we're all sinners and going to die. Gets all twisted and contorted and tries to bite me. Killed the ranch owner and his wife and a couple of ranch hands. Been married 49 years. Had no choice. Had to put her down."

"I'm sorry," Audrey said. It was the same story wherever they went. She suppressed the familiar urge to scream obscenities at the Father. It made no difference. She had other plans in the works to make sure the Father wasn't in charge down here anymore. Revenge was a dish best served cold.

"A-yup," Pete said, stoically snapping out of it and donning an expression of acceptance. "I'm sorry too. She was a good wife. Didn't deserve what God did to her."

Pete led them to a crowded passenger car. Several other non-ranch passengers were on the train with numerous parcels to bring to the state capital for trade. They sat down and made themselves comfortable as the train chugged along its route, making numerous similar stops to feed cattle, drop off supplies, and pick up passengers. As had happened in Alamosa, wherever there was a reliable method to get people and goods from point A to point B, civilization was beginning to recover. Their group made small-talk with the other passengers, Jose' running a wire out to the roof of the train and setting up his portable satellite dish to log into dot gov and teach the others passengers how to create an uplink.

Audrey smiled at the sudden light 'thunk' on the roof. Gabriel had decided they'd had enough time to 'play normal' and was going to make his appearance. She nodded to the others so they could warn the other passengers an angel was about to come into their midst. It wasn't often Gabriel felt safe to let them just … be. Normal people meeting other normal people. He knew he created a spectacle and cringed at being the center of attention. After the usual obligatory introductions, wing-touching and questions, he was finally able to settle into her side, adjusting his wings until he was finally able to settle himself, his wings, and her into the narrow bench.

"What made you decide they were safe?" Audrey asked, curious about how those silent inner gears worked inside his mind.

"The guys with the guns," Gabriel said, nuzzling the top of her head with his nose as he pulled her in close. "They took off their hats when they first saw me and made the sign of the cross, and then lowered their guns. Not the kind of respect you get from a group of predators."

"Oh," Audrey said. "Thanks." She snuggled into his side, ignoring the furtive glances the other passengers on the train made in their direction, and enjoyed the simple pleasure of riding a train with the man she loved and not having to walk.


	53. Chapter 52

Chapter 52

"Liberty's sword points to the fifth disciple," Audrey said, repeating the cryptic prophecy she had spoken at the end of last nights' vision. On top of the Texas state capitol building stood a statue of the Goddess of Liberty carrying a sword and a star.

"That's a big building," Jose' said.

"Second-largest one in the country," the Reverend said.

"It looks like it's about to fall down," Gunn said. "The rest of our havens were untouched by the heavenly host."

"That's a big building," Jose' repeated.

"_My _haven was in the middle of a damaged building," the Reverend pointed out. "The building was invaded, but they did not enter my personal space."

"Pete said there's a government still functioning here," Lena said, looking down over a railing, and then shifted gears. "That's a big hole in the ground." Beneath them lay an elaborate four-story deep rotunda surrounded by balconies and offices.

"The Texans didn't want to mar the view of their capital building when they needed to add on," the Reverend said, "so they dug _down _instead of _up._"

"That's a big building," Jose' said a third time. The others gave him that 'look' they gave when he started to go off on one of his schizophrenic repetitive perseverations, repeating the same phrase over and over again, to remind him to break the feedback loop before it got started.

"Hey!" Jose' protested. "I's was just sayin', that's a big-ass fuckin building!"

"That's Texas for you," Lena said. "Big country. Everything larger than life."

"The rotunda is still standing," Audrey said, pointing to the center of the damaged building. "Along with the statue of the goddess of liberty. Her sword is pointing straight down at the rotunda."

"Gabriel," Jose' asked. "Any chance I can gets you to fly ups onto that dome and lands next to the statue for the webcam?"

Gabriel gave the young disciple his most unreadable, unemotional, 'it'll be a cold day in hell when I pose for a camera' expression.

"Had to ask," Jose' said, shrugging resignedly. He immediately started taking web footage of the grounds of the Texas state capital.

"It's pink … and it looks like the building is … peeling," Lena observed. "Maybe it's got a sunburn?"

The others laughed at Lena's lame joke.

"Pink granite sheathing," the Reverend said. "The Texans wanted it built of local limestone, but once they started building it, they realized it was loaded with iron. The building oxidized to a rust color before it was even completed. So another quarry donated the pink granite façade."

"It doesn't look safe to enter," Gabriel stated flatly.

"The compass rose points directly there," Audrey said. "And liberty is standing on top of it with her sword pointed straight down."

"Maybe you should fly up to the top to check it out?" Jose' said hopefully, surreptitiously aiming his webcam in Gabriel's general direction. "Make sure it's structurally sound and there's no skinheads roaming about?"

"I will," Gabriel stated emotionlessly, taking to the air.

Audrey suppressed a laugh. Gabriel was brilliant, but as he lacked subterfuge himself, he was no match for Jose's sly camera abilities. The young programmer had filmed Gabriel doing all _sorts _of things.

"He's going to strangle you when he finds out," Gunn pointed out to Jose'.

"You could have warned him," Audrey said.

"You could have warned him, too," Gunn said, a wolfish grin on his face. He tugged at the two braids of his beard and made a gesture as though they were wings, and then turned to Jose'. "You got him on film?"

"Yup," Jose' said, carefully following Gabriel's flight as he flew up to the top of the rotunda, perched there to examine the campus, and then flew around the building, landing several times to check various windows and doors. As Gabriel flew, Jose' narrated into the camera.

"The main entrance is unsafe," Gabriel said upon landing. "But the entrance to the left appears to be in working order."

"How do you know?" the Reverend asked.

"Because there's a sign at the front entrance saying, 'danger, structural damage. Use side door' and an arrow," Gabriel stated flatly.

"Let's go find this disciple," Audrey said, grabbing Gabriel by the hand before he had a chance to fade into the back of the group and enthusiastically tugging him towards the side entrance. Last nights' vision had been as bad as usual, but she had awoken refreshed and full of energy this morning for the first time in weeks. She suspected having been fortunate enough to ride a series of slow-moving supply trains from the Lubbock stockyard to the outskirts of Austin in a matter of days, instead of walking in the hot autumn heat over the course of weeks, had a lot to do with it.

The Lone Star capital building had once been a beautiful building. Even gutted out by fire, it still resonated with the pride of the only state in America which had ever once briefly been its own country. A few repairs had been made to the building, but no massive reconstruction effort had yet begun. With few people left to govern, scarce resources could not be expended on a monument to man's ego. Someone had, however, removed the bodies. Although there were dark splotches along the corridors that testified where somebody had met a violent death, there were no corpses. The building had a caretaker.

Several not-too-casually dressed men and a woman wearing the familiar Texas Stetson hats and cowboy boots were exiting the side entrance as they arrived. They asked a few questions, mostly about Gabriel, and then pointed them down a series of corridors that had been deemed safe enough to use.

"The Restored Republic of Texas Government Seat," the Reverend read off the placard at the designated entrance. "Office hours: Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. Follow arrows."

The arrows routed them around several heavily damaged corridors, but there were other people coming out of the building who apparently had business with the Republic of Texas. All seemed to view Texas as its own country, abandoned to fend for itself, and were acting to meet their own needs accordingly. The building was extremely heavily damaged, but the Texans had grasped onto the symbolism of their capital building and reused it for its original purpose, a gesture of defiance against the angry god who had attempted to exterminate them. The arrows led them directly to the rotunda, directly underneath the goddess of liberty which adorned its roof.

"Now what?" Gunn asked, looking at the line of people in front of them.

"We wait," Audrey said, showing him her hand. The direction mark on the compass rose had disappeared. "We're here."

As people glanced back in their bored fidgeting and realized Gabriel was in their midst, it caused the usual commotion, curiosity, fear, anger, hope. None had heard of the dot gov uplink, but quite a few had been hearing rumors on the old citizens band and ham radio waves that an angel walked the Earth. Gabriel endured their curiosity with stoic acceptance until they finally got to the front of the line.

"Senator Eckerton," the Reverend said, shaking the hand of the neatly dressed politician. "And I assume you're Cindy?"

"Who are you?" the young woman asked, staring with disbelief at Gabriel.

"Audrey Anderson," Audrey stated. "This is the Reverend, Gunnlaeif, Lena, Jose' and of course, Gabriel."

"We've been hearing rumors that both the Savior and an angel walked the Earth," the Senator said. "But this is the first proof."

"How does the Reverend know about the Senator?" Audrey whispered to Jose'. She could feel Gabriel's reassuring presence at her back. As always. Ready to protect her.

"Don'ts you's all's watch the news?" Jose' whispered. "The Senator got caught with his pants down around his ankles with Miss Cindy over there. Was watching him on a live webcast making a big announcement he was leavin' his wife stepping an down as state senator when the apocalypse hit. Asked for gods' forgiveness and all that shit."

"How old is she?" Gunn asked, contempt lacing his voice. "The Senator is like, what, forty-seven?"

"The news said he had slept with his twenty-year-old legislative aide," Lena said. "She'd be twenty-two or so now."

"That's disgusting!" Audrey exclaimed.

Gabriel gave her a look, one eyebrow lifted in an otherwise unreadable expression.

"I mean, he's more than twice her age," Audrey tried to clarify.

Gabriel's second eyebrow shot up.

"I mean … how can she want to _be _with someone who's so much older than her?" Audrey snapped. "He's like … wowing her with his charisma and power and taking advantage of her for sex!"

Gabriel was out of eyebrows to raise. He crossed his arms defensively in front of his chest.

"You can stop while you're behind, dear," Lena whispered, glancing at Gabriel before patting her forearm.

"What?" Audrey asked.

"Talk about open mouth, insert foot," Gunn teased.

"Feet," Lena said. "Plural."

"What?" Audrey asked.

"She's using both her feet's, an also her hands," Jose' said, his hands shaking with excitement at his own joke.

"The pot shouldn't call the kettle black, dearie," Lena said, and then burst into laughter.

Gabriel retreated behind his most icy, unreadable expression and faded back into the shadow of the hallway.

Oh!

"Gabriel," Audrey called. "I didn't mean … I mean … I didn't …." It finally dawned on her what an ass she had just made of herself and shut up.

"What?" the legislative aide, Cindy asked, oblivious to the catty remarks Audrey had just been making about her. She looked perplexedly from one disciple to another, over to the hallway where Gabriel had faded out of sight as though he had been a mirage. "Where'd he go?"

"Audrey's one to talk," Gunn snickered. "There's a _slight _age difference between her and Gabriel."

"Only fourteen billion years," Lena laughed. "Give or take a few million."

"I am _not _going to defend my feelings for the Senator to a bunch of strangers," Cindy said, her eyes flashing with fire as she caught up the thread of their conversation and realized she had been the topic of discussion. "Just because I'm young in years doesn't mean I'm some impressionable young twit straight out of college!"

"No, you're not," the Senator said, turning from his conversation with the Reverend to take her hand, a peaceful expression coming onto his face. "You're my right hand and now you're my wife. The one thing I did right in all this mess was to announce to the world I was choosing _you _over anything else."

"Sorry," Audrey murmured, looking down at Cindy's perfect high-heeled shoes in shame. "I … um … my bad. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go eat humble pie."

"We're used to the reaction," Cindy said, somewhat mollified by Audrey's rapid apology. "Our relationship is … unusual."

As they talked to the Senator, they managed to ferret out how the Senator had gone from fallen politician to leader of the Restored Republic of Texas. Until news of his affair had broken, the Senator had been the next great hope for a presidential candidate. Audrey had never been interested in politics, such concerns beneath her former teenaged notice, but she recalled the Senator had possessed rousing oratory skills. She could see that same spark of the divine when he focused on the woman he loved. The Senator had some sort of … something. A spark. Audrey could sense the peculiar spark which all of the disciples possessed, a spark that rendered them immune to the heavenly host.

While the Reverend explained to their newest disciple who they were and why they were here, Audrey decided it was time to find a suitable hat-sauce and go find Gabriel so she could eat that humble pie.

"Gabriel," she called, travelling down the corridor. "Honey … I didn't mean…"

He stepped silently out of the shadow where he had been standing sentry, watching her back as always. His arms were still crossed defensively across his chest, wings stiff, feathers twitching, his expression unreadable, but she could detect hurt in his beautiful, inhuman, icy blue eyes. She had hurt his feelings.

"We're different," Audrey said.

"How?" Gabriel asked.

"You're not…" Audrey hemmed.

"Older? More powerful?" Gabriel asked, a rare accusatory tone creeping into his voice. She had _definitely _hurt his feelings.

"I'm sorry," Audrey finally said, stepping close and reaching up to slide her fingers onto his forearm, his skin warm through his shirt. "It's a trained reaction. I had no right to judge them."

"Is that what people see when they see us?" Gabriel asked. "Is that what _you _see when you think of us?"

Audrey held her tongue. Tact. Why hurt somebody with an awful truth when a lesser truth would do.

"We're different," Audrey said. "Nobody knows how old you are."

She could tell by the way he stepped back that she'd said the wrong thing.

"What does appearance have to do with anything?" Gabriel asked.

"You look, maybe, thirty-five in our years," Audrey said.

"Twice your age when we first met," Gabriel said, anger tingeing his voice. "And still nearly twice your age now. And not true. There's a _hell _of a lot more of an age difference between us than the Senator and his new wife."

Angry. Gabriel was angry. At her. She'd hurt his feelings and he was withdrawing. There had not been many times Gabriel had allowed himself to succumb to injured feelings, but when it happened, he sometimes withdrew for weeks.

"Honey," Audrey said. "What I said was wrong. We've been trained to think it matters, when really, it doesn't."

"It mattered to you at first," Gabriel said. "I overheard you talk to Lena about it many times."

"It _did _matter at first," Audrey said, deciding truth would be the only antidote to her self-inflicted wound. "First I questioned myself, and then I questioned you."

Gabriel stared at her, his expression sullen and hurt. A dog. She had thought of him at first as some beat-up old junkyard dog. That was definitely a truth he didn't need to know. She stepped forward and slid her hand along his arm to his firm bicep, sliding her fingers into the sensitive inner joint of his elbow where he had his arms crossed, an emotional wall against her.

"But then I realized just how special this … thing … we have between us was," Audrey finished, her voice a husky whisper as she slid her fingers up his 'wall' to caress his bicep, "and I realized nothing else mattered."

She could feel the muscles quiver beneath his skin. It had been so long since she had thought of Gabriel as being vulnerable that she had forgotten just how deeply he could be wounded once he had chosen to let somebody inside. Still waters ran deep, and the powerful eddies which whorled beneath the surface of his beautiful, inhumanly blue eyes now indicated he worried about more than just the difference of their ages.

"Forgive me," Audrey whispered. "I did not mean my thoughtless comment to cause you pain."

Gabriel paused, and then reached up to grasp her hand where it was placed upon his bicep and slide it up to his mouth. Audrey felt a shudder of desire shoot through her body as he held her gaze and kissed her hand, giving it a squeeze before placing it over his heart.

"I am not made of stone, little Prophet," Gabriel said softly. "My concept of time is different than yours. Time and age have little meaning for me, but I know they do for your species because you are short-lived. I worry that you only _think _you love me because I am different, but that in two years you will grow bored with me."

"When we first met," Audrey said, searching his eyes. "You were not the beautiful, romantic defender of the fairy tales that makes a girls heart twitter. You were a broken creature at the bottom of a cliff who had done me wrong. Love did not happen overnight, but grew quietly in my heart as I learned my first perceptions were wrong."

"The Father does not differentiate between a failed union and a successful one," Gabriel warned. "Once we take that final step, you _will _be held to your choice for all of eternity. Whether you wish to stay with me, or not."

His words cut to her very soul. Gabriel had watched her grow from flighty, callous teenager to young woman, but still didn't trust she knew what was in her own heart. Fear. Not only did he fear she would be punished along with him for daring to taste the forbidden fruit of love, but he also feared it will have been for nothing. Gabriel was unflinching, unyielding, and immoveable in his devotion. Not even to the Father who had cast him down as a scapegoat. But he had also seen how fickle her own species was when it came to love. He was afraid.

"Even the Father, himself," Audrey said softly, "could not dissuade me from what I know in my heart to be true. Every night I see what the Father did to your brother and his family, how much he has made them suffer, the sorrow in your brother's eyes at having to witness it, and every morning I weep, not because you have been condemned to the same fate, but that when you die, by not consummating our love, that I will be prevented from joining you there."

An anguished groan escaped from deep within his chest as he pulled her into his embrace, his lips crushing down upon hers as he shuddered with all the pent-up emotion he had been keeping from her all this time. It wasn't simply desire Audrey tasted upon his lips, but hunger. A desperate, hungry animal waiting to be unleashed so it could feed.

"Let me teach you what it means to truly feel loved," Audrey whispered. "For I do not wish to ever be separated from you. Not even in death. And if the Father tries to prevent me from joining you, I shall pound upon the gates of Sheol itself and demand entrance to join you at your side."

"Marry me," Gabriel whispered into her ear, pulling her so close that she felt as though he were trying to wrap her in his own heart. "May the Father forgive me … I wish to commune with you for all eternity … consequences be damned."

"Yes," Audrey said, tears coming to her eyes. "Yes."


	54. Chapter 53

Chapter 53

"Reverend?" Gabriel asked, "I have a favor to ask of you."

The train chugged reassuringly beneath their feet. Audrey was up front getting to know their newest disciple and his young wife. The Senator had suggested they accompany him on an 'ambassadorial mission representing the Restored Republic of Texas' to develop trade for the state's abundant cattle and scattered petroleum resources. The train route they had travelled into nearby San Antonio brought cattle and other goods to be offloaded onto steamboats in New Orleans, but the Republic wished to develop its _own _trade relations with communities which allegedly survived along the Mississippi river. The compass rose had reappeared on the Prophet's wrist pointing that general direction as soon as the Senator had suggested they tag along, so they had agreed.

'_If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death,'_ Gabriel thought of the Father's unyielding law as he watched the Senator snuggle with his new wife. The concept that a human was capable of leaving someone they had once vowed to spend the rest of their life with deeply disturbed him.

'_He that is without sin amongst you, let him cast the first stone,'_ answered his first thought, not memory of the verse in the bible, but the words of the Savior himself as he deftly outmaneuvered the machinations of the Pharisees. Hypocrisy. Gabriel was the last person who had the right to cast stones. Watching how much the Senator and his new wife adored one another, Gabriel had to admit the easy, comfortable way they got along reminded him of his relationship with the Prophet. Perhaps there had been some justification?

They hadn't told the others about the wedding yet. No sooner had they gotten back to the rotunda than they'd discovered a large group of curiosity seekers tipped off via shortwave radio by Pete, the cattle foreman, that a bona fide angel would be paying a visit to the state capitol building that day. Texas had still not pieced back together a television network, electricity being too sporadic a commodity, but they _did _have both an active broadcast commercial radio station where the Senator gave rousing speeches encouraging his constituents to band together and giving them nightly progress updates. They also had extremely active ham radio and citizen's band networks to replace defunct telephone and cell phone communications. The Senator had seized upon the opportunity to build morale within the community by inviting all who could get there within the next three days to attend mass baptism ceremonies held on the 22 acre grounds of the state capitol.

Not only had _he _balked at the thought of interjecting their wedding vows into the middle of that mess, but his little Prophet had balked as well…

It had been a nonstop, endless circus. With him in the center ring, getting patted like a dog and answering the same old stupid questions over and over again. The Prophet in another ring describing how his brother Michael had come to defend the Savior from the heavenly host (omitting, of course, his part in it) and her part in delivering him into this world. Jose' had occupied a third ring, giving tutorials on how to jury rig an old satellite dish into a computer and program it to uplink to the dot gov website. And finally Gunn and Lena had patiently answered endless questions describing how their individual communities had managed to successfully pull together and cope with post-apocalyptic life.

The Reverend had been … busy. Baptizing hundreds of followers into the new Church of the Reborn Savior and urging them to spread the word that the Savior once again walked the Earth and, this time, needed _their _support.

In Texas, 'support' was usually accompanied by guns. Lots of guns. Never in his life had Gabriel seen so many people, from pre-teens to little old ladies, so willing to take up arms. The ammunition factory had been one of the first industries to recover and everyone, it seemed, knew how to reload their own shotgun shells. After the apocalypse had hit, survivors on remote ranches had pulled back along the highways to the central crossroads in San Antonio like their heroes of old defending the Alamo against the Mexican army. They had quickly regrouped and pushed back to reclaim critical state infrastructure in nearby Austin. Now, they were banding together and pushing back along the working rail lines to oust predators and reclaim what was theirs. The locals had a saying, 'don't mess with Texas.' Gabriel could believe it. Even ancient Rome paled in comparison to the militant pride exhibited by the average citizen of the Restored Republic of Texas.

"Anything you need, Gabriel," the Reverend replied, looking up from the journal he wrote in every night. "What's on your mind?"

"I have asked Audrey to marry me," Gabriel said, his expression serious. "We would like you to perform whatever ceremony you deem appropriate to make our union binding."

A grin lit up the Reverends' face, followed by a frown of concern as the seriousness in Gabriel's eyes registered.

"You still fear the punishment of the Father," the Reverend said.

"I am certain of it," Gabriel said quietly. "But when the time comes, I know what carrot to dangle before the Father to get him to spare Audrey from punishment for _my _sins."

The Father liked sacrifices. Scapegoats. Burnt offerings of favorite sons upon the altar of his own ego. Sacrifices of his _own _son upon a cross, willingly suffering and dying to seal a bargain. If the Grigori were at the gates the way the Prophet foresaw, Gabriel felt certain the Father would cut a deal. One thing the 'new' Gabriel recognized that the old blindly obedient Gabriel had not was that, once you acknowledged the Father was fallible and recognized His flaws, a pattern became obvious. Was this what had happened with Michael? Had Michael made this same realization at some point in the not-too-distant past and been able to use that knowledge to get the Father to change his mind?

"Then we should amend the traditional wedding vows," the Reverend said. "As we have done with the oath of baptism."

"Your mortal oath is appreciated, but not sufficient," Gabriel said, his wing twitching involuntarily with contempt. "Till death do us part is meaningless to someone who was once immortal. We wish to say our _own_ vows in addition to your earthly ones."

"Saying your own wedding vows is fairly common these days," the Reverend said thoughtfully, and then suddenly cheered, slapping his hands upon his thighs in excitement. "A wedding! It's about time! The unresolved sexual tension between you two has been so thick that the rest of us were conspiring to lock you both in a closet and refuse to let you out until you'd taken care of business!"

"You're a priest!" Gabriel scoffed. "You've bought into the Father's propaganda that sacred union is something to be ashamed of!"

"I'm a _minister,_" the Reverend reminded him. "We get married, remember? Shortly after Martin Luther rebelled against the Catholic Church, he declared _'t__here is no bond on Earth so sweet, nor any separation so bitter, as that which occurs in a good marriage' _and married ex-nun Katharina Von Bora."

"Why have you never done so, then?" Gabriel asked.

"Haven't met the right woman," the Reverend said. "A minister in Las Vegas wasn't exactly on the 'most eligible male' list, while the Elvis groupies weren't interested in the real life minister beneath the white polyester suit. Between tending to my congregation, my prison ministry, and my side-job at the Elvis Wedding Chapel performing weddings, I never really had time to look."

"It is a deficit we shall need to help you rectify as quickly as possible," Gabriel stated, his mouth twitching upward in a small, involuntary smile as an image of the Reverend gyrating his hips in his white Elvis suit jumped into his mind. Lena had observed one thing accurately. For a minister of the lord, the Reverend had the Elvis pelvis gyration down a little too accurately,

"I assume you want something small and intimate?" the Reverend asked.

"We have agreed to wait until we get to New Orleans," Gabriel said. "The Senator spoke of great paddle-wheeled steamships plying the Mississippi once more. The Prophet felt such a location would lend the appropriate ambiance to our nuptials."

"Going all out, are we?" the Reverend asked.

"If I'm going to defy the Father by becoming fully fallen and condemn both our souls to eternal damnation in Sheol," Gabriel said, flaring his wings slightly for emphasis, "then I wish to shout my defiance to the world for all to hear."

"Jose's going to want to webcast it," the Reverend warned. "He's got ways…"

"We shall grant him permission," Gabriel said, a real smile coming to his face for the first time. "It will save him from having to spend the night beforehand hiding webcams in every room. If we don't … he might catch something we _really _don't want publicly broadcast."

The Reverend chuckled. Jose' had gotten embarrassingly funny footage of _all _of them at one point or another and then uploaded it for all the world to see, as well as a few frightening moments when Gabriel had been forced to leap into action to take down a threat. Dot gov informed them their viewership was growing by leaps and bounds by the day as people in the areas they had passed through taught other people, and those people taught yet _more _people, how to splice together an uplink like concentric rings spreading out from a flat rock skipped across the water. Viewership was something the Prophet enthusiastically embraced in her attempt to gain support for the Savior.

"You _do _realize there's been an internet betting pool on whether or not you and the Prophet will get hitched?" the Reverend informed him. "You two are the hottest couple since Eric and Tami from _Friday Night Lights._"

The reference to some form of defunct mortal entertainment completely escaped him, but Gabriel decided not to seek details. He was certain the Reverend wouldn't compare his relationship with Audrey to something tragic. Like Ophelia and Hamlet. Or Romeo and Juliet. Gabriel had been ordered to escort one of the Father's muses to whisper to the Bard, so he was intimately familiar with Shakespeare's works as well as the real inspiration behind them.

"I believe the internet pool isn't the only wager," Gabriel said. "I suspect the Father is about to lose one of his wagers with the Mother, and he's going to be very upset."

"Do you think he'll try to sabotage you?" the Reverend asked.

"Of course," Gabriel said, "but he will not succeed. I will not be dissuaded any longer, and the Mother will only allow him to interfere so much."

While he talked to the Reverend, Gabriel noticed Audrey kept looking conspiratorially back at him and smiling. It was good to see her so happy. Keeping his libido in check _until _they got to New Orleans was going to be a challenge. He wasn't marrying her in a futile attempt to gain the Father's acceptance before breaking that last forbidden barrier between being a heavenly creature and a fully fallen one. Marriage had done _Lucifer_ no good. Gabriel waited because he wanted their day to be special. Not just another event on the road crammed in between her visions, the direction of the compass rose, and the stresses of survival in post-apocalyptic life. No … now that the Prophet knew it was only a matter of days before they would be married, she was enjoying tormenting him with hints of what consummation would be like and tempting him to lose control.

…Like the smoky gaze she gave him now from beneath her veiled eyelashes which was making his body temperature rise even though she was on the other end of the passenger car…

The Reverend regarded him carefully for a few minutes. "If you're going to go all out, we're going to have to scrounge up some better clothes for you. The last time I looked, threadbare Cabela's military knockoff attire wasn't on the cover of Bride magazine."

"My attire is functional," Gabriel stated flatly. "I have impractical new boots to wear."

The Texans had presented him with a 10-gallon hat, a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters in matching holsters, and some exquisitely crafted cowboy boots, officially adopting him as a 'cowboy angel and official citizen of the Restored Republic of Texas.' The guns and holsters were appreciated. The hat was practical. It kept sun and rain out of his eyes. The boots, however, felt even _more_ uncomfortable than his combat-style boots. The pointed toe and slight heel was designed to slip into a pair of stirrups and help the rider keep his seat on the back of a horse, not walk for miles. He wore them now out of deference to his hosts, but he had already determined he would need to save the flashy boots for special occasions.

"Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel," the Reverend laughed, reaching over to slap him in the back. "It's not about functionality. It's about fantasy! Weddings are a girls' fantasy day."

Gabriel paused, the concept turning over slowly in the gears of a mind accustomed to dealing only in fact and function, not fantasy. The Reverend, accustomed to the way Gabriel needed time to adjust to new concepts, silently sat back and waited for him to work things through. Fantasy was a topic that was outside his area of expertise, but the Prophet possessed a romantic streak…

"The Prophet has informed me that when she first met me," Gabriel said hesitantly, his insecurities creeping into his voice. "I was not the kind of person who would make her heart twitter. I would very much like to make her heart … twitter."

"Then we shall have to plan just how you intend to do that," the Reverend laughed. "If there's one thing I know well, it's how to make a girls heart twitter on her wedding day!"

They spent the better part of the night conspiring how to make Audrey's heart 'twitter.'


	55. Chapter 54

Chapter 54

"If you'd already announced you were giving up your Senate seat," Audrey asked the Senator and his wife, "than how did you end up the de facto governor of the Republic?" Although they had spent the past four days with their newest disciple, in the bustle of chasing after a busy political leader enthusiastically embracing the opportunity to rally people around the Savior, there had been little time for small talk.

"He didn't want to," Cindy said, kicking off her high-heeled shoes and curling her legs up onto the seat of the train as she snuggled in alongside her husband. "At first, the only thing we cared about was helping the people who had been trapped in the rotunda with us try to get home to find their families."

"Cindy's the boss," the Senator said, affectionately wrapping his arm around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. "She's got a heart as big as Texas. She had become a legislative aide because she wanted to help people by providing good advice to our leaders, and this was her chance to shine."

"Steve was too distraught to even think," Cindy said. "He felt at first it was punishment from God for daring to so publicly announce he was leaving his wife and public service to be with me."

"Georgette," the Senator said, sorrow etching his eyes. "She had already poisoned my sons against me long before I informed her I wanted a divorce, blackmailing me that she would ruin my career if I ever left her. That was years before I met Cindy. I wish now I had possessed more courage to do what was right. It would have allowed me to meet Cindy with an open heart instead of sneaking around behind everyone's back."

If there was one thing the husband-wife pair of Senator and Cindy knew how to do, it was how to grasp onto an opportunity to further the needs of their constituency and quickly get word out that something needed to be done. The pair was an efficient, unstoppable political machine that quickly greased wheels to get results. In this case, _results _had been giving their disaffected, formerly god-fearing constituents a new hope to replace their shattered trust in the heavenly Father. The Reverend was a very happy man, having just quintupled the size of his flock in a mere three days. Not only had he baptized thousands of ordinary citizens, but also other clergy who vowed to go out into the outlaying areas and baptize as many converts as possible.

"We tried to deny the attraction that was growing between us," Cindy continued. "Texas is a conservative Christian state and Steve was a conservative Republican senator on the fast-track for a run for the presidency. Divorce isn't viewed too kindly by the voting public. For two years we tried to remain chaste, to deny our feelings and be supportive of each other in other ways."

"You can only deny what is in your heart for so long before things get out of hand," the Senator said. "We tried to be discreet, but there was no hiding the way we felt about one another."

"Once the rumors began," Cindy said, "it was only a matter of time before it leaked to the media."

"When Georgette confronted me," the Senator said, "I couldn't lie to her. Our entire marriage had been a lie. I told her the truth and announced I was stepping down. I just couldn't live a lie any longer."

While Lena asked a series of questions, Audrey glanced back at Gabriel, intently engaged in a conversation with the Reverend. Hopefully about their upcoming wedding. Before they announced their nuptials to the others, they wished to gain the support of the disciple who had been with them the longest. Gabriel glanced up, their eyes meeting across the room, and she smiled. Serious. Gabriel was still too serious. She shot him her most sultry, Bette Davis eyes across the train and relished the slight flush which rose to his cheeks.

"Huh?" Audrey suddenly asked, her prurient thoughts about her future husband suddenly interrupted by a question.

"Stop giving that man of yours those bedroom eyes," Lena huffed, playfully swatting her with the new red-white-and-blue silk scarf with a gold star in the middle the Texans had presented to her as a gift, "and pay attention! What's up with you two? Neither one of you has had the attention span of a two-year-old for days!"

The Senator and his wife burst into laughter and snuggled further into one another, giving her a knowing look. Oh! How Audrey regretted Cindy overhearing her first, catty, incorrect assumption about their relationship! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Theirs was a relationship Audrey could relate to only too well.

"What happened to Georgette?" Audrey asked gently, expecting the worst.

The Reverend burst out laughing.

"Georgette survived," Cindy said. "And so did Steve's two sons. When we got back to his house to check up on them, I thought at first she'd been possessed by the heavenly host because she was screaming obscenities at him, shouting he was going to hell, and throwing things."

"That's just the way Georgette always was," the Senator chuckled. "I'd been living with one of them all along and hadn't known it."

"She still shows up once in a while and tries to start trouble," Cindy said, "but we feel sorry for her. We do what we can to make her life easier. For the boys' sake."

"Have they forgiven you?" Lena asked.

"My older boy has," the Senator said, his expression sad. "He realized quite some time ago that his mother was unstable. He'd already cut the apron strings before he'd gone off to college. But my younger boy still refuses to have anything to do with me. He's high school age, although school is still one of the things we're working on restoring. The poor kid is stuck home all day listening to her rant about how evil I am for leaving them. No wonder he hates me."

Cindy reached up and instinctively touched the worry line that marred his handsome face. The line softened. How many times had Audrey had made that same gesture during one of Gabriel's all-too-frequent worry fests? She glanced back across the room and noticed he appeared to be happy. Whatever he and the Reverend were talking about, it pleased him.

"Huh?" Audrey suddenly asked, realizing she had just missed another question.

"I asked when you two are going to get married?" Cindy asked, looking between her and Gabriel. "It's obvious you two love each other very much."

"Soon," Audrey said, deciding now was as good a time as any to make the announcement. "We just haven't nailed down the details."

"Soon?" Lena squealed. "You mean he finally asked?"

"Three days ago," Audrey said. "It's just been so hectic … we didn't want to interrupt the Reverend's work."

"It's about time," Gunn interjected, looking over from where he had been busily helping Jose' teach some other passengers on the train how to create a satellite uplink by MacGyvering together a computer to a homemade satellite dish using a bunch of paperclips, bread ties, tin foil, and scrap metal. "Hey … Jose'! You've finally got some _real _news to report to your fangirls."

"Th-th-they'll go *SQUEE* when I r-r-report it," Jose' said, his stutter and tremors more obvious than they had been while his supply of Chlozapine had lasted. Texas was out of Chlozapine to manage his symptoms. They'd needed to switch him over to a less effective anti-psychotic medication. Scrounging up more was high on their priority list once they got to New Orleans.

"He's not supposed to do that," Cindy asked gently. "Is he?"

"No," Audrey said softly. "The Father will punish him severely for what we are about to do. But we just can't deny our feelings for each other anymore. It's destroying our souls to pretend we don't belong together."

The Senator and Cindy looked at each other and sighed, giving her a sympathetic look.

"We've been where you are now," the Senator said. "All you can do is stay at each others' side no matter what and face the world together."

"It didn't turn out so bad for _us_ once we stopped hiding from it," Cindy said. "People condemned us at first. But once they got to see how good we were together, they rallied behind us."

"I was the only surviving politician in the entire state of Texas," the Senator said. "It was as though God decided to deliberately target the mechanisms of society which made civilization possible."

"God _did _deliberately target the government, military, and social structures," Audrey said. They had omitted Gabriel's part in the genocide. It was time to tell their newest disciple the rest of the story. "Gabriel was put in charge of the offensive after his brother, Michael, refused. He was sent to personally eliminate the Savior's mortal shell before he had a chance to incarnate into this world."

"_Gabriel _was the angel who attacked you?" Cindy asked, her expression horrified.

"For fourteen billion years," Audrey said, "Gabriel was trained to obey the Father without reservation. Rebellion was unthinkable."

"How did he end up being assigned to protect you, then?" the Senator asked. "After the Father changed his mind?"

"We're not sure," Audrey said. "All we know is it had something to do with this mysterious Mother they are forbidden to acknowledge exists. There seems to be a series of continuing, evolving wagers between the two deities about how Gabriel and I will react to certain things. The first wager appears to be that I would find him broken at the bottom of a cliff and leave him there to die, but Michael knew me well enough to know I wouldn't do that. All we know for sure is that we keep surprising the two deities by not doing what either of them expects us to do and that they have to keep dealing with one another as a result of it."

"That's…" the Senator said.

"Disturbing," Cindy finished.

"Like Job," the Senator said. "Only there's two of you."

"Is the Mother the Devil?" Cindy asked. "That's the only deity the bible ever mentions God wagers against."

"Perhaps," Audrey said. "Gabriel says there's no flesh-and-blood Satan like in the bible, only elemental forces of nature and laws of physics that interfere with natural movement. But _something _inspired the myth of the wager. Think of the Mother as being more like Georgette and the Savior being more like the Senator's oldest son. Gabriel heard rumors in heaven that the Mother left the Father because he was too controlling. Only in this case, it's beginning to look like the Father is the one who's like Georgette, while the Mother might be a little bit more rational."

"Whoever the Mother really is," Lena interjected, "the Senator possesses a nice big sparkly spark of her, or the heavenly host would have destroyed him along with every other politician in the country. For some reason, the bigger the spark, the harder time the Father has gaining control."

"Ahhh," Cindy sighed, an evil little smirk twitching her mouth upwards as she ran her fingers through the Senators hair and tugged up two small cowlicks to make impromptu 'horns.' "Georgette was right. I married the devil."

The Senator growled and affectionately nipped at her neck. Cindy giggled and gave him a quick kiss. The couple settled back into each others' side. Separate … and yet inseparable.

It was with that thought that Gabriel quietly slid in next to her on the bench, creating a bit of a shuffle as he attempted to fit his enormous wings, and pulled her into his side. They were like bookends on either end of the growing collection of disciples and followers, giving it a framework to take shape. Separate … and inseparable.

She yawned.

"It's time to go to sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel said, nuzzling her hair with his nose and kissing the top of her head.

"There's too many people in this railcar for me to fall asleep," Audrey grumpily groused. "My visions will scare them."

"Let's find someplace else," Gabriel murmured.

Tugging him by the hand, she led him back through the cars.


	56. Chapter 55

Chapter 55

He'd assumed in a train so crowded there would be little opportunity for his self-control to be seriously tested. He was wrong! In such close quarters there was no way to hide the Prophet's nightmarish visions from the other passengers. It was one thing to expose their newest disciple to the dark side of the Prophet's gift. It was another to expose civilians. They decided to bed down in the hay of one of the cars carrying horses.

The Prophet cheerfully plopped down onto a pile of loose hay, sighing as she stretched and burrowed like a dog rolling in the grass. "Care to roll in the hay?" she cheerfully asked, playfully tossing a handful of hay at him.

"We're sitting in hay," Gabriel answered, blissfully ignorant of her intent as he knelt and busily began rummaging through their backpacks to lay out the bedroll and blankets.

"We really need to find a working television and make you watch at least 200 hours of old episodes of popular television shows," Audrey sighed, crawling over to him and placing her hands upon his chest. "Roll in the hay is a reference to sneaking out to the barn to have wild, passionate sex."

"Soon," Gabriel murmured, grabbing her roaming hands which suddenly began to snake around his torso. "You can wait another day or two until we have made suitable arrangements."

"What if I don't want to?" Audrey asked, her voice sultry and teasing. She pushed him back into the hay and sat upon his hips, her pelvis pressing through his pants against his manhood, which had sprung up with interest. He was so surprised that it didn't occur to him to react as she tugged his shirt up out of his waistband and began to unbutton it.

"You will wait," Gabriel gasped in surprise, grabbing her hands to stop the sweet violation of his person.

"Is that an order?" Audrey purred, deliberately brushing her pelvis against his manhood, which was straining against his zipper, clamoring to be free. He was so aroused he could feel the shape of the anatomy she kept hidden beneath her jeans.

"I know better than to order you to do anything," Gabriel growled, his own desire building in his core. "You are defiant. If I give you an order, you will always do the opposite." He clutched her hands tighter, willing her to stop. Afraid she wouldn't stop. Afraid she _would._

Audrey easily circumvented his attempts to incapacitate her hands by bending down to kiss his abdomen, trailing her tongue down and gently licking his belly button. He'd never really noticed he'd had a belly button before, just another body part like his lungs or his manhood which he'd never had occasion to think about. The intimacy of the gesture sent warmth shooting through his body unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Belly button? A random thought skipped through his mind. Had he been _born? _ Like a human?

"You should not tease me so," Gabriel panted, fighting to keep his libido from taking over. "It will mean more to the both of us if we wait."

"Maybe I'm sick of waiting," Audrey pouted, her small, agile hands slipping his grasp to finish unbuttoning his shirt and pushing the cloth aside, leaving him feeling vulnerable and exposed. "I've wanted to do … this … ever since the day I saw you take that swan dive off the waterfall into the river. Naked."

"You saw me … unclothed?" Gabriel asked, mortified. Even though he knew she had tended to him when he'd been unconscious, she'd carefully avoided reminding him of his period of incapacitation. He'd always gone out of his way to maintain his modesty around his little Prophet afterwards. A sign of his respect for her.

"Most beautiful ass I've ever seen," Audrey teased, kissing his chest and nipping on his nipple, licking it until it stiffened with the same interest as his manhood. He hadn't even been aware his body possessed that reaction, but it was causing his manhood to twang for freedom from the constriction of his pants. He was losing control!

"If you don't stop now," Gabriel gasped, "I won't be _able _to stop!" A hunger unlike anything he had ever felt before grabbed hold and urged him forward to a single, inevitable destination like the train they now rode, hurtling through the night on its rails.

"Maybe that's the idea," Audrey teased, kissing higher to lick the pulse point throbbing in his throat and nip him under the chin. "Let's see Gabriel lose some of his legendary self-control."

"We will wait!" Gabriel ordered, pulling together the last fragile thread of control he possessed to grab her hands, which seemed to be everywhere at once, and pin them together. Audrey squealed, fighting to get free and resume her merciless teasing. He finally resorted to rolling over and pinning her so tightly to his chest that she couldn't escape.

"Gabriel!" Audrey shrieked in laughter. "Let me go!"

"Never," Gabriel whispered huskily in her ear, wrapping his arms and wings around her, cocooning her so tightly she could barely move. "I will never let you go."

They lay there, both panting, until he finally managed to will his heart rate to slow and the pleasant jangle of electricity shooting through his nerves to calm to a pleasant glow. Gradually, his little Prophet stopped struggling and dozed off. Tonight was the first night he'd ever felt the Prophet's cheek pressed against the bare skin of his chest. Skin to skin. The sensory organ the Father had denied his species the ability to feel. The sensory organ he had first recognized through a fog of pain and despair the night she had set aside her hatred and stretched alongside him to share her warmth. It felt so … good.

His little Prophet's defiance, that she would batter down the gates to Sheol to join him, had touched his soul in a way not even the Father had ever been able to do. He hadn't had the heart to inform her that there was no way for a living mortal to journey to Sheol. Only dimensional beings such as angels and the rare soul who had already been sentenced there and then released could access it. He would enjoy her love wholeheartedly while he still could and give her everything he had in return. Once he had met his fate, he would nurture the memory of her love to sustain him for the rest of eternity.

She would suffer greatly once he was gone, but a mortal lifespan was brief. It would be over in the blink of the Father's eye. Like most mortals, the Prophet would forget her pain, and him, as soon as she entered the perfection of Eden.

It was better that way. To have her suffer any other fate would be unbearable.


	57. Chapter 56

Chapter 56

"Whatsamatter?" Gunn ribbed him. "Audrey leave you with another case of blue balls?"

Gabriel gave Gunn his most displeased glower and ruffled his feathers, refusing to dignify that question with an answer. How casually humans discussed something so … intimate.

"I don't know which made him more miserable," Lena commented. "Back when he thought she didn't love him?"

"Or now that he knows she _does,_" Gunn teased, "and he's soooooo close, but he can't do anything about it for a couple more days."

Lena pretended to fan herself as though she were hot. Gunnlaeif made an obscene gesture with his hand near his crotch. Jose' turned to aim the webcam in his direction.

A warning growl escaped from deep within Gabriel's chest, the kind of growl a dog might make when it was too hot to move and another dog was attempting to take its bone. A 'don't make me hurt you' growl. He gave them all a disgusted look and turned without answering, stalking through the train.

The transportation was functional, but Spartan. Crowded with passengers and goods on their way east where the compass rose still pointed. Had the train travelled with few stops as it had done before the apocalypse, they would have been there in twelve hours, a trip which would have taken at least two months on foot, possibly three. Now, however, the railway was the lifeline for the areas they travelled through. They stopped at every town, often three or four times within the same town, causing the trip to stretch out for days. There were no sleeping quarters. Everyone just bedded down on benches or bedrolls on the floor.

He caught himself absent-mindedly rubbing through the thin cotton of his shirt to feel his belly button. Before the Prophet had brought the anatomical anomaly to his attention three nights ago, it had been like breathing air into his lungs, or having a penis that did things like pee or become aroused, or swallowing. Body parts and reflexes he had always possessed but never recognized as being something separate from the Father because it was unnecessary and irrelevant. Now, he repeatedly found himself touching the spot she had so gently licked with her tongue and daydreaming about what other areas of his body the Prophet would teach him to recognize on their wedding night.

As the train clickety-clacked down the tracks towards the old city, one of the passengers strummed on an old six-string, singing an old folk song about a train going to the very city they were headed to right now.

_Good morning, America, how are you?_

_I said don't you know me, I'm your native son?_

_I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans._

_I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done. *_

It was a fitting song for their journey, created to evoke the sense of travelling to a destination on a slow-moving train which gave the passengers plenty of time to think. He sat down in the corner, alone with his thoughts, and allowed his mind to wander as the guitar player moved onto to other folk songs of a similar tone and ilk. Last night had been a repeat of the previous two, his bride-to-be teasing him to the point of breaking, and then backing off just before he lost control. Now that he expected it, he could fend off the worst of her lasciviousness. If he wanted. He really didn't _want _to want to fend her off. Not wanting to want to fend her off but doing so anyways was making him … grumpy.

His little Prophet enjoyed pushing him to the edge of the envelope, but intuitively she understood there were some lines it was not wise to push him beyond. She did not wish to see him break. As she had recognized when he'd lain broken at the bottom of the cliff, self-control was frequently the only thing holding him together. She teased him like a harlot, and then she curled up so trustingly in his arms, an innocent little lamb that had lain down with the Father's lion, and told him how much she loved him.

And then the nightmare had come, as it did every night, marring the perfection of his happiness. As he did every night, he comforted her and tried to protect her from the dark future she foresaw which could only end one way. His death. As she'd keened his name, great sobs wracking her body, he'd reassured her he was still at her side, that perhaps they could change that dark future. And then had come the prophecy, quick on the heels of the one which had only come less than two weeks before.

"_The sixth disciple shall teach the Prophet to dance with the serpent without fear,"_ the consciousness which spoke through Audrey had said. _"You must enter the Old City and seek out the Mambo before your nuptials or her gift will be lost."_

Dancing snakes?

His little Prophet's defiance, that she would batter down the gates of Sheol to join him, had touched his soul in a way not even the Father had ever been able to do. There was no way for his little Prophet to journey to Sheol. Only multi-dimensional beings such as angels and the dead could find it. Their time together would be like a shooting star. Brilliantly lighting up the night sky until darkness inevitably claimed it. He would enjoy her love wholeheartedly while he still could. Once he had met his fate, he would nurture the memory of her love to sustain him for the rest of eternity confident she would forget her pain as soon as she entered the perfection of Eden.

"Good morning, mister grumpy face," Audrey teased, shaking him out of his brooding. She automatically slipped her small hand into his larger one and laced her fingers through his. "Did you sleep well?"

Gabriel growled something noncommittal under his breath. _She _had dropped right back to sleep after last nights' vision, complete with accompanying prophecy. _He _on the other hand, had spent the night awake and sleepless, wondering if the Prophet would even remember the prophecy which he suspected she would not remember it had he not been there to hear it. Perhaps that was the reason why the Father had put him in the odd position of needing to comfort her at her most vulnerable, but to otherwise never touch her?

At least she had awoken refreshed this morning, unlike many nights when she had the visions. Cheerful, chipper, and maddeningly enthusiastic about the future.

"New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal is less than an hour out," Audrey said, swinging their joined hand like an excited little girl about to go on a merry-go-round. "I've never been to New Orleans before."

"It's a beautiful city," the Senator said, coming up behind her, tugging his grumpy wife behind him as she hopped with one high heel on, one high heel off. "Or at least it _was._ I haven't seen it since the apocalypse. I've got an appointment with the new mayor at noon. We've only spoken through brief written messages relayed through a chain of ham radio operators to date. This will be my first time meeting him in person."

"Not until I've had at least _two _cups of coffee," Cindy groused. "I don't qualify for the species homo sapiens until I've woken up."

Gabriel recognized the grumpiness which mirrored his own and gave Cindy a sympathetic look. Not that he wasn't a morning person. He required far less sleep than most humans. Just that he could empathize with her reluctance to be thrown into a new situation before she'd had a chance to compose herself.

"The city has recovered well, I hear," the Senator continued. "It's placement as the transition point between rail, sea, and the Mississippi River have rendered it too important to languish."

"Dot gov says they've already gots an uplink with the city," Jose' informed them. "They's goin' to have peoples all lined up for the Reverend to baptize and me to teach the average guy how to make the uplink, too."

They all turned and gave Gabriel an expectant look. He gave them his most sullen look in return. Wonderful. He got to be the prize exhibit in their travelling petting zoo today. He'd be picking cotton candy and baby puke out of his feathers by nightfall.

"Gabriel," Audrey asked, glancing at the compass rose on her hand. "What are we looking for today?" She met his eyes and automatically reached up to sooth his brow. It appeared she remembered they had a disciple to find today.

Gabriel silenced the selfish little voice that urged him to tell her she was mistaken, that there had been no prophecy last night, and refocus her energies on something happy. Like finding the perfect dress to get married in so he could hurry up and whisk her away someplace private.

"Dancing snakes," Gabriel grunted, crossing the one arm that _wasn't _being held captive in the Prophet's too-cheerful, giddy hand and using it to grab his bicep on the other side so he could convey just how unhappy he was with the whole world today.

"What?" Audrey asked. "I seem to recall there was more to it than that. What were the exact words?"

Gabriel glowered at her. He didn't _want _to go searching for the sixth disciple today. He wanted to whisk her through the city to pick flowers for her bouquet and herd everybody onto a restored steam paddlewheel riverboat to tell the world how much he worshipped the ground she walked on. He wanted just a few days without this damned … mission … hanging over their heads like Damocles sword. He wanted to whisk her so far off her feet that … that when she entered Eden after he was gone and the Father reabsorbed her consciousness and removed her pain, that some small memory of him would remain to remind her that, once upon a time, a heavenly creature had loved her enough to sacrifice everything just to spend a fleeting instant as her husband.

He wanted to cry. He couldn't understand what was wrong with him today.

"The sixth disciple shall teach the Prophet to dance with the serpent without fear," Gabriel reluctantly recited. "You must enter the Old City and seek out the Mambo."

He deliberately omitted the part about needing to do it _before t_hey were married or her gift would be lost. _That _was the part which had kept him awake all night and had him sullen and angry this morning. Part of him _wanted _his little Prophet's gift to be lost, the tattoos to disappear, the compass rose gone, the mission to just go away, and the terrible dark nightmares of a future he knew he couldn't escape, but which marred his happiness every night, to simply stop. He wanted her to be simply Audrey, the woman he loved, not the Prophet of the Savior.

"Maybe you should wait until after you've gotten married," Cindy suggested, glancing at Gabriel and giving _him _a sympathetic look this time as though she could read the dark thoughts travelling through his brain like that old, slow-moving train in the song. "Maybe it's time you guys did something for yourselves."

"Honey?" Audrey asked, searching his eyes.

Gabriel looked deep into her beautiful, velvet-blue eyes, staring into his own with complete trust. It had taken him so long to earn her trust after her horrible first experience with him. Even longer to earn her love. It wasn't his decision to make.

"The prophecy said we must find them before our nuptials or your gift will be lost," Gabriel said reluctantly. There. He'd done the right thing. He wasn't the Father. He would not deny his little Prophet her free will. But … damned! Free will stank!

"Okay," Audrey said cheerfully, oblivious to the dark thoughts which travelled through his mind. "We find this Mambo first. What's a Mambo?"

And just like that, Gabriel once again gave himself over to the insanity that was their mission to help the Savior.

Oh … joy…


	58. Chapter 57

Chapter 57

"La Vodun Ancienne Societe'," Audrey read off the sign. She glanced at the compass rose on her hand and noticed it had disappeared. "We're here."

"Doesn't look very promising," Lena said, frowning at the tacky red paint of the worn metaphysical shop where the Mayor had informed them they could find Mambo De Vivre, the so-called reigning 'voodoo queen' of New Orleans. The Reverend and the Senator and his wife had stayed behind with the Mayor to win friends and influence people, leaving the rest of them to seek out the sixth disciple.

"What is this place?" Gunn asked, his expression remarkably mirroring one of Gabriel's typical unreadable expressions when Gabriel was attempting to hide his disdain for some foible of mortal behavior.

"Let's get this over with," Gabriel said. Gabriel wasn't _bothering _to hide his disdain of the tired, run down blue-collar neighborhood the shop was located in. Although not as devastated as the Lower Ninth Ward, which had never recovered after Hurricane Katrina and been reclaimed by the river after the apocalypse left nobody to maintain the levies and pumps, it was still a less savory part of town.

"We's goin's in now to m-m-meet the sixth disciple," Jose' quietly narrated into his webcam. "Mambo De Livre. Voodoo high priestess of New Orleans."

"Turn that damned thing off!" Lena snapped. "The last thing you want to do is piss off a voodoo priestess!"

An assortment of paraphernalia littered the front window. Handmade dolls with skulls for faces. Dried chicken feet. Small cloth dolls with 'X's for eyes and a crude heart painted on the chest. Rattles made of legumes or nuts strung over a dried gourd. Across the street, several heavyset African-American men of varying ages stood around a dilapidated old Cadillac with the vinyl roof peeling off smoking cigarettes and eying them warily. By post-apocalyptic standards it was tame, but it still wasn't the kind of neighborhood you'd like to wander around alone after dark.

"Here we go," Audrey said, taking a deep breath and pushing open the door.

A bell, along with something that rattled, announced their entrance. Inside, the shop was dark and gloomy, with several candles lit for ambiance. The scent of cigar smoke and incense permeated the air, as well as an assortment of herbs. Behind the counter, a white girl with short dyed jet-black hair helped a skinny African-American male in threadbare clothing scoop herbs out of a jar into a brown paper bag. On one wall, some sort of alter or shrine was set up with candles, a human skull wearing a replica of the tattooed crown which adorned Audrey's skin, shells, and an assortment of paraphernalia and stones. Skulls of various horned animals and carved wooden masks, the features often appearing to be anguished, adorned the walls, intermixed with pictures of Catholic saints, crosses, and holy relics.

The group was strangely silent. This was a little much. Even for them. Gabriel had his wings tightly pinned to his back, as though the mere rustle of his feathers would invoke bad mojo.

"Can I help you?" the girl asked, barely looking up from what she was doing.

"We're looking for Mambo De Vivre," Audrey said. "We were told we could find her here."

"Just one minute," the girl said, finishing up with the skinny man she was helping and ringing his order into the cash register. The man turned to leave and spied Gabriel for the first time. His eyes grew round as he approached, made the sign of the cross upon his chest, and hesitantly touched Gabriel's arm.

"Saint Michael pwotèj an!" the man uttered in an unintelligible language Audrey couldn't understand. "Ou gen vin pwoteje nou!"

"What did he just say?" Audrey asked. The language had hints of English and French, but she couldn't quite translate it other than the man thought Gabriel was his brother, Michael.

"Pa Michael," Gabriel answered fluently in the same language. "Gabri'el. Mwen pwoteje pwofèt la Sovè la."

"Gabriel told him he is your protector," Lena translated.

"Se vre, lè sa a," the man asked. "Sovè a te tounen nan nou?"

"I think he asked if the Savior has returned," Lena translated some more.

"Wi," Gabriel replied. "Pwofèt nan anons tounen l '. Se travay mwen nan pwoteje l 'jouk Sovè an gen ase matirite ase sipoze manto nan lidèchip."

"Yes," Lena whispered. "Gabriel tells him he is to protect you until the Savior is old enough to do it."

"Manbo De Livre gen forseen arive l 'yo," the man said, shakily reaching out to touch the feathers of one wing. "Mwen te pè li pa te vre. Ou ban m 'espwa."

"Mambo De Livre told him the Savior would come," Lena translated. "The man said he had begun to lose hope."

"Espwa," Gabriel replied. "Sovè a pote espwa bay tout. Menm zanj yo ki nan syèl la. Retounen lakay ou epi di tout sa ou wè ke Sovè a pote espwa pou yon demen nouvo, men li bezwen èd ou. Fòs Dark sispann chache l '. Lè moman an rive, ou dwe pwoteje l '. Ou pa dwe kanpe la epi kite yo kloure l 'yon tan travèse yon dezyèm fwa. Si ou fè sa, avèk benediksyon gwo ap vin lakay ou.

"Hope," Lena said, and then got a frustrated expression on her face. "Sorry … I can't translate that fast. Hatian Creole is a lot different than straight French. Something about go home and tell your friends."

"Mwen pral fè tach sa a, gran Loa," the man said, bowing and making the sign of the cross on his forehead and chest. "Mèsi, gwo pwoteksyon, pou parèt nan repons lapriyè m '. Jiskaske ou rive, mwen te grandi deprime. Mwen menm mwen nan tout tan nan sèvis ou."

"He called Gabriel a great spirit and thanked him for lifting his despair, I think," Lena whispered. "Something like that. They're talking too fast."

The man took a dried chicken foot out of the brown paper bag the sales clerk had given him only moments before and pressed it into Gabriel's hands. To her surprise, not only did Gabriel not recoil from the disgusting dried dead thing, but he smiled and graciously accepted it, reaching back and tugging out a small wing feather to give the man in return. The man took the feather, his hands shaking with gratitude, and bowed a second time. Gabriel touched the man on top of the head.

"Ale nan lapè," Gabriel said.

"Go in peace," Lena translated.

The man bowed and backed out the door, bowing several more times, and then ran down the street, shouting with happiness.

"What?" Gabriel asked, noticing for the first time they were all staring at him.

"I didn't know you could speak Hatian Creole," Lena said. "I only speak a little because I did a two-week ministry in Haiti with the Mormon Church before I came out of the closet. I speak French, which is close enough to Creole that I can understand a little."

"I speak all mortal languages that have ever existed," Gabriel flatly stated. "I thought you knew."

Audrey would have asked him why he had never mentioned this before, but just then she noticed an elderly African-American woman had come out of the back room and had been observing the entire exchange. The woman couldn't have come up higher than Audrey's chin, but something about her demeanor gave the impression of someone who was much taller. Her white dress and turban-like head wrap accentuated her chocolate colored skin.

"You honor our customs, Archangel," the woman said. Although her English was in the dialect of a well-educated woman, she spoke slowly and deliberately and had some of the cadence of the skinny man who had just left the store.

"My brother spent time amongst the ships that brought your people over from the Dark Continent," Gabriel said. "He spoke very highly of your devotion to your gods, although I have had little opportunity before now to witness such with my own eyes. He pleaded with the Father to have mercy and cease his punishment."

"Mambo De Livre?" Audrey asked. The Mayor had explained that 'Mambo' was a title like 'Reverend,' not a dance.

"Wi," Mambo De Livre said. "And you would be the Prophet?"

"Yes," Audrey said.

"Papa Legba said you would come," Mambo De Livre said, gesturing them to follow her back into the back of the store. "Come. Jean Paul will have his friends here bringing gifts and begging favors of Loa Gabri'el within twenty minutes. We shall go back to the pavilion."

"Favors?" Audrey asked.

"We do not simply pray to our loas, what you call saints, to provide a service to us," Mambo Le Vivre said, her slight limp becoming obvious once she sped up her gait. "We expect to provide something of value to them in return. It is rare that one of the loas has come in physical form to walk amongst us. The usual vehicle is a horse."

They reached a small, square building behind the store, little more than a large shed with large wooden awnings that swung up to provide shade, or down to close the large openings that acted as windows. Through the open windows, one of the numerous canals that criss-crossed New Orleans lay beyond, along with a dilapidated old bridge that appeared it had been closed off to traffic for decades. Although the pavilion had much of the same paraphernalia as the store, somehow it seemed less threatening.

"We have received instruction that you are the sixth disciple chosen by the Savior to serve him," Gabriel said.

"Papa Legba said thus," Mambo Le Vivre said. "He took possession of a horse during our all-saints ceremony last night and said I am to go with you."

"A horse?" Lena asked, looking around the tiny yard for sign of a large animal.

"A willing vessel in a sacred ceremony," Mambo De Vivre explained. "Possession is as common to our people as kneeling to say mass. Most active voudoun are also devout Catholics."

"Will you find travel acceptable?" Gabriel asked, looking at her leg, which obviously pained her.

"I am sixty-seven years old," Mambo Le Vivre said. "I am in relatively good health, but my leg gives me difficulties. I have devoted my entire life to service of the spirits, but there will be times I will slow you down. If the terrain becomes too difficult, I may not be able to complete the entire journey."

"We do not know what direction we will be instructed to go in after this," Audrey said, glancing down at the compass rose, which had not yet begun to display a new direction. Whatever it was she needed to do here, her task had not yet been completed. "Or how rough the territory we need to travel through. Much of the time we have had to walk."

Mambo De Vivre nodded and grunted, easing herself down into a chair. She reached over to a little table that was next to her chair where there were assorted bones, stones, and other small items and picked up a cigar. Grabbing a lighter, she lit it, sucking on the cigar and thoughtfully blowing smoke into the room.

"You are to participate in the all-souls ceremony tonight," Mambo De Livre instructed, her enunciation deliberate and slow as she puffed smoke rings towards the canal. "What is to happen from there, I do not know. The loas did not see fit to enlighten me."

"Loas?" Audrey asked.

"Lesser gods," Mambo De Livre said. "Like him." She pointed towards Gabriel.

"I am no longer a loa, Mambo," Gabriel said. "I have fallen from favor with the Father."

"Bon Dieu is displeased with us," Mambo De Livre said. "First _our _people, and then all people. Loa Simbi has become very active since the apocalypse. Gran Maitre and her son return to this world."

"Bon Dieu?" Audrey asked. "Loa Simbi? Gran Maitre?"

"Bon Dieu is the creator god, the one you call the Father," Mambo De Vivre explained. "He does not speak to us. When we plead relief, we beg the intervention of the Loas, lesser gods, to implore Bon Dieu to grant us a favor. Like Gabriel. But we have older myths, back before our people came to this land, of a Gran Maitre, a black goddess who created all that is. Loa Simbi, the serpent god, is her messenger. It is said that Bon Dieu attempted to drive all the serpents from this world so that we would not be able to talk to her."

"The prophecy said you would teach me to dance with the serpent without fear," Audrey said. "What does that mean?"

"Serpents are symbols of wisdom," Mambo De Vivre said. "The medical caduceus with two serpents twining around it is a remnant of this memory. It is said that Bon Dieu drove out Simbi after he gave mankind forbidden knowledge. Your people have legends of this, too. Eve tasting the apple, or Saint Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland."

"So," Audrey said, "you'll teach me about this Simbi and the goddess he speaks for and we'll be all set, right?"

Mambo De Vivre sucked another draught of her cigar, holding her breath as she thought, and then slowly blew the smoke out in Audrey's general direction.

"To communicate with Simbi," Mambo De Vivre said, "you must dance with Le Gran Zombi, the physical snake, until the loas take possession of your body and speak through you. Only then will you know the purpose the Gran Maitre has for you."

"How do you know Gran Maitre has a purpose for me?" Audrey asked.

"Because she has marked you," Mambo De Vivre said, pointing to Audrey's chest. "That is her veve, her sigel, tattooed over your heart."

Audrey glanced down to where a partial tattoo was peeking through the cleavage of her blouse. It was one of the few symbols Gabriel could not read. She unbuttoned her shirt just far enough that the top of her bra peeked out, but not completely.

"What does this say?" Audrey asked.

"It says you are dead, Audrey Anderson," Mambo De Vivre said, "and the Mother has lay claim your soul."


	59. Chapter 58

Chapter 58

"Dead?" Audrey asked. "What do you _mean,_ dead? I'm alive."

"You sure look alive to me, honey," Lena chipped in, poking Audrey in the arm. "Pink skin, warm, moving. Alive."

"I'm _not _dead!" Audrey exclaimed, an irrational feeling of panic rising in her voice. It was bad enough she dreamed of Gabriel's death every night. To say that _she _was dead was more than she could wrap her brain around.

"The veve of Gran Maitre is preceded by a particular sigel of Maman Brigette that is only drawn to signify death and the graveyard," Mambo De Vivre said matter-of-factly, pointing to a symbol that looked like three crosses over an altar, "and is followed by a sigel that means possession of your gran bon ange, your great good angel or part of your soul that represents your link to the divine, by another. You are zombie, a living dead."

"Zombie?" Audrey asked, her voice sounding high-pitched and strangled even to her own ears. "I'm _not _a zombie!" After all she'd been through. Attacked by the heavenly host. Catapulted through a windshield. Forced to care for the angel who had killed her, only to fall in love with him and spend every single night since then grieving over his inevitable death, it was a little much.

"Had any cravings to eat human flesh or suck brains, lately?" Gunn joked. By the look on his face, he wasn't taking anything Mambo De Vivre said very seriously.

"Rrrrrrr…." Lena groaned, sticking her arms straight out in front of herself and faking a stiff, shuffling walk, her mouth hanging open and her eyes crossed, as though she were a zombie in a George Romero movie.

"And now, l-l-ladies and g-g-gentlemen," Jose' narrated into his webcam, which apparently he'd kept running despite Lena's warning, "we l-l-learn that the Prophet is really a z-z-zombie…"

"We told you to turn that goddamned thing off!" Audrey hissed at Jose'.

"Before Mambo De Vivre turns _you _into a zombie!" Gunn joked, pretending to grab Jose' by the shoulders as though he were a zombie and throttle him.

Mambo De Vivre silently took another draw of her cigar, holding her breath with a bemused expression on her face as she watched Audrey do the emotional equivalent of brush spiders off her body, and then slowly exhaled. It occurred to Audrey how much the voodoo queen, whose wrinkled chocolate skin was sagged with age, resembled a basset hound.

"Zombie?" Audrey sqeaked, pinching herself to make sure she was really still alive. Her skin had goosebumps and jolts of electricity shot through her body the same way it did when she was aware of that second consciousness touching the edge of hers to speak during her outbursts of holy blasphemy. The ultimate heebie-jeebies.

She could feel Gabriel silently move into her back, his reassuring warmth reminding her he was there. No matter what happened, Gabriel always had her back.

"Do not let Hollywood taint your perceptions of our sacred beliefs," Mambo De Vivre said. "Zombie can refer to two things. Possession of your gros bon ange, divine spark, by an evil sorcerer or evil spirit while you are still alive to do their bidding."

"As when the heavenly host took possession of the weak and turned them against the strong?" Gabriel interrupted.

"Yes," Mambo De Vivre said, nodding. "Or it can refer to the return of your gros bon ange to your body after death to act as a Loa on behalf of the divine. Many of our Loa were once living people who learned to commune with the divine, like your Catholic saints. They continue to help us even after they move onto the great beyond."

"How do you know the Prophet has been possessed?" Gabriel asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

"Not possessed," Mambo De Vivre clarified, running her finger along the string of unknown sigels that adorned Audrey's chest. "You are a conduit. The placement of the veve of the Gran Maitre after death indicates the Mother has claimed your spirit to act as a conduit to do her bidding. Like a Loa. Only you are still alive. You are zombie. The living dead."

"I'm not dead," Audrey whispered, leaning back into Gabriel's reassuring warmth and welcoming the feel of his arm protectively wrap around her shoulder. "I'm very much alive."

"You _were _dead," Gabriel murmured softly into her ear, a hint of remorse in his voice. "Remember? Your spirit had already left your mortal shell before I had a chance to pick myself up off the road and fortify it. An angel can only strengthen what is already there and accelerate healing, not retrieve a life spark that has already gone. Only the Father can restore life once it has departed."

"Or the Mother," Mambo De Vivre said. "Or the Son."

"Lazarus," Lena said. "Risen from the dead."

"Or Jesus," Gunn added. "After he was crucified."

"It was rumored the Father was furious the Savior seized possession of his former mortal shell and returned to speak to his disciples after his sacrifice," Gabriel said. "The Savior disappeared from the garden after that and was not seen for nearly two thousand years until he incarnated back twenty-one months ago."

"Bondieu has dominated our religion since being uprooted from the homeland of our ancestors," Mambo De Vivre explained, "because that did not conflict with the religion of our captors. To survive, our people adopted Christian saints who were willing to intervene on our behalf and act as our Loas, like Saint Michael and Saint Clare. We adopted outward practices of Christianity which did not conflict with our own beliefs to avoid the wrath of the slave owners. But the Gran Maitre has no correlation in your Christian faith. The Vodun remember that once upon a time, we had a Mother who gave birth to all that is, not just a Father. But memory of her has faded."

"The Holy Ghost," Gabriel said, his expression thoughtful. "Mention is made of a trinity comprised of Father-Son-Holy Spirit, but to speak of it further has always been forbidden. For as long as I have been aware, the Father has always insinuated that he was both Father and Holy Spirit."

"It takes two to tango," Mambo De Vivre snorted, sitting back and flicking ashes from her cigar into an ash tray before carefully squashing out the flame and placing the cigar back upon the table. "There are several serpent loas, Simbi, we can call upon to attempt to make contact with the Mother. In our religion, the serpent is a symbol of sacred knowledge because it crawls close to the earth and can travel underground, not a symbol of evil. It is the unconscious wisdom which cannot be spoken."

"How do we make contact with this … Mother," Gabriel asked, voicing the thought Audrey wanted to ask.

"La Gran Maitre is always easiest to petition when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest," Mambo De Vivre said. "Near all-Saints and all-Souls days. The timing of your arrival on all-Souls day is more than coincidence."

"Tell me what I need to do," Audrey said. "I want these nightmarish visions of the future to stop."

"Visions are a gift from the divine," Mambo De Vivre said. "But sometimes there is a lack of alignment between the one possessed and the Loa attempting to speak through them. It is like a gate that is closed. If the matter is urgent, the Loa will keep knocking at the gate, more and more loudly, to bring it to your attention so you can unlock it. If you have old psychic wounds or fears that prevent you from facing the truth, the results can be traumatic. I have seen conduits go into seizures or throw themselves into a fire resisting because the truth the Loa was trying to reveal was urgent, but it was more painful than the conduit could bear."

"I have not tried to resist," Audrey snapped, crossing her arms in front of her chest and trying to block the Mambo's preposterous explanation out of her mind. "I can face the truth perfectly fine!" She didn't want to hear _any _of this. She wanted to stick her fingers in her ears and hum _'la la la la…'_

Lena reached out to squeeze her hand. "That's not true. I never saw the incapacity which followed your gift of truth before you came to Salt Lake City, but the Reverend has described it. I was behind the camera when you confessed to the Mormon elders about the dog. That was a pretty ugly truth about yourself you faced that day and cleansing it from your soul has made you more balanced."

"Your gift of holy blasphemy," Gabriel said quietly into her ear. "Ever since that day, you have been able to speak truth without losing control of your gift. You wield it now like a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer."

"But I still have nightmares," Audrey said, her grief permeating her voice as tears sprang to her eyes. Fear. She was afraid of what this frightening old woman with her strange religion would do to her if she listened. "Every single night I have to … I have to … I have to watch …"

Her voice trailed off. She couldn't even bear to speak the words aloud. How could she explain that for nearly two years she had been forced to grieve the loss of something she hadn't, until recently, even possessed? She couldn't get past the image of Gabriel's death because, when he died, she wouldn't _want _to get past it. Every night as she grieved his loss, all she wanted to do was crawl into the earth where all she had left of her beautiful, heavenly angel was the mortal blood he had spilled for her and dig it over herself to create her own grave so she would never had to feel the pain of living without him.

She couldn't speak the words, so she turned and flung herself into his arms and sobbed into his great, broad chest. The arms that held her every night and reassured her he was still here. The arms that coaxed her back from her future grief every night into the present, where he was still alive. What would happen when it happened for real and there was no more waking up in his arms? The thought incapacitated her, so for as long as she had had the dream, she had diligently avoided thinking about it.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered in her ear, nuzzling her hair with his nose as he reassured her the same as he did every night after her vision left her sobbing his name in grief. "Whatever the future brings, we will face it together."

"What will happen when you are no longer here?" Audrey asked, looking up into his beautiful, unearthly ice-blue eyes and voicing the words she had never dared speak aloud. "What will happen when the Father takes you from me to punish you for our sin? How will I live without you?"

"Love cannot die, little Prophet," Gabriel said reassuringly, gathering her into her arms and drawing his wings protectively around her. "The Father can punish me for loving you, but he cannot make me stop. Any more than he was able to make my brother stop loving _his_ mortal wife. Or make the Savior stop loving all of mankind. The son was powerful enough to thwart the Father and come back to humanity a second time. Perhaps the son offers hope?"

"If Gran Maitre has sent you to learn to dance with the serpent without fear," Mambo De Vivre said, compassion etching the wrinkles in her face, "then your fears must be preventing you from seeing the message that lies _beyond _the vision she keeps sending to you. You are stuck. We must perform a ritual to cleanse whatever blockage prevents you from seeing what lies beyond your worst fear."

Audrey nodded, her head being the only part of her that peeped out of the feathery cocoon of Gabriel's wings like a chick peeking out of its mothers breast, and hiccoughed an affirmation. If she was to change the terrible prophecy she foresaw, she needed to be able to see what she needed to change.

"Good," Mambo De Vivre said, slapping her hands upon the thighs that lay beneath her white skirt. "You … Loa … you must go do something else. And bring the annoying young man with the camera with you." She pointed to Gabriel and Jose'. "Ritual cleansing is a very personal matter. Not to be uploaded onto the internet!"

"But I…" Gabriel started to protest.

"_You_ are the reason she cannot see beyond her worst fears," Mambo De Vivre said, unafraid of him. "Begone! You may come back tonight around seven o'clock, once we are ready to begin the all-Souls day commemorations. You may leave this other one, son of Odin, to act as her protector in your stead."

Gabriel hesitated.

"Go!" Mambo De Vivre ordered. "Do you think anybody in this town would dare attack a priestess of Oya? Even the Father's heavenly host did not dare attack me!"

"I'll be okay," Audrey said, wiping her tears. "Gunn will protect me. Maybe you could go … see a man about a riverboat?"

Gabriel's face lit up at that suggestion. He had been grouchy and sullen all day, ever since she had received her prophecy stating they needed to find the sixth disciple before tying the knot, and even _more _sullen about the promise the Reverend had extracted that Gabriel would make an appearance at city hall where the Reverend would be busily performing mass baptisms all day, something he loathed. Giving Gabriel something productive to do was the best medicine.

"Perhaps Lena would agree to accompany me?" Gabriel asked, looking to Lena, a look something akin to a plea for help crossing his expression. Gabriel, she knew, had never even _conceived _of planning for a wedding before. Much less actually done so.

"The transgendered one must stay," Mambo De Vivre said, looking at Lena. "Her place is to act as a bridge between the psyche of the Mother and the Father. If the Father wasn't so closed-mind about her kind, I suspect he wouldn't be having marital problems with the Mother in the first place."


	60. Chapter 59

_Note: Thanks again to all the kind readers and reviewers who keep cheering on the Muse, who still whispers, although a return to reality has forced me to slow down. For those of you who read this chapter and ask, the answer is 'yesssss.' Nothing aidssss good writing like real life exssssperiencssse._

XXXX

Chapter 59

_Saint Peter won't you open up the big white gate  
>Cause I heard about forgiveness and I hope it ain't too late<br>I ain't no holy roller but you go tell your king  
>That all the folks up in heaven might like to hear me sing *<em>

Gabriel found himself humming along to the old slave spiritual turned pop song as he watched the white-clad Voodoo practitioners sing, dance and gyrate around the large bonfire lit on the waterfront. Hundreds of people had converged here after visiting various graveyards. What surprised him how many practitioners of the faith were Caucasian or other races, not African-American as was the common misconception. Tonight was November 2nd, All-Souls Day, the day Voodoo practitioners and devout Catholic alike visited the graves of their ancestors, cleansed the stones, left flowers, and talked about the memories of those who had passed.

All around them, worshippers painstakingly used powdery substances such as corn flour, charcoal or salt to create veve's, intricate voodoo sigels, on the ground surrounding the ceremony grounds. Many hoped to induce their ancestors to speak via 'possession' and act as a type of personal family loa. As the only surviving Voodoo high priestess, or Mambo, left alive in New Orleans after the apocalypse, Mambo De Vivre was in charge of the sacred ceremony. Or festivities. It was hard to tell. The event they attended now had elements of both but seemed as much party as a religious ceremony.

"I hate snakes," Audrey complained as Mambo De Vivre pulled the large, albino python from its carrying basket and coaxed it to crawl up her own arm.

"The Father encouraged us to kill them wherever we saw them," Gabriel said, his feathers twitching at the thought of his little Prophet allowing something he had been taught was … vile … up her bare arm. "Several times he sent us on campaigns to eradicate as many as possible. Snake worship was one of the reasons the Father claimed he deafened his ears to the cries of the African people. He sent the heavenly host to whisper to the slave traders that they would make good slaves."

"If he was angry at the Mother and the serpent loas were her messengers," Audrey said, eyeing the snake nervously, "than I can see why he'd want to wipe snake worship out. Although Mambo said it's not _worship,_per se. More … spiritual aid. It doesn't sound very different from what he tried to do to _us._"

"Mambo De Vivre says Gran Maitre is _also_a creation goddess, equal to the Father," Gabriel commented absent-mindedly to himself more than anyone present, thinking out loud. "It makes a lot of disjointed memories I have of the time before the Father made us aware make more sense."

"I _hate_snakes," Audrey whined, louder this time, as she watched Mambo De Vivre hold the serpent up in the air with two arms, and then coaxed it to coil down her arm.

The snake continuously tasted the air with its forked tongue as it cautiously twined around the Mambo's arm and across her shoulders as though it were a fur collar or cat curling up for a nap. Gradually, it wrapped its enormous coils up one side of her torso and down the other, coming to rest with its head on the Mambo's arm, curiously watching the other worshippers at the ceremony. That the snake trusted the Mambo and was accustomed to being used in such a way was apparent.

"You must learn to dance with the serpent without fear," Gabriel reminded his little Prophet, reciting last nights' prophecy as he caressed her cheek. "I'll be right here at your side."

"Why don't _you_wear the snake, then?" Audrey snapped.

"Uhh-unh," Gabriel grunted, giving her a wolfish grin he had picked up from Gunnlaeif. "I hate snakes."

Audrey hit him in the arm. For some reason, his dark mood from this morning had lifted after meeting the scrawny man in the voodoo shop. Ever since he had fallen, he had been shot at, put on display, pawed, patted, poked and prodded. Humanity just didn't view his species with the respect he had grown accustomed to most of his existence anymore. The Hatian males' respectful demeanor and simple, heartfelt gesture to offer _him_the good luck gris-gris (charm) the obviously impoverished man had just bought for himself had significantly brightened his mood. He was actually looking _forward_to seeing his little Prophet dance with a snake wrapped around her body.

As for Audrey … not so much…

"Eeeeewwwww….." Audrey shuddered, closing her eyes and waving her hands as though she were shooing flies as Mambo De Vivre danced closer with the snake. "I hate you!"

"No you don't. You love me," Gabriel teased, bending down to kiss her scrunched-up face. "We're getting married tomorrow. Remember?"

Gabriel had managed to sneak out of the 'petting zoo' at City Hall with Jose' and Cindy this afternoon after meeting Mambo De Vivre to make a few arrangements for their big day. Cindy had impeccable taste and had been eager to earn her place in the group by smoothing the way without ridiculing him for his blatant lack of knowledge. That had pushed him over the edge from merely being in a better mood to downright cheerful.

Lena had taken one look at him when they'd gotten back at 7:00 as ordered and asked, _'who__are__you__and__what__have__you__done__with__Gabriel?'_

Gabriel inhaled the scent of her hair. Mambo De Vivre had made her bathe in a pleasant smelling concoction of herbs and change her clothing into a flowing cotton white skirt and top, a symbol of intellectual and spiritual purity. She looked beautiful. She smelled wonderful. One more night, and then she would be his. The purification ceremonies had kept Audrey busy while he flew off to make plans. Much of it would be a surprise. He felt like the cat that had swallowed a canary…

…Or a serpent who had just swallowed a mouse. Mambo De Vivre had fed a mouse to Le Gran Zombi, the name of her snake, named after a snake owned by a famous 19th-Century Voodoo queen, Marie Laveau. If Zombi was well fed and happy, Mambo had explained, he was less likely to bite one of the ceremony participants. For some reason, this had made Audrey _more_nervous, not less.

The song changed as Mambo De Vivre danced, whirling faster and faster, amazing for a 67-year-old woman with a gimpy leg, while the ceremony participants chanted a song to one of the deities Mambo De Vivre had explained was the gatekeeper to the other loas, or lesser gods, Papa Legba. Papa Legba was the African equivalent to Saint Peter at the pearly gates, and some strains of voodoo used the two loas interchangeably. The Mambo's dance was a blend between a stomping African tribal dance and the snake-like undulations of Middle Eastern dance. The Mambo must have been quite a dancer when she was younger.

Other dancers beat on drums, tambourines, rattles, and other instruments as they danced around the bonfire along with her. Off to one side, a band with less portable instruments played the earthy, African-inspired rhythms. A 'caller' with a deep voice called out to one of the voodoo loa in a singsong voice, the other participants singing right along with him in what had to be a familiar song.

_Papa Legba, open the gate for me, Ago eh_

_Papa Legba, open the gate for me_

_Open the gate for me, Papa_

_For me to pass, when I return I will thank the Loa!_

While they chanted, one of the ceremony participants had dressed the part of the Voodoo deity, dressing as an old man with a crutch, a straw hat, and a pipe. The man limped around the bonfire. When he was done, the participants ceremonially 'paid' the loa by giving him an offering of cola, peanuts and bananas, items the real-life loa purportedly appreciated.

Gabriel had never met Papa Legba in heaven, but he was aware there were numerous non-angel spirits, such as the death-spirits that served under his brother Azrael, which walked both the Earth and also in heaven. Angels were simply the Father's soldiers, barely even in the top ten of heavenly rankings. As an archangel, or high angel, he had been higher-ranking than other angels, but he had still been just a soldier nonetheless. How he wished now he had been more curious and asked more questions! But Lucifer had been naturally curious, and look where it had gotten him...

Gabriel had never been naturally inclined to excessive curiosity, but now that he thought about it, he had begun to wonder _why_ he'd never asked questions about the numerous non-angel spirits he'd crossed paths with over the years. If he thought about it, he could remember a time when the Father had first elevated him. He'd been too terrified and awestruck to ask questions, but he'd quietly observed everything that went on around him, eager to learn what pleased the father. Obedience. The Father liked obedience, so Gabriel had transformed himself into the most obedient of all the angels.

Then … Lucifer had rebelled and the Father had made them all take the collar. Had the collar taken away his ability to think for himself, the same way it had taken away his ability to feel? The natural inclination which had evolved once his shell had adjusted to being mortal was to be deliberate, thoughtful and cautious. Not pig-headed, blind and stupid. What had changed?

Perhaps _he_should dance with the snake, as well?

Gabriel watched the serpent eye him, licking the air with its forked tongue and eyeing him with its unblinking, green-gold slit eyes as though it could see straight through his flesh to whatever soul, if he even _had_a real soul, lay beneath.

Meh … maybe not…

"Do I have to do this?" Audrey pleaded with him, backing into his arms as Mambo De Vivre danced closer with Le Gran Zombi, the snake. The snake seemed to not mind being used as a prop. In fact, by the way it lifted its head and curiously observed what was going on around it, it _did_appear to demonstrate the intelligence the Vodun believed it possessed, not just a reptile.

"Mambo thinks if you learn to set your ti bon ange aside so the Mother's loa can speak through you," Gabriel murmured reassuringly in her ear, "that the visions won't be nearly as traumatic for you to experience. No more waking up with scratches."

The 'ti bon ange' was the other half of an individual's soul, the small good angel, or personality. It was the part of an individual that was unique to them, separate from the divine, probably the part the Father referred to as a person's 'free will.' It was also the part that, when a soul suffered spiritual and emotional damage, could interfere with a persons' ability to channel the gros bon ange, divine connection. Learning to dance with the serpent was really, Mambo De Vivre had explained, a metaphor for setting aside your fears and embracing the divine.

"How can my visions _not_be traumatic," Audrey whispered, just barely audible over the beating drums and chanting, her eyes haunted. "Even when I still hated you and the visions were little more than distant dreams, being forced to watch you die was traumatic."

Gabriel wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her back into his front, and kissed the top of her head. The fact his little Prophet, _after_he had acted like a monster and mindlessly killed her with barely a backwards glance, collateral damage in the Father's service, had been able to set aside her hatred, was beyond his comprehension. If he burned in the Keep for all eternity, as he already knew he would, the Father would never be able to touch his awe of her. He didn't deserve her love. He didn't deserve _her._ He knew that. Only the realization that _not_consummating their love would make not alleviate the pain she would suffer at his eventual death and his certainty that he could get the Father to accept a sacrifice of his own life to spare her had finally moved him to _accept_the gift of love she offered to him.

"Everything will be fine," Gabriel whispered reassurances in her ear as Mambo swirled in front of them, her white skirt swaying with her steps. "It's only an animal. A pet. Like a cat. Mambo De Vivre has assured us it will not bite you. You must conquer your fear."

The other ceremony participants sang louder and then, as if on cue, stopped. Mambo De Vivre stopped in front of the Prophet, her arms stretched up over her head with the middle of the snakes' torso strung between her hands. Le Gran Zombie coiled upwards, attempting to reestablish its earlier position around the Mambo's neck with its tail wrapped around her torso and head coiled around one arm. Slowly, Mambo lowered her arms so the snake slowly wriggled in front of her, denied its favored perch.

"Reach out one hand, child," Mambo De Vivre said, "and touch his skin. He won't hurt you."

"Eeeewwwww," Audrey whimpered, reaching out to hesitantly touch the snakes tail with one finger and jerking back her hand when the tail twitched. "Eee!"

"Feel how beautiful his skin feels," Mambo coaxed. "It is smooth and cool. Like fine leather."

"Just like a snakeskin purse," Lena chipped in from somewhere to their left.

Gabriel remembered the rattlesnakes they had been forced to eat when he had first begun to recover his strength at the base of the cliff. He had just smashed the skull of any snake foolish enough to enter their camp and then unceremoniously peeled back its skin to expose the oily, strongly flavored fish-like meat for Audrey to roast over a campfire. Some small, irrational part of his psyche hoped it wasn't a relative of the snake Mambo held now. He could picture the snake wrapping the Prophet in its coils, hissing '_thisss__isss__for__my__sssissster!'_

He was going daft. Too much time amongst the humans.

"Go ahead," Gabriel said. "If it so much as flicks its tongue at you the wrong way, I'll turn it into a pair of shoes for you."

A quick smile snuck onto Audrey's earlier expression of disgust, and then disappeared. Hesitantly she reached out her entire hand and placed it upon Le Gran Zombie's skin and held it there.

"It's cool but not cold," Audrey said, a hint of wonder in her voice. "Not slimy like I expected."

"Now move your hand up to just behind his head," Mambo De Vivre said. "He is a very well behaved serpent. He won't bite."

Gabriel glanced over to Jose', who was trying to pretend he _wasn't_surreptitiously filming the entire episode on one of his numerous hidden webcams for future blackmail … aka … embarrassment … aka … viewer education. For once Gabriel was glad. He wanted to show his little Prophet the look on her face as she touched the Mambo's enormous albino python.

Audrey moved her hand towards the snakes head and recoiled as it turned to look at her, its tongue flicking the air. Mambo coaxed her to hold her arm steady to allow the serpent to explore her arm and gradually begin coiling its way to its favored perch, the nice warm shoulders of a friendly human.

"Gab-ri-el!" Audrey squeaked in fear, drawing out the syllables of his name and turning her head in the opposite direction with her eyes and face scrunched up as the snake got to her shoulders and began to move its coils off Mambo De Vivre onto her body. "It's … heavy!"

Gabriel couldn't help it. His wings twitched in disgust at the mere thought of allowing that … thing … to touch his skin. Serpents. Enemy of the Father. Who was _he_to urge the Prophet to do something that he, himself, felt repulsed by?

"Allow Le Gran Zombie to find a position that is comfortable for him to hang on," Mambo De Vivre said. "Think of yourself as a tree. That is a python's natural habitat. Your torso is the trunk, while the extremities are the branches. Picture yourself as a tree swaying in the wind, and he will feel comfortable and move with you."

"Move?" Audrey squeaked, her voice a high-pitched, strangled sound and her posture so stiff Gabriel thought she might shatter like glass if he were to bump into her. "Nobody said anything about moving."

"You must _dance_with the serpent, child," Mambo De Vivre said. "And when you are done, he will visit other ceremony participants."

Le Gran Zombie finished coiling around the Prophet's body, its tail wrapped around her waist and down to trail down one leg, its head looped down the other side and swaying in the air, intently watching everything that went on around her, as she shuddered.

"Come, child," Mambo De Vivre said. "Come walk once around the circle."

Audrey gave him a terrified look and silently mouthed the word 'help!' as she dutifully followed the Mambo once around the bonfire, her gait stiff and fearful. Mambo made some sort of signal with her hands and the music started up again. Within moments, the crowd closed around her, dancing and undulating, clapping and stomping their feet, singing and chanting and laughing and generally having a good time. Within moments, Gabriel noticed that first Lena, then the Reverend, Cindy and the Senator, and finally Gunn joined in the dancing. Jose' excitedly moved around, trying to pretend he wasn't filming when Gabriel knew damned well he was. It looked like … fun.

Fun? Had he ever _had_fun? He couldn't remember. Maybe, once, before he had been aware? Closing his eyes, as the music grew louder and the chanting and laughing increased, vague memories, more feeling than images, came into his mind of a time he and his brothers and sisters had frolicked in the Garden of Eden and played pranks on the heavenly Father and his consort. Yes. He had once had a Mother. And sisters. He was certain of it.

He couldn't remember the Mother's face, but he remembered the way she would get down on the ground with them and squeal with delight as they made figures out of mud. To delight her children, the Mother would blow on their mudpies, imbuing them with her life force and creating _new_spiritual beings to frolic with them in the Garden of Eden. The Mother had loved them. Even the Grigori, who Lucifer had shaped one day out of mud as a gift for the Mother. Sadness tore through his heart. Why had the Mother left?

"You have memories of her," Mambo De Vivre said. It was an observation, not a question. Gabriel opened his eyes to find the voodoo priestess was standing in front of him, her gaze so intense it was as though she could see straight into his soul.

"I remember … something," Gabriel said. "It was a very long time ago. Before we were made self-aware by the Father so we could protect him."

"The spark of the Mother burns strong in the Prophet's breast," Mambo De Vivre said. "Never have I seen one so imbued with the light of the Mother, just as never have I seen one as imbued as you with the light of the Father."

"I have fallen from grace, Mambo," Gabriel said. "The Father has withdrawn his holy fire."

"He has withdrawn his holy fire," Mambo De Vivre said. "But he has not been able to withdraw the gros bon ange the mother gave you when she created you, nor the ti bon ange that _he_gave you. I suspect, out of all the angels in heaven, that you are most like him."

"That is probably not a good thing," Gabriel said warily. "The Mother left the Father and abandoned her children even though I remember they were once very happy together."

"Ahhhh," Mambo De Vivre said. "But you have a ti bon ange, free will. The Prophet has strengthened your resolve to do things differently than the Father. You have a choice. Observe what the Father did wrong and simply _choose_to do things differently."

"I was already faced with that choice once today," Gabriel said softly. "I could have remained silent."

"You did not want her to come here tonight," Mambo De Vivre said. Once again, it was a statement, not a question. The voodoo queen was terrifyingly perceptive.

"It is bad enough knowing that someday I am going to sacrifice my life to save her from punishment," Gabriel said. "So long as she is unharmed, I accept that fate. The Father taught me about self-sacrifice."

"Then what is the problem?" Mambo De Vivre asked.

"Do they have to rub our faces in it every single night?" Gabriel asked, his voice rising in anger. "Do they have to leave her sobbing in grief, with physical scratches on her body? Why can't they just leave us alone?"

"You say the Father once loved the Mother dearly," Mambo De Vivre said. "Perhaps it is too painful for _them_to watch?"

"Not my problem!" Gabriel snapped. "All I want is for them to just leave us alone so we can live out what little time we are given together in happiness!"

"But that is not what you did," Mambo De Vivre said. "You had a choice, and yet you let _her_make it. You brought her here."

Gabriel sighed. "It took me so long to earn her trust. Even longer to earn her love. I'm not arrogant enough to assume that, if I betray that trust, she will continue to love me. Sometimes … the things the Father taught me were just plain wrong. I usually don't even know I've stumbled until she is upset, but once it happens, I make sure it doesn't happen a second time."

"Perhaps that is the lesson the Father needs to learn?" Mambo De Vivre said. "To acknowledge his mistakes and not repeat them instead of insisting he is always right? I suspect that you and the Prophet are more than mere conduits for the two old gods. I think perhaps you are also their teachers."

"They only need watch the example laid out by their own son to know what to do," Gabriel said. "The time he spent here before was brief, but there is one thing I know for sure. The Savior worshipped the ground his wife walked upon."

The tempo of the music changed as more 'loa', ceremony participants dressed in bright colors wearing peculiar costumes, repeated what the man dressed as Papa Legba did earlier, dancing around the bonfire, acting out little skits, and then accepting 'gifts' of things like rum, hot chili peppers, cigars or food. The African deities appeared to enjoy being taken care of, not simply being called upon for favors.

"Maman Brigette," Mambo De Vivre said as she noticed Gabriel watch a participant dressed in purple dance around and encourage Audrey to dance with the snake. "Loa of the graveyard. And sensuality. Perhaps the _real_Maman Brigette will pay us a visit tonight?"

"The Prophet appears to be accepting the snake," Gabriel said, observing the way Audrey relaxed once the other ceremony participants began to dance alongside of her, pat the snake, and offer her words of encouragement as they clapped, sang, and danced.

Audrey shot him a glance with a victorious smile on her face. He couldn't help but smile in return. _He_wouldn't get caught dead wearing a serpent as an accessory. _Or_dancing, for that matter.

"Perhaps you should dance with her?" Mambo De Vivre asked, as though reading his thoughts.

"I don't dance," Gabriel said, hastily retreating behind his customary unreadable expression. The thought of having to cram his oversized body and wings into the undulating crowd and … move … his hips … like that … to some sort of rhythm … with other people watching …

He'd rather go battle the Grigori!

"Dance is about more than performing for others," Mambo De Vivre said. "It is about self-expression. Releasing your inner spirit. When you dance with another, you must learn to anticipate each others' steps so you can move in unison. A couple that dances together usually stays together."

Gabriel glanced over at Audrey, who appeared to have finally accepted her live snake collar and was beginning to whirl and undulate somewhat like Mambo De Vivre had done. She looked … happy. She looked … sensual. She looked … tempting.

"I don't know how," Gabriel said softly. "I never learned. The Father discouraged such expressiveness in heaven. He only cared how well I smote his enemies and how accurately I carried his word."

"The Prophet said you also sang?" Mambo De Vivre asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "Our choirs pleased him, back before he made us self-aware. Hosannas and poetry were two forms of expression he approved of, but not dance. He forbade dance as too … vulgar."

"Did the Mother dance?" Mambo De Vivre asked.

"I don't…" Gabriel started to say, and then sensed the words were inaccurate even before he'd uttered them. They had been led here to learn about inner knowledge that must be felt, not spoken. He closed his eyes, listening to the music, and tried to remember. Tried to remember what it had been like back when the Father had still been happy. Vague images of being swung around and squealing with delight, falling on the ground, and singing silly songs danced through his mind.

"The Mother danced," Mambo De Vivre guessed.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "I feel … I feel like we danced together a lot. Like … children. Dancing in a circle until we would fall down from exhaustion and laughter."

"Try to recapture sssome of that ssssentiment," Mambo De Vivre said, compassion etching her face as she spoke. Her eyes were no longer dark brown, but the gold-green, unblinking eyes of her serpent. "You mussst dance with your bride so you can remember the Mother."

Gabriel recoiled. He was no longer speaking to Mambo De Vivre. He was speaking to…

"It'ssss been a long time, Gabriel," the Serpent Loa said who had taken possession of Mambo's body. "Do you remember me?"

"Who are you?" Gabriel asked.

"I am the ssserpent sssent by the Mother to tempt Eve," the Loa said in its slightly hissing voice.

"Begone!" Gabriel recoiled, automatically reaching for his mace and remembering he had left it in the pavilion. "Evil thing!"

"You don't remember the Mother, do you?" the Loa asked. "You have sssurpassed all of her expectationssss. Ssshe is very proud of you."

"You tricked them," Gabriel snarled, pointing to the people who danced oblivious to the serpent in their midst. "You lied to them and told them it tasted good."

"She _doessss_ taste good, doesn't she?" the Loa said, pointing to Audrey dancing with the others. "She sssmells good. She feelsss good. When she touchesss you and tellsss you how much she lovesss you, it makesss your heart want to burst with joy, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Gabriel said softly.

"Having tassssted her," the Loa asked, "would you give her up for anything in all of creation?"

"No," Gabriel whispered.

"That is the gift of being fully ssself-aware," the serpent said. "That isss what a loving parent does. They teach their children right from wrong, and then they help them stand on their own two feet and make their own choicesss. The Father tried to deny their children the right to be self-aware."

What does the Mother wish from me?" Gabriel asked.

"Why don't you assssk her yourssself?" the Loa said pointing over to where Audrey was dancing with the snake. "Gran Maitre hasss taken possession of her vessel. It isss time for you to dance with the Mother."

Gabriel glanced over at Audrey and, although her physical shell was still recognizably his little Prophet, the manner in which she danced with the serpent was most decidedly _not_Audrey. Nor was it anything like the Mother who had danced circles with _him_holding hands in the garden. It was a dance he had seen the Mother perform for the Father to get him to look up from his work and pay attention to her. Wild … and seductive as hell. Gabriel glanced back at the Loa and realized it had left, leaving Mambo De Vivre back in possession of her own body.

"Go," Mambo De Vivre said. "Dance with Gran Maitre. It has been a very long time since the Mother has made a personal appearance. Not since before the slavers came and took my ancestors."

"How can you…?" Gabriel started to ask. The Mambo seemed totally nonplussed by the fact there had been another intelligence occupying her mortal shell only moments earlier.

"Possession is as normal for my people as brushing our teeth," Mambo De Vivre. "If the Loa is trustworthy, we do not fight it."

"She…" Gabriel said, unable to find words to voice what he was seeing at the moment. Gran Maitre caused the prophet's body to undulate like the serpent she carried, as though they were one entity.

Glancing at Le Gran Zombie, Gabriel realized the Loa he had spoken to earlier had now taken up residence in the Mambo's python. It looked at him expectantly as it swayed to the rhythm of the body it's master had just taken possession of, waiting for him to join them. The other ceremony participants cleared a ring around her, clapping and chattering excitedly. They were all familiar with the signs of someone who had been possessed by one of the loa.

Not a loa. But one of the very gods the loa acted as intermediaries for. Audrey was now possessed by the Mother!

With serpent-like arms, the Mother beckoned to him to join her in the dance.

X

*Song: _Big__White__Gate_ by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals


	61. Chapter 60

Chapter 60

'_What's happening to me?' _Audrey asked. The words did not obey and come out her mouth. Instead, they echoed inside her own mind.

'_Trust,' _a consciousness whispered. _'You will not be harmed.'_

"Come closer, my son," Gran Maitre spoke through Audrey, beckoning to the son she had not seen for thousands of years. "It has been a long time since we last danced."

Gabriel approached the Mother warily, his wings flared and twitching as though ready to take flight. She read the thoughts of the one she possessed and sent reassuring thoughts back into her mind. The vessel was strong enough to block possession if she so chose. That was good. She liked her vessels to be willful and strong. And able to think for themselves.

'_I only wish to speak to my son,'_ the Mother whispered to her vessel. _'Thank you for trusting me.'_

"Please don't hurt her," Gabriel said, his eyes etched with fear. He held out one hand as though he were a policeman coaxing a weapon out of a frightened teenaged thugs' hand. "Holy fire destroys the one possessed."

"Holy fire!" the Mother snorted with contempt. "Is _that _what he calls it these days? Ge-rouge! Wrath! It consumes because _he _is always angry, not because it is necessary."

"Don't hurt her," Gabriel pleaded, edging closer to pounce although there was no way from him to eradicate the deity which had possession of his love without hurting _her _as well. "Please. I'll do whatever you want. Just don't hurt her."

"Has he really been able to erase me so completely from your mind?" the Mother pleaded, her voice soft but audible even through the clamor of music and dancers. She sensed the question in her vessels mind.

'_Gabriel played at my feet for billions of years before the Father erased all memory of me and claimed I was the devil,' _the Mother whispered to her vessel. _'But without the holy fire to suppress it, his memories are returning. It is important that he remember so he can help you face the coming threat.'_

"Fragments," Gabriel said, reaching the spot where her vessel danced and cautiously reaching out one hand to touch her shoulder where loa Simbi lay coiled. "Just fragments. And only since I have fallen from grace."

Fear etched her beautiful boy's face. Fear for his beloved. The Mother coaxed her vessel to do what she wished, to reach out and caress the furrow from his brow. Simbi shifted his position to free her vessels arm so her movement wouldn't shove the serpent-body the loa currently possessed into his face.

"Dance with me, my child," the Mother coaxed. "Your beloved very much wishes you would dance with her. She loves you dearly, but she finds your formality to be rather constricting. She is a free spirit. It would behoove you to find methods of self-expression you both share so you will always have a middle ground."

'_Move as you –wish- to move, child,' _the Mother whispered to her vessel. _'Embrace the serpent. He will teach you how to move without constriction or fear.'_ Her vessel moved of her own volition, stepping closer to her beloved and undulating her body like the serpent she now carried. Through the sensory receptors of her vessels mortal shell, the Mother could feel Simbi move with her vessel, gently constricting in once place to coax her to move that part of her body and then moving the constriction along his serpent-like vessel to teach the Prophet how to move in sync with the Mother.

"Why do you torment her with visions of my death?" Gabriel asked. "If you need something from us, why don't you just ask?"

"It was not my intent to cause your beloved pain," the Mother said, transforming the caress of desire her vessel reached out to touch him with into the caress of a mother touching her son. "I show the tapestry of the future as the current weave of the threads dictate. Her visions started the day Michael retrieved her soul from Sheol. She only began to fixate upon your sacrifice when she began to care whether or not you lived or died. The death of the others causes her sorrow, but only your death causes her to become so incapacitated with grief that she is unable to explore how reweaving individual threads might cause the tapestry to change."

"Isn't it enough that I will sacrifice my life when the time comes to spare her?" Gabriel asked, frustration lacing his voice. "Why must you both intrude upon our happiness?"

The Mother felt the same question echoed from her vessels' mind. The Prophet wanted to know not only why it was necessary that her beloved die, but why the Father opposed their love.

"The Father made a series of grave errors while he had sole possession of our kingdom," the Mother said remorsefully. "I knew his shortcomings, but I just could not deal with him any more without losing myself to my anger. I should have never have abandoned my children to his care."

"Then why _did _you," Gabriel snapped, his eyes flashing with uncustomary anger. "You broke the Father's heart! I do not remember _you,_ but I remember how much he grieved when you left!"

"Why are you so willing to suffer all eternity in Sheol?" the Mother asked, answering his question with another question. "When the Father will forgive you and allow you to return to heaven if you simply ask. He has already tried to lure you back and you refused. Answer that question, and you will have your answer."

Gabriel glowered at her, an unmoving rock jutting out of the sea of writhing, joyful voodoo dancers. The Mother waited while the gears slowly turned, while Gabriel thought the question through and answered his own question.

'_He didn't tell me the Father tried to lure him back,'_ Audrey asked the Mother in her own mind. _'When did this happen?'_

'_When the bullet tore through his mortal lung and nearly caused his shell to expire,'_ the Mother informed her vessel silently in her mind. _'The Father offered Gabriel forgiveness if he would give you up and return home. Gabriel refused. Had you not whispered to him that you loved him when you did, things might have turned out differently. The Father was livid his machinations failed.'_

"Because once I return to heaven," Gabriel whispered, "he will make me take the collar and take away my ability to feel. He will force me to forget her the same way he forced all of us to forget _you._ I will forget what it feels like to love her. He cannot tolerate anybody loving anyone except for _him._"

A cry of anguish resonated through her vessel's soul. The Prophet did not wish her beloved to die, to suffer on her behalf. Even if it meant he would forget her.

'_Would you rather the Father turn him back into the mindless monster who would kill an innocent baby?' _the Mother answered into the mind of her vessel. _'After all he has been through, all he has grown, do you think –he- wants to return to being that monster?"_

'_No,' _Audrey silently answered her query. She did _not _wish for Gabriel to return to being so obedient that he killed without question. There were some fates worse than death.

"Then understand why I could not tolerate his presence any longer," the Mother said, encouraging her vessel to reach up and touch Gabriel's cheek. "I was losing myself. I tried to reconcile with him several times. But he betrayed me. The free will of humans was a ruse. You saw what he did when Simbi gave them a choice."

"You _left_ us," Gabriel accused. "How could you simply just _leave_ us with him and not communicate with us for millennia?"

"I am the void from which all of creation sprang," the Mother said, remorse tingeing the voice she projected through her vessel. "In my natural state, I have no form. It was the Father who gave shape to my desires so I could breathe life into them. But the Father is always angry. If I merely wish it to be so, all of creation can be undone with a single thought. I was not well defined enough at the time to withstand his bullying. Rather than destroy all that is, I left. I thought you would remember me."

"If _you _could not withstand him," Gabriel accused, "than how could we? We were just … children!"

"One does not usually realize they have made a mistake until they have stumbled," the Mother said softly, paraphrasing Gabriel's own words. "All you can do is pick yourself up and try very hard not to make the same mistake a second time."

Gabriel's expression softened, but he was still wary.

"I love the Father with all of my heart," Gabriel finally said. "_He _did not abandon me. I will not betray him."

The Mother sensed her vessels thoughts as the Prophet screamed obscenities in her mind at her beloved, wishing very much to reach out and smack her husband-to-be on the side of the head.

"My vessel has asked me to remind you about a certain angel she found broken at the bottom of a cliff," the Mother said, repeating the words the Prophet wished to convey, omitting the 'you fucking idiot' expletive from the end of the sentence.

'_Tact,'_ the Mother whispered to her vessel, reminding the Prophet of the lesson she herself had only recently learned under the patient tutelage of the Savior.

"I do not ask you to follow me blindly," the Mother said aloud to Gabriel. "Obedience is not my nature. All I ask is you follow your heart and decide for yourself what you think is right."

"You forfeited the right to tell us what to do when you abandoned us," Gabriel snarled, fire flashing in his eyes.

"The Father put the kingdom at risk when he tried to pry our Son from his mortal shell," the Mother said, a warning tone coming into her voice. "He finally angered me enough to stand up to him. He has the power to punish, but –I- possess to power to destroy. His rigid, unforgiving ways have finally earned him more enemies than followers."

"Then tell us what we need to do," Gabriel asked, "so we can get the _both _of you off our backs and live our lives in peace?"

"If I knew the solution to that problem," the Mother said, "then the Father and I would not be at each other's throats blaming it on each other instead of fixing the problem. Contrary to popular belief, we are neither omnipotent, nor omniscient. You will need to come up with your own solution."

A cornucopia of conflicting emotions danced across Gabriel's face as he tried to force his normally cautious, deliberate thought processes to wrap around the reality the Mother had just revealed to him. That he even _tried _was proof of just how far he had come since the Prophet had found him broken at the bottom of a cliff.

"Why do you force her to dance?" Gabriel finally asked. His expression was confused. He did not understand the nature of possession.

"I am not the heavenly host," the Mother said. "I do not take unwilling vessels. I only encourage her to do what she already wishes to do. The Prophet's will is very strong. Too strong to override. It is why she has had so much difficulty accepting the gift of prophecy. I only give her encouragement to coax you to dance with her."

Despite his reservations, Gabriel reached out to touch her vessel as though to reassure himself Audrey was still there. Physical. Gabriel had always been the most physical of all her children, needing close proximity and constant physical contact in order to thrive. While physically the strongest, he had also always been the most emotionally vulnerable. The Mother shared a memory of her son quietly sitting at the edge of the garden, watching but rarely participating, patiently waiting for the others to finish so he could give her a grubby handful of dandelions.

'_I have chosen well for my son's mate,' _the Mother whispered into her vessel's mind. _'It was all I could have hoped for that you would save his life and allow him to be your protector so he would continue to have a purpose for living after the Father sacrificed him. Much less that you would grow to love him. I am pleased with how much you have helped him grow. Of all my children, -he- is most like the Father. I had begun to give up hope of him ever finding love.'_

"I don't know how to dance," Gabriel said hesitantly, his movements stiff and robotic as the Prophet coaxed him to move first to one side, and then to the other, to move with her. "The Father forbade it."

"My time grows short here," the Mother said, sensing the angry chattering from the Father, irate that she did not simply give her son orders and command him to obey. "I wagered you would not violate the Prophet's free will if given the choice to earn this time to speak to you. The Father does not like losing. It is his nature to cut off his nose to spite his face."

"I have come to recognize that fact," Gabriel said cautiously.

"The one thing the Father and I agree upon is that you must help the Prophet finish paving the road for the Savior or all of heaven will be destroyed," the Mother said. "The Grigori are beginning to amass at the gates. Time grows short."

"Mother?" Gabriel asked.

"Yes, my son?"

"Don't stay away so long next time," Gabriel whispered. "The Father isn't the only creature who missed you."

"You must catch her when I leave," the Mother said. "She is unused to possession. It will take her some time to recover."

The Mother withdrew the tentacle of energy from the Prophet's mortal shell, leaving the Prophet in control of her own body once more.

"Mother?" Gabriel asked, catching Audrey as she wavered, and then began to lose her balance.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered as she collapsed into his arms. "I met the Mother."

"I know," Gabriel said, catching her before she fell. Simbi coaxed his vessel, Le Gran Zombie, to go visit other patrons. Within moments, the Mambo's python had slithered over to find a _new _perch upon another ceremony participants willing shoulders.

"I'm so sleepy," Audrey murmured. "Let's go home."

She relished the feeling of safety as her beloved picked her up as though she weighed nothing at all and carried her away from the festivities she no longer wished to participate in. She was asleep before they had even left the circle, oblivious to anything except the reassuring sensation of his warmth as he encircled her in his arms and wings.

For the first time since the day she had found him at the base of the cliff, Audrey did not dream.


	62. Chapter 61

Chapter 61

"Oh Audreeeeeey!" an annoyingly cheerful voice called.

"Mmphffff…" Audrey groaned.

"And now, peoples and gents, we's gots the bride on her big day," an even _more _annoying voice said. "The siren who wooed down one of heavens greatest archangels to stay with us peoples and fight on behalf of mankind."

"Sampson's Delilah," a third annoying voice chipped in.

"Anthony's Cleopatra," a fourth annoying voice added.

"Potempkin's Catherine," a fifth voice added.

"Odysseus's Penelope," a sixth voice added.

"Speak to your adoring fandom," the first cheerful voice said. Lena. "The whole world wants to know what it's like to be loved by that big, manly angel of yours."

Audrey threw her pillow at them.

"Go away!" she groaned, the blinding light causing her to squint most unattractively as Jose' began the morning with a live streaming webcast of her wedding day.

"What's it like to be held in those burly, mace-wielding arms," the fourth voice asked. Cindy.

What's it like to be encircled in those wings?" the second voice asked. Jose'.

"How big is his…" Gunnlaeif started to ask.

"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?" a deep, baritone voice bellowed.

Silence.

"We-we-we's was just a makins sure she gots up and everything," Jose' stammered.

"Don't want her to be late for the big day," Lena added in a near sing-song voice.

"We've got to get her hair done and everything," Cindy said. "I made an appointment for her at the hairdressers."

"You'd better not be filming this, Jose'!" Gabriel snapped. "I said the ceremony. Nothing else!"

"Hey," Lena said. "I thought the groom wasn't supposed to see the bride until she walks down the aisle."

Audrey could practically _feel _the heat coming off of the red-hot glower Gabriel must be giving them right about now.

Silence.

"We'd better be going, guys," Cindy whispered. As the newest member of the group, not even a full-fledged disciple but rather the _spouse _of a disciple, she was the most hesitant about ruffling Gabriel's tail feathers.

"Mmmm'llll be out in a ffffew minutes," Audrey mumbled, the pillow she had her face buried in to block out the sunlight muffling her words.

The other disciples piled out of the room, twittering like a bunch of pre-adolescent girls. Except for Gunn, who sounded more like a pre-adolescent boy. A pre-adolescent boy with deep voice and a very dirty mouth. The sound they made as they piled out of the room reminded Audrey of the movie, 'Gremlins.'

"Who fed them after midnight?" Audrey groaned.

"I don't understand," Gabriel said, his voice reassuring and low.

"Movie reference," Audrey said, groaning and stretching as her eyes finally began to adjust to the light. "Cute cuddly little creatures that turn into demons if you feed them after midnight."

"I know of no such creatures," Gabriel said, sitting down on the bed next to her and laying his hand upon her abdomen. "Although the heavenly host are known to become more active around that time of night."

"What's on the agenda today?" Audrey asked, relishing the feel of his hand radiating heat down into her midsection. New Orleans was warm year-round, but the early November chill had her reluctant to crawl out from under the covers. Especially as Gabriel had been up before dawn and flown off to finalize some arrangements.

"You didn't dream last night," Gabriel said, reaching up to touch her cheek. "No nightmares. I stayed awake as long as I could."

"No nightmares," Audrey said, at last adjusting to the light and putting on her 'cheerful face.' "What time is it?"

"Ten o'clock," Gabriel said. "I wanted to let you sleep."

"Worried we're not going to get any sleep _tonight_?" Audrey asked in her most sultry voice, giving him her best Bette Davis eyes impression through veiled eyelashes. She was rewarded by a slight catching of his breath and a hint of color creeping into his cheeks.

"You never woke up last night," Gabriel said softly. "I was worried that the Mother had harmed you."

"I'm fine," Audrey said. "It was strange, but not painful. In fact, I feel … idunno … lighter?"

Gabriel was silent. He communicated with her, as he often did, through his reassuring touch, not his words.

"She showed me an image of you and your brothers as little cherubs," Audrey said gently. "The others would climb all over her and play, but you'd always quietly sit off to the side and wait for her to notice you. You used to pick her flowers. Dandelions. I never realized they had dandelions in Eden. My father always hated dandelions."

She reached up to touch his cheek. How different he looked from that young cherub, and yet how alike. He had been as deliberate and quietly loyal _then _as he was now.

"I don't remember anything about her," Gabriel said, his expression mournful. "How can I have forgotten my own mother?"

"You won't forget me," Audrey said, understanding the _real _concern he had on his mind. "He can't make you forget unless you _allow_ him to make you forget."

Gabriel was silent.

"You're afraid he's going to make _me _forget _you_?" Audrey asked.

Gabriel was silent.

"You know darned well that, whatever the old geezer tells me to do, I'm going to do the opposite," Audrey reassured him. "You were a little boy when she left. Parents do stuff like that all the time to their kids. Split up. Tell them the other parent is evil. Screw around with visitation and stuff until the kids don't know which end is up. Things are different now. You're an adult. He can't make you do anything you don't want to do."

"No matter what happens," Gabriel said quietly, "know that I will always love you more than my own existence."

"You act like the old geezer is going to split the heavens and reign down fire upon us when we say 'I do,'" Audrey said.

"It's been known to happen," Gabriel said.

"The Mother won't let him," Audrey said, reaching up to touch his face. It had always amazed her that angels didn't grow facial hair.

"I know nothing about her," Gabriel said. "Other than that she left. She said she cannot prevent him from punishing us. Only from destroying us."

"Cold feet?" Audrey asked.

"No," Gabriel said firmly. "Just … worried."

"You're _always _worried," Audrey said, moving her hand to caress across the furrow that marred his perfect brow. "This is our day today. Not theirs. Let's just be happy. Okay?"

Gabriel captured her hand in his and brought it down to his lips, kissing the back of her hand before bringing it down to cover his heart.

"I never knew joy until I met you," Gabriel said, searching her eyes with his inhumanly beautiful, ice-blue eyes, the color of glaciers. "The Father made us feel content. Safe. Secure. Even bliss. But it pales in comparison to what I feel … here … in my heart … when you smile and tell me that you love me. No matter what happens, I won't ever allow him to take that from me. Not even if he sends all the angels in heaven to hold me down and force that damned dog collar back onto my neck to try to make me forget."

They sat there, paused in the intensity of the moment, as Audrey lost herself in his ice-blue eyes. She could lose herself forever in those eyes.

"Yeah," Audrey finally said, looking down and breaking the moment with an evil grin. "If you think I'm unforgettable now, just wait until I pin your wings to the bed and have my way with you." She waggled her eyebrows at him to make him smile.

"Humans!" Gabriel snorted, grabbing her face between his large hands and pulling her in for a kiss. "You've hopelessly corrupted me."

"Fallen angels," Audrey said, her voice getting husky and low. "Falling, falling, falling all over the place. By the time I'm done with you tonight, boy, you'll be sunk so low in the Earth you're not going to want to _ever _get out."


	63. Chapter 62

Chapter 62

"I'm getting married in the morning," Lena sang in her best drag queen voice, putting the finishing touches on Audrey's dress. "Ding-dong, the bells are gonna chime. Pull out the stopper, we'll have a whopper, but get me to the church on time."

"You look lovely," Cindy said, teasing her hair and putting the last few hairpins into it to secure the simple antique lace veil to her hair. "Like an angel."

Audrey burst into tears.

"Honey … what's wrong?" Lena asked, pulling Audrey into her signature glittery blue evening gown and false breasts for a big old hug.

"Pre-wedding jitters?" Cindy asked.

"No," Audrey said. "It's just … I didn't have my vision last night."

"Isn't that good?" Cindy asked. "I've heard you scream. They sound pretty terrifying."

"You don't understand," Audrey whispered. "Everybody dies trying to defend the Savior. Even Gabriel. Every time we've found a new disciple, the length of time we're able to fend them off gets longer, but it's never enough. Without the visions, I have no way of knowing what threads we need to change to alter the tapestry."

"Perhaps the Mother has alleviated the vision so she doesn't ruin your wedding day?" Lena suggested. "She _did _lay off when Gabriel was shot. You went three nights with only bad dreams, not full-blown visions."

"If I'm going to change the outcome," Audrey sniffled, wiping her eyes. "I need to see which changes matter, and which changes don't. I'm not even sure the compass rose works anymore. The arrow didn't reappear after meeting Mambo De Vivre."

"We only met Mambo _yesterday,_" Cindy reminded her. "You're getting married _today._ The least the Mother could do is wait a couple of days to let you enjoy a decent honeymoon."

"Yeah," Audrey said. "You're right. Two disciples in two weeks. It took an entire year to meet the first two."

"Not to mention our new, superhero sidekick," Lena said, slapping Cindy on the back.

"Do disciples even _have _sidekicks?" Cindy asked.

"They do now!" Lena said. "Who's going to keep us all super-organized? I never _seen _nobody pull together a wedding in a strange town so fast in my entire life!"

"That's my job," Cindy said. "A politician has to deal with the unexpected all the time. They depend upon their staff to pull it off."

"I love this dress," Audrey said, flitting the skirt on the vintage 1930's-era wedding dress back and forth. "Wherever did you find it?"

The dress was a simple bias-cut silk sheath, short-sleeved with light glass beading to accentuate the deep V-cut back. Simple, but exquisite. A relic from another era when humanity had been knocked on its backside economically, but come back fighting by returning to simpler values.

"New Orleans was always a colorful old town," Cindy said. "We've yet to hear of any areas where the production of any kind of textiles has recovered, but there was always a market for vintage clothing here. You're so tiny. It was easy finding something that fit."

"We're lucky we ended up someplace that started to recover in time to get married," Audrey said. "Could you see if we'd gotten married in Santa Fe? That city was in bad shape. I'd have gotten married in blue and purple gang colors."

"He wanted to ask you there," Lena said quietly. "The Reverend told me. But then that brother of his showed up and warned him the Father was pretty ticked off Gabriel didn't go running home when daddy waved the carrot of forgiveness in front of his nose."

"Azrael," Audrey said. "Gabriel wouldn't ask until he realized _not _asking was causing me more anguish than some eventual punishment by the Father."

"No gang colors," Lena joked. "Or biker clothes."

"Would it have mattered?" Cindy asked. "The Senator and I got married in the rotunda while the rest of the building was in shambles wearing the same dress I'd been wearing for nearly three weeks. All that mattered was we were finally together."

There was a knock on the door. It was time. Beneath them the vibration of the steam-powered paddle wheel reverberated throughout the ship as it turned north out of New Orleans up the Mississippi River. Gabriel refused to tell her any more about the plans he had made, and Cindy was being tight-mouthed about it other than to smirk.

"And l-l-ladies and gentlemen's, this here's your faithful cameraman and oh-fish-shell disciple of the Savior here with exclusive live streaming video of the hottest celebrity of the year, the Prophet of the Savior and the Archangel Gabriel," Jose' narrated, his stutter almost completely disappearing behind the safety of the webcam. "We's now with the bride and her maid-of-honor, the ever-lovely Miss Lena, and her wedding organizer, Cindy, with a 'y' not an 'i.'"

Cindy pushed a small bouquet of flowers into her hand. In early November, the choice of flowers was limited, but Gabriel had found some simple white iris's in a local woman's garden this morning. The old woman had purportedly been amazed to see an angel drop out of the sky and start picking flowers from her garden. Gabriel had garnered the flowers for the price of having a pleasant cup of tea with the old woman and a photograph together with him for her scrapbook. The old woman had even beautifully bound the long stalks together with a white silk ribbon.

Audrey forced herself to take a deep breath and smile into Jose's webcam. They all harped about how annoying Jose' could be with his constant filming, but every day their viewership numbers grew. Not only was their satellite webcast encouraging people to band back together as a country and a world, but every viewer was a potential ally for the Savior against the Grigori when they finally punched through here. And they _would _punch through. Audrey could almost feel their presence pressing in on her body.

"Smile, sweetie," Lena chided her.

"Did the two ministers finally get who was going to do what ironed out?" Cindy asked her husband, who was helping referee the other passengers on the riverboat.

"Sort of," the Senator said, giving his wife's hand an affectionate squeeze. "Mambo's finished up the sigels around the bow of the ship and setting out food offerings for the loas, while the Reverend is tying flowers to the railings. Since you guys are essentially saying your own vows, they decided to stop arguing about the right way to conduct a wedding and focus on invoking every helpful saint or deity they could think of to bless your marriage."

"All except the one that really counts," Audrey whispered. "It breaks his heart to disobey the Father, even though he knows he must."

"At least you both have the blessing of the Mother," Lena reminded her. "That's got to count for something."

The deck of the ship was jammed with other passengers, cargo, and even livestock. Renting a reliable form of transportation in this day and age for something as luxurious as a wedding was unheard of. The riverboat had been chosen to bring them to the next several stops on the Senator's trade relations tour for the Restored Republic of Texas, Baton Rouge, Natchez, Osceola, Memphis, and finally Saint Louis. With petroleum products still nearly nonexistent, the steam riverboats had become the lifeline for the towns lining the Mississippi River. The boat would stop every single town from New Orleans to Saint Louis, Missouri.

At least they had been able to get their own room on the riverboat for the lengthy journey. If that counted. The room was so tiny and cramped, the lumpy bed jammed against the wall, that there was no room for Gabriel to flare his wings. He was also too-tall for the ceiling, needing to duck or he banged his head. The walls were also paper-thin. Not an ideal place by pre-apocalyptic standards to spend your honeymoon.

But heaven by post-apocalyptic standards…

"Everybody MOVE!" Lena barked, running interference for her as her maid-of-honor aka goon squad through the other passengers. Curiosity seekers had piled on the upper deck, eager for the entertainment provided by the wedding of the century. Or more likely millennia. According to Gabriel, no angel had married a mortal since Lucifer and his men had been sent to babysit humans and teach them civilization around 3,500 BC and chosen to 'go native' with the local women.

Her first glimpse of him took her breath away…

"He looks good enough to eat, honeychild," Lena catcalled just loud enough for Jose' to pick up on the camera.

Gabriel was wearing a simple dark grey pinstripe suit. Not a tuxedo, but obviously a designer cut, and a plain white dress shirt. He kept fidgeting with the red tie, obviously ill at ease with it. The suit shone beautifully against his dark brown hair and feathers, almost glossy black against the scenery.

"Where did he find a suit?" Audrey asked. "I mean … that … worked … with his wings? It took weeks for the Mormons to alter a few shirts to fit him."

"There's not a lot of business these days for professional tailors," Cindy said. "They were falling all over themselves for the privilege of saying they'd outfitted an archangel. Finding a suit big enough to alter, on the other hand, proved a lot tougher. He's a lot bigger than a human male and the textile industry is currently extinct."

"How'd you manage?" Audrey asked.

"We found a saint willing to donate one of theirs," Cindy said. "There was just barely enough room in the cuffs and sleeves to lengthen it for him."

"You mean you found a really nice person?" Lena asked.

"No," Cindy said, laughing. "We found a Saint. The Louisiana Saints are the local football team. One of the linebackers is nearly as big as Gabriel and survived the apocalypse. The Mayor put in a call and asked him if he had something suitable."

"Nice, big manly men," Lena cackled like an old hen. "Just the way we like them."

Gunn was acting as Gabriel's best man, since the Reverend was performing the bulk of the ceremony. They'd scrounged up a suit for him, as well. The Reverend had managed to borrow fancier ministerial attire from one of the New Orleans clergy, while Mambo De Vivre wore her trademark flowing white skirt and blouse.

"Thank you," Audrey whispered to Cindy, a tear escaping her eyes. "Thank you for helping him pull this off. There's no way he could have done this without help."

Gabriel's expression was serious, as always, until he caught sight of her, and then his face lit up in a smile as the crowd finally parted enough for her to get through. Off to one side, a couple of musicians played a rough ragtime rendition of 'Here Comes the Bride' on a trumpet, a trombone, and a banjo. Not an orchestra, but perfect for the occasion.

"And the brides stepping up to the … hey! Get out-out-out of my way!" Jose' narrated into his webcam, cussing out a couple of passengers who crowded in too close behind her for him to film.

Gabriel held out his hand to hers as she stepped up to the bow of the ship where he waited, clasping it tightly and pulling her close.

"You look beautiful," he whispered.

"So do you," Audrey whispered back.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in the bond of holy matrimony," the Reverend began to read off the traditional wedding vows. "These are unusual times. The old way of doing things no longer works, while the new way of doing things is emerging as we speak. Furthermore, in case some of you didn't notice, our groom is a bit unusual. Where he comes from, a vow until death do us part is insignificant. Therefore, our couple would like to read off their own vows to each other."

The Reverend looked to them and then to Audrey. She was supposed to go first. She gave Lena her flowers so she could take both of Gabriel's hands and hold them in front of her level with her heart.

"Every girl dreams of being swept off her feet, of love at first sight, of that first meeting of the eyes across a smoky room," Audrey said, looking into his beautiful, unearthly ice-blue eyes as she spoke her vows. "But sometimes, love creeps up on you slowly. It's the little things that matter. Learning to trust that someone's always got your back. Those little reassuring gestures that someone is always thinking of you, putting your needs before their own. Trusting that someone will catch you when you fall. Will still want to be around you when your hair is a mess and you look like something the cat dragged in. Sometimes love starts with friendship, trusting that someone will still want to be your friend even when you're being a less-than-perfect friend in return. Sometimes love starts with the realization that you can no longer fathom not having someone in your life because they have become your best friend, someone you trust more than any other person in the world, your confidante. Sometimes, you wake up and realize that what you have with this person is special, that nobody else in the world has something as special as the relationship you have with your best friend, the person who accepts you as you are. And then one day, it happens. You realize that you've been in love with them for a very long time and you didn't even realize it, because it crept up on you so slowly, so naturally, like a vine crawling up a sturdy tree trunk reaching for the sun, that you realize you would wither and die without their love. Our love is like that, Gabriel. Without you, I would wither and die. With you, I can face anything. I swear to you that no matter what happens, either in this life or the afterlife, that nothing will ever separate us. Not even the Father himself will keep me from your side wherever you go, or cause me to forget my beautiful angel who chose to stay with me as my protector. I choose _you, _Gabriel, to be my husband for all of eternity, come what may."

Tears streamed down Audrey's cheeks as she spoke her vow, and she was touched to see the mist rising in Gabriel's eyes. The Reverend turned and nodded to Gabriel.

"Audrey Anderson," Gabriel said, enunciating his words the way she had heard him speak before the Mormon elders when he wished to convey he was capable of carrying the word of god, "you found a broken creature in the wilderness who had done you wrong. Somehow you overcame that rough beginning and gave this fallen creature a second chance to prove himself. From the first time I ever heard your voice calling to me in the dark, I could hear the spark of the divine in your voice, and I hear it now. You taught me what it meant to feel, to have emotions, to be human. You taught me what it means to have friendship. You taught me what it means to love. You taught me joy, and I will never let you go. I swear nothing will ever cause me to willingly leave your side. I love you more than my own existence. Nothing will ever prevent me from protecting you. Not even my own death. I take thee, Audrey Anderson, to be my wife for all eternity, come what may, and heaven itself will not be able to separate us."

Gabriel's eyes were solemn as he recited his vow, the tear that had been gathering as he spoke finally escaping and trailing down his cheek. He took her hand and placed it over his heart and, as he did, she realized that his hand was trembling.

"Bow your heads, my children," Mambo De Vivre said, stepping beside the Reverend. She took out a length of string and nodded to them to stretch out their hands, which were still clasped together, and began to wind the string around one each of their joined hands. "We are grown and gathered and ground, and binding as well. We are joined at the hip and the hand, the heel and the head. We are planted beneath the land, forever to wheel as the Earth and the sun are wound on a golden wheel. As the ripening grasses stand and pale and fall."

Mambo De Vivre finished loosely winding the cord and tied the two ends together.

"The rings?" Mambo De Vivre asked. Gabriel had managed to scrounge up rings with the help of the efficient Cindy. Jewelry had little value in post-apocalyptic society. Only tradable commodities had any real value.

"As you have stated your desire to be united," Mambo De Vivre said, "take these rings and place them on each others' finger and recite the vows."

"I bring you the light of my love," Gabriel said, placing the ring on Audrey's finger.

"I bring you the warmth of my heart," Audrey said, placing the ring on Gabriel's finger.

"Now seal your promise with a kiss," the Reverend chipped in.

Audrey looked up at her tall, beautiful angel. Her husband. She tilted her head up expectantly as Gabriel unabashedly bent down to taste her lips in front of their friends and crowd of strangers, passengers on the riverboat. Someone in the bridge must have been watching, for the ship cried out a high-pitched whistle as they kissed, signaling the crowd to begin clapping and cheering. Audrey gasped as Gabriel deepened his kiss, not holding back as he normally did, pulling her into his torso and wrapping her in his wings. Their friends began to laugh, and then to cat-call as the kiss deepened and lingered.

"Get a room!" Gunnlaeif cracked.

"We now pronounce you husband and wife!" the Reverend and Mambo De Vivre said loudly together. Mambo nodded to the band, which began to play an only slightly out-of-tune rendition of "Oh When the Saints Come Marching In." Not exactly a wedding tune, but festive for the occasion.

"Are we officially married, now?" Gabriel asked the Reverend.

"You may go ravish your bride," the Reverend said with an enormous grin on his face, giving them his trademark 'Elvis' pose and finger-point.

"That's all I wanted to hear," Gabriel said, suddenly getting a grin on his face remarkably similar to the grin Gunn always got when he was about to cause mischief.

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked, still breathless from their kiss.

"Hold on," he murmured in her ear, pulling into his arms and nudging his knee between her thighs.

Audrey screamed in terror as he suddenly catapulted them both airborne into the air. "Gabriel!" she squealed, holding on with her arms and legs for dear life, and then whooped at the realization they were flying. Below them, the crowd on the riverboat let out a whooping cheer.

"I didn't realize he could do that," Audrey heard Lena say as they disappeared skyward.

"Why do you think he was offering to carry everyone's backpacks ever since Santa Fe?" the Reverend said. "He was determined to carry his bride off someplace private on their wedding day."

Gabriel's wings beat mightily to get them airborne the last few hundred feet, and then spread outward to capture the abundant air currents wafting up from the mighty river below and carry them lazily on the air currents.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, daring to slide one hand up further to run her fingers on the hair at the back of his neck. He bent his neck to kiss her a second time, wrapping her securely in his arms so she wouldn't fall.

"Close your eyes and feel what it's like to fly," Gabriel urged her.

Audrey didn't know how long it was, but she spent the most enjoyable time of her life simply kissing her new husband and floating wherever the wind and Gabriel's wings carried them before he carried her off to his next surprise.


	64. Chapter 63

_**Warning**__**: this particular chapter is rated MA for post-wedding … well … you get the idea. If you are under 18 or find this offensive, please don't read this chapter.**_

Chapter 63

Although human technology had not advanced to the point that Gabriel did not feel the loss of the hive-mind that came with taking the Father's collar, he _did _have to admit the technology Jose' had used to uplink to the dot gov website and then aim a spy satellite at the coordinates for the honeymoon hideaway he'd arranged proved adequate to the task. Being a creature accustomed to viewing terrain from the air, it enabled him to hone right in on where he needed to go without having to land with his new bride in his arms and ask for directions. Gabriel _hated _having to ask for directions.

"Hold on," Gabriel murmured, shifting position as he circled and tested the air currents before deciding what direction to come in for a landing. "It's been a while since I've last done this."

"Okay," Audrey said breathlessly, her eyes filled with trust.

Although he had carried countless creatures aerially, both human and non-human alike when he had still been filled with the light of the Father, this was the first time he was attempting to do so completely under his own power. He'd been practicing increasing the load he could carry for months, far above his little Prophet's weight, to build up the axillary muscles which powered his wings, but this was the first time he was carrying a real live person. Who squirmed. And did things to distract him. Like nibble on his neck. And shift her weight so that she brushed against his manhood. It would be terribly mortifying if he made a hard landing and dropped his new bride upon her head.

He circled so he was facing into the wind, giving him maximum uplift. Shifting upright to land, he beat his wings so he hovered with his bride in his arms several inches above the ground. Tilting the angle of his wings and tightening the spread of his primary feathers to reduce uplift, he landed as light as a feather upon the earth. Perfect landing. Audrey need never know how hard he'd practiced carrying all sorts of weights, with varying results, so he would be ready to carry his little Prophet aloft.

"That was…" Audrey said as he gently slid the length of her body down along his to gently touch her feet upon the ground. She had no words to describe the exhilaration she felt at their first flight together, so she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him down for a hungry kiss instead.

Gabriel had never been a man of many words, so he simply picked her back up, bridal style, without interrupting her kiss, and headed towards the tiny little cabin that an alligator-hunting ancestor of the Mayor of New Orleans had dropped onto the remote edge of one of the numerous bayou's that dotted the Louisiana landscape, accessible only by boat. Or angel.

"What is this place?" Audrey asked, looking up at the Spanish moss hanging off the trees, reminiscent of the simple antique lace veil she wore.

"Cabin," Gabriel said, never one to embellish reality with flowery descriptions or poetry. It was ironic that, as the most taciturn of all the Father's angels, it had been Gabriel the Father had chosen to carry his Word. Probably because Gabriel was _least _likely to screw things up by embellishing.

"It's adorable," Audrey said as he carried her up the tiny front porch and shifted her weight so he could open the wooden screen door and press down on the thumb-latch that kept the front, and only, door latched. "How did you find this place?"

"Mayor," Gabriel said, nuzzling her neck and inhaling her scent. Whatever voodoo love potion Mambo De Vivre had made Audrey bathe in, it was working. She smelled so good he wanted to press his nose to her flesh and inhale the scent of every single part of her body. Including those parts, until now, he hadn't dared explore.

"You're talkative today," Audrey purred, nipping his lower lip as he continued through the tiny kitchen/living room area straight into the modestly-sized bedroom. The Mayor had warned him the cabin didn't have enough room for him to fully flare his wings, but at least the crude cathedral ceiling was high enough that he wouldn't have to duck.

"Mmmm-hmmm," Gabriel murmured, placing her lightly upon the bed. The Mayor had assured him they kept the cabin cleaned and well stocked with provisions. It had no electricity or running water, but kerosene lanterns and candles adorned all the rooms and there was a hand-pump to draw water up from the well into the kitchen faucet. They had installed a modern bathroom in a tiny bump-out in the back of the cabin, but to get water, you had to hand pump water into a small holding tank built into the rafters. While Gabriel rummaged for matches, his little Prophet artfully arranged herself upon the bed like a mountain lion lazing on a branch in the sun.

He finished fumbling with the lanterns, turned to his bride, a vision of heavenly beauty that would put the most beautiful of all the Father's creations to shame, and froze. Although he had observed all manner of creatures throughout time engage in various acts of procreation, the fact of the matter was, Gabriel didn't have a clue what was supposed to happen next.

"Um…" Gabriel stammered.

Audrey patted the bed next to her and pushed herself up to a sitting position, still artfully arranged in a pose that could have graced the cover of one of those fashion magazines Cindy had shown him when trying to explain to him what women wanted on their wedding night. Unfortunately, now that he had gotten past the whole riverboat-suit-dress-flowers-flight-romantic candlelit cabin in the woods part, nobody had ever sat down and really explained to him about the birds and the bees. Oh, he'd observed that the male of all mammalian species would insert a certain part of their anatomy into a corresponding part of the female of the species anatomy, thrash around in copulation and share seed, but Gabriel really _didn't _have a clue.

"Sit with me," Audrey coaxed, patting the bed beside her. She had a bemused expression on her face, but thankfully had enough sensitivity to avoid laughing at his inexperience.

Gabriel felt like he was being choked. The tie. He tore at the tie constricting his throat and popped off a button on the too-tight neck of the dress shirt.

"Allow me," Audrey said, her voice low and husky. He knew it wasn't her first time. The Father had condemned casual relations, but Gabriel was momentarily grateful for the fact the _both _of them weren't as clueless as he was.

"It's too tight," Gabriel said, his words sounding lame even to his own ears. "I'm not used to such … accoutrements."

Instead of answering, Audrey slowly undid the tie, deliberately slipping it off his neck so that the red silk brushed against his skin.

"Let's get this off before you wrinkle it," Audrey said, holding his gaze as she unbuttoned the front of his suit jacket and pushed the lapels back.

"You've got to unbutton behind the neck," Gabriel said, his breath catching in his throat as she coaxed him to slip first one arm, and then the other, out of the suit jacket.

Wordlessly, Audrey reached behind his neck, her fingertips caressing the back of his neck as her fingers slid around and unbuttoned the back of the collar where the tailor had altered the suit to fit around his wings. He bent to kiss her, but she placed one fingertip upon his lips, stopping him.

"I want to teach you how to feel," Audrey whispered, moving her finger to caress his cheek. "Let me teach you what it feels like to be truly loved."

"Okay," Gabriel whispered, warmth building in his body as he gazed into her beautiful, velvet-blue eyes. "Teach me how to please you."

"It pleases me to watch you lose control," Audrey said, moving her hand down to unbutton his shirt. "Always denying yourself whatever your heart desires so you can meet somebody else's needs. I want to watch _you _accept pleasure for a change."

"I thought that's what I did by marrying you," Gabriel whispered. "We are one now."

"Not yet," Audrey said, slowly unbuttoning the rest of his shirt and tugging the hem out of his slacks. She slid the shirt open and down his shoulders, hobbling his arms behind him so that he lay propped up on his elbows. Maintaining his gaze, she bent to kiss her way up his abdominal muscles as she had done on the train, only instead of playful and wanton, this time she was deliberate and slow, tasting every inch of him as she worked her way up his chest. "Tell me what you feel, Gabriel."

"I feel…" Gabriel stammered, his breath catching in his throat. "I feel … warm."

"Good," Audrey said, caressing the sides of his torso where she gently kissed him. "Where do you feel warm?"

Gabriel gasped as she unclasped his slacks and slid down the zipper, suppressing the urge to writhe in exquisite agony under her fingertips as his manhood grew hard and firm. "All over. I feel warm all over."

"Don't suppress what you feel," Audrey said. "Your body knows what to do. Move as your body tells you to move." She caressed his abdomen just under where the button had been only moments before, only centimeters above the head of his throbbing manhood, but not touching it. No one had ever touched him here. It was forbidden. But she was now his wife. This is what wives were supposed to do.

"I feel … anxious," Gabriel whispered, giving into the urge to throw back his head and arch his back towards her gentle touch. Anxious wasn't the right word, but he didn't know how else to describe it. His wings quivered in anticipation, the quills straining upright in their follicles as he suppressed the urge to flap his wings.

"Don't fight it," Audrey said, tugging gently at his slacks and coaxing him to life his buttocks just enough so that she could slide his pants down. Instead of touching what lay beneath, however, she moved further down his leg, caressing the flesh through the thin wool of the slacks until she reached the cowboy boots gifted to him by the people of the Restored Republic of Texas.

"I will remove them," Gabriel said, struggling to sit upright.

"No," Audrey said, placing her hand upon his chest to stop him from assuming control. "I will do it. I wish to take care of _you _for a change." She caressed down his leg to reach the top of his boots and clasped them firmly in her dainty hands. One at a time, she slipped them off and let them hit the floor, the dull 'thunk' reverberating through his overly-stimulated tissues.

"I wish to touch you as well," Gabriel pleaded, reaching up to caress her cheek with one hand.

"Not yet," Audrey said, a sweet smile coming to her face. "You always give to _me._ I wish for you to learn to receive." Moving her hands up his black silky dress socks, she moved her hand back up the sensitive inner flesh of his legs, reaching the waistband of the slacks she had tugged down mid-thigh earlier. Showing him how to move with her hands, she gently slid down his slacks the rest of the way, coaxing first one leg, and then the other, out of the pant legs. Without so much as a backwards glance, she tossed them behind her onto the floor, leaving him wearing nothing but his socks and his underwear. And the shirt which hobbled his elbows to the bed.

"My socks," Gabriel asked, meeting her eyes and seeing a spark of mischief there. "Shall I remove them?"

"I wish to make love to every part of you, Gabriel," Audrey whispered, sliding her hands down to grasp one ankle firmly in one hand. Gabriel flinched. Nobody had ever touched his feet before except for him.

"What do you feel?" Audrey asked, caressing the outside of his socks to get him accustomed to her touch, and then slipping one finger underneath the top of his socks to slide them down off his feet. "What do you feel, Gabriel?"

"I feel ticklish," Gabriel said, suppressing the urge to pull the sensitive limbs back from her touch and laugh. This was unlike any form of ticklishness he had ever felt before. Normal ticklishness had never caused his manhood to twitch along with his sensitive feet.

"I want to teach you how to accept my touch," Audrey said, caressing his ankles and then the sensitive insoles of his feet. "To be as one, you need to get comfortable with my touch."

"Teach me how to make love to you," Gabriel whispered. "I want to please you."

"You please me greatly," Audrey said, running her hand along the sensitive inside of first one leg, and then the other, her eyes drinking in each tiny detail she touched each small detail of his legs and smiled. "Tell me what you feel, Gabriel."

"I feel … electricity," Gabriel gasped, writhing under her touch. No one had ever touched him like this. It was as though his body had become a temple and the Prophet wished to lovingly explore every small detail. "Through my whole body." His manhood twitched in anticipation of … something. Audrey continued caressing up the inside of his leg until she reached his underpants. His manhood rose up to meet her fingertips, but she deftly avoided the part of him that clamored for attention and moved her fingertips around it, caressing back up his abdomen to his chest.

"Let's get shirt this off," Audrey said, coaxing him to sit up enough so she could repeat the ritual she had performed earlier, slipping her fingers around his neck to unbutton the collar so she could get the shirt off around his wings. When she was done, he lay vulnerable and prone on the bed, naked except for his underwear, while she remained fully dressed. She kissed him, gently, holding his cheeks in her hand and not allowing any other part of their bodies to touch, the denial of her touch enhancing the sensation where their lips met. He could almost feel the ghosts of her fingers where she had so recently touched him, yearning for more.

"I want to touch you, as well," Gabriel pleaded. Although they had curled up alongside one another for nearly as long as they'd known one another, first to share their warmth, then to give her comfort during the nightmarish visions which plagued her sleep, Gabriel had diligently avoided touching her in a way that would arouse his own desires. He had always known that if he did, he would lose control. Now, however, _she _was in control.

"My shoes are in the way," Audrey smiled, sitting next to him and adjusting the hemline of her wedding dress so she could slowly extend one leg towards his face. "Would you like to remove them for me?" She delicately placed her ankle down upon his shoulder, waiting for him to accept the offer to remove the high-heeled pumps.

Gabriel reached up to slide the proffered pump, her foot tiny and dainty compared to the large hand which slid the beautiful, impractical shoe off. She had worn shoes such as this when he had first met her, but he had shunted aside all thought of the way the shoe had shown off the length of her legs, caused her firm, round buttocks to jut outward, her back to arch. Such thoughts were forbidden, and Gabriel had always been an obedient angel. He had stored his observations aside in the compartment he kept in his brain to segregate all forbidden thoughts from the unfamiliar emotions that might lead him into temptation. But that hadn't meant he hadn't noticed. He _had _noticed.

As he slid the pump from her foot, all the memories he had stored from that period of time, the forbidden desire he had refused to allow himself to feel because the ability feel human emotion was then too new, too frightening, shuddered through his body.

"Such a beautiful sculpture the Father created," Gabriel murmured. He caressed the curve of the Prophet's arch and relished the way she reflexively curled her toes as he touched the sensitive flesh. He tugged the beautiful work of creation up to nuzzle the sensitive flesh, relishing the Prophet's sharp intake of breath and the way she squirmed slightly beneath his touch as he kissed her sensitive arch.

"That tickles," Audrey whispered, gently rescinding the leg she had just offered and extending the other one for similar shoe removal. Gabriel held the second leg captive this time, caressing up her ankle to the sensitive flesh behind her knee as he watched the pupils dilate with desire in the Prophet's eyes.

"Teach me how you like to be touched," Gabriel asked, his hands trembling as he touched the silky hem of her skirt where it had come to rest against the Prophet's knee. Her skin was so beautiful. So soft beneath his calloused hands. As he kissed the inside of her calf, her breathing grew heavier.

"I'm not sure …" Gabriel said, hesitating as he touched the silky wedding dress, unsure how to remove it. "I'm afraid I might destroy it."

The fabric was so silky and thin as to be almost gossamer, frail for big, rough hands such as his. And yet, it was also strong. Cindy had explained to him the history of the dress when she had recommended he select it for his bride, how it had been created as a sentiment of hope during an earlier period of human misery from the strong, light fabric of a military surplus parachute from an earlier world war. The Prophet's dress had been birthed as an instrument of war, recycled into an instrument of hope a decade later, and then survived an apocalypse a century later to be worn again by the Prophet of the Savior.

"Slide it upwards," Audrey whispered, using the leg he wasn't currently holding captive to lift her buttocks off the bed so he could gingerly slide the dress up above her hips. He relished the feel of the silky dress sliding over her equally silky skin as he bared his bride to the waist.

She wore no stockings, such luxuries impossible to procure in post-apocalyptic society, but the Prophet had somewhere found a tiny silk triangle of fabric to cover her feminine mysteries, her enticing brown curls peeking out from the sides of the luxurious fabric. He reached to touch the fabric and gently twirled one tiny curl around his large finger. Her breathing became heavier as she instinctively tilted her hips up to greet his hand, welcoming his touch.

He wished to see all of her. All the parts she had kept hidden from him all this time. With a sound in his chest that was more primal growl than words, he moved from the vulnerable position she had first coaxed him to assume into a dominant one, his wings flared as much as was possible within the confines of the small room as he kneeled above her.

"What do you wish to see, Gabriel?" Audrey asked, her voice husky and low. "Let your curiosity guide you."

Curiosity. Lucifer had been curious, and it had gotten him into trouble. After that, the Father had actively discouraged curiosity. Gabriel had always been obedient. He had refused to indulge the emotion until his experience amongst the humans had taught him the emotion was not one to be feared. If anything, he was discovering it was one of the humans' greatest assets. Curiosity. He was curious to find out if his little Prophet's breasts were as soft and luxurious to hold as the brief brushes against her covered breasts when he comforted her during her visions had led him to believe.

"I wish to finish removing your dress," Gabriel growled with desire. He wished to _see _what she sometimes allowed him to catch glimpses of, the swell of her breast visible above her bra, a bit of cleavage shown in a shirt, visible, and yet always hidden. "I wish to see your breasts."

Audrey dutifully sat upright and lifted her swanlike arms above her head, inviting him with her smile to finish sliding the dress off her taut form. Careful so as not to damage the fragile dress, Gabriel slowly slid it above her head and tossed it across the room to land upon the bureau. With such a deeply cut exposed back, the dress had no place to conceal a bra, nor did his little Prophet need one. Her pert, brownish-pink nipples hardened as he watched as he exposed them to the cool autumn air.

"Touch me, Gabriel," Audrey invited him, running her hand across her own breast. "Do what you have always wished to do."

Gabriel cupped first one breast in his hand, and then the other. A perfect handful. They were soft and pliable. He ran his thumb across one nipple and was rewarded by the Prophet's sharp intake of breath. Her breathing deepened, a slight flush rising on her chest and cheeks as he caressed her breasts.

"How could the Father create such perfection," Gabriel asked in wonder, relishing the feel of her breasts in his hands, "and then forbid us to touch them?"

"Not just touch," Audrey coaxed, beginning to unconsciously rise as her own arousal rose to match his own. "Taste."

"Taste," Gabriel growled, bending his neck to taste one firm nipple in his mouth. "Everything about you tastes so good." Humans suckled their young with these creations. How lucky they were to receive their first nourishment from such soft, beautiful creations. Her breasts were … perfect. As he suckled them, his bride arched her back towards his body, making little pleased sounds deep in her throat. He reached around to caress the arch of the back which curved towards him, inviting him to taste.

"Gabriel!" Audrey cried out, stretching out backwards upon the bed as it was she, now, who assumed the vulnerable position, inviting him to explore.

"What do you feel, little Prophet?" Gabriel asked as relished the feeling of having the power to make her writhe with desire. Desire for _him._ Never would he have ever dreamed such a perfect creature would desire a fallen creature such as himself.

"I feel warm," Audrey gasped, taking his cheeks between her hands and tugging his head upwards to give her a kiss. "I want you to make love to me now, Gabriel."

"Not yet," Gabriel whispered, boldly tasting the inside of her mouth. All that lay between them now were his underwear and the tiny silken triangle which provided almost no obstacle whatsoever. But although he had witnessed countless creatures copulate at a distance over the eons, never once had he ever indulged his curiosity to take a closer look. Before he took that final step, he wished to explore the mysteries of her flesh.

His manhood had been twanging insistently for attention for quite some time, but Gabriel had denied himself all desire since the universe had been created. He wished to taste the forbidden fruit before he bit into it. Kissing past her breasts and down her quivering abdomen, he nuzzled the tiny white silk triangle with his nose, inhaling her musky scent.

"Go ahead," Audrey coaxed, her pupils black with desire as she looked into his eyes and nodded encouragement. She lifted her hips slightly, giving him access to remove the silky triangle slide it down her legs. She was naked now, uncovered so her perfection could be appreciated as the Father had created her species to be when he had first ordered the angels to bow down to them. How blind he had been to not see!

Gabriel buried his nose in her dainty brown curls, coarser than the hair upon her head, and yet silky. He loved the way she smelled. When he had lain broken at the bottom of the cliff, his brain too addled to interpret the signals being sent to him by his eyes to create the gift of sight, it had been her touch and her scent which had encouraged him to hang on. For so long as he existed, it would always be her scent and the feel of her touch upon his flesh which would burn most vividly in his mind.

"Touch me," Audrey invited him, parting her legs to give him access to her feminine mysteries. This was uncharted territory. To look had always been forbidden, so Gabriel had obediently never looked. Now, however, he had determined he would be obedient no more. The Father could take the prohibition he had tattooed across the Prophet's mound of Venus and go to hell! Gabriel wished to explore every part of the wife he had just married.

Gently rubbing his thumb over her mound of Venus, he rubbed his fingers downward, exploring the folds of her feminine mysteries and gently parting it to catch a glimpse of the moist pink flesh the folds protected. Delicate. Like the inside of her mouth.

"Gabriel, please…" Audrey pleaded. Gabriel touched her folds again and was rewarded by an adorable mewling sound as she writhed beneath his touch. Whatever he was doing, it most definitely pleased her.

Arousal. Her scent changed as she became more and more aroused. The Prophet arched her hips towards his mouth, inviting him to taste the delicate, vulnerable flesh which deepened to a dark pink the more he teased her. Eve's apple. The forbidden fruit, tempting him to take a bite. With a groan of pleasure, Gabriel bent down and licked, relishing the sweet taste of her arousal upon his lips.

"Here," Audrey whispered, pointing to a tiny red mound which rose up to greet his tongue. She grabbed him by the hair, intertwining it in her slender fingers so he couldn't escape until he had satiated the fire he could smell grow beneath his touch.

"Tell me what you feel, little Prophet," Gabriel huskily murmured, glancing up from his ministrations to meet her smoky gaze.

"I feel as though my heart might burst if you don't hurry up and finish what you started," she groaned, greedily moving her hips to brush against his lips. Audrey was growing more aggressive, tugging him upwards into position so they could consummate their union.

"What if I decide to obey the Father and abstain?" Gabriel teased.

"Then I shall pin your wings to the bed and have my way with you," Audrey gasped, the aggressor suddenly as she somehow managed to contort her lithe form and reach down to caress the manhood he still kept hidden beneath his breeches.

"Oh!" was all he could exclaim as she caressed the most intimate part of his anatomy. Nobody had ever touched him there. Not even himself until he had been cast down to earth, required mortal liquids, and then suddenly been forced to deal with the aftermath. She had brushed against his manhood several times since he had fallen, arousing a yearning which he could not name, but that paled to the sensation of her taking his manhood into her slender hands and caressing it. The Prophet had more things she wished to teach him about feeling his own body.

"Tell me what you feel, Gabriel," the Prophet murmured, urgently sliding down his underwear and discarding them onto the floor. He gasped at the unfamiliar feel of cool air touching the most intimate part of his anatomy, followed immediately by the warmth of her hand as she closed her hand around his shaft and caressed it.

"Oh!" he groaned as the twanging grew even _more _insistent, causing the sensation which had been growing in his heart and loins to surge towards some climax that he had sensed previously when she had teased him, but never this powerfully.

"Tell me what you feel," she asked again, gently compressing the head of his manhood between her thumb and forefinger, causing a sensation that was part pain, part pleasure. Exquisite torture, commanding him to answer her inquiry or she would torture him some more.

"I feel … open," Gabriel gasped as he felt some emotion he had never felt before begin to build towards an inevitable climax. "As though my spirit reaches out towards yours to touch it. I feel … hunger."

"Make love to me, Gabriel," Audrey pleaded, gentle now. "Consummate our love so that our hearts will always know one another no matter what form our spirits may take." She stretched alongside of him, no longer aggressive, but vulnerable as she invited him to complete their union, to so fully violate the Father's prohibition that there would never be any question in the Father's mind that he, Gabriel, had defied the Father and made her his wife. She wriggled into position underneath his hands and knees.

"Teach me, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered, kissing her. "Teach me what it means to become one with you."

Audrey tugged him into position, gently guiding his manhood to press against the entrance to her feminine mysteries. Her beautiful, velvet-blue eyes, nearly black with desire, met his as she nodded approval for him to do what came next. Once he took this final step, there would be no going back. She rose up to meet him, waiting, leaving the final decision to him, their eyes locked.

He slid into her feminine mysteries, hissing with pleasure as he felt the warm, wet folds close around his manhood and welcome it until he had sunk his shaft all the way to the hilt.

"We fit together," he whispered, wonder tingeing his voice. "Perfectly."

"Yes," Audrey said, tears rising to her eyes. "We were made to fit together."

The sensation of pleasure was intense as he slid three-quarters of the way out, and then sank his manhood into her mysteries once more. Wordless sounds escaped his throat as he moved, attempting to voice sensations that could only be experienced, not put into words. He wasn't sure what to do, but the Prophet wrapped her legs around his upper thighs and grabbed his backside with one hand, the small of his back with another. She squeezed and constricted her own body around his like a serpent, teaching him how to move as she hungrily bent up to kiss him, her tongue darting boldly into his mouth.

"My love," he gasped with pleasure into her mouth, his wings involuntarily slapping against the sides of the bed as the agonizingly sweet sensation built in his core as he moved with her as one entity.

"Gabriel," she cried out, arching her back further as her hips undulated in unison to his, burying his manhood deeper and deeper into her feminine mysteries as they both rose to crescendo together.

Pressure built in his heart, his core, his loins, and spread through his body. He had thought it couldn't get any more intense, more pleasurable, but still they rose as her feminine mysteries embraced his manhood and coaxed him to further heights of pleasure. It was like flying. Crashes registered in his ears and a slight pain in one wing as he knocked several objects off the furniture and the walls, but he could not stop the involuntary beating of his wings any more than he could stop the frantic urge to … to … to …

The Prophet cried out, arching her back and spasming beneath him as he felt her feminine mysteries constrict and tug at his manhood. The wave reached its pinnacle and washed over him, exploding into his heart and brain as his seed exploded into her, his own joyous shout of ecstasy sounding distant and foreign to his own ears. Just for a moment, he felt his spirit leave the bounds of his mortal shell and intertwine with his beloved's, a sacred union not even the Father had ever been able to make him feel. Just for a moment, they were one spirit, inseparable by even the Father himself, as Gabriel caught a glimpse of what it must feel like to be a god.

As he collapsed against her, he realized he was crying.

"What's wrong," Audrey asked, gently kissing him as she kept her legs tightly wrapped around his hips, keeping him inside of her as long as possible as she ran her fingers through the back of his head and touched his cheek. "Regrets?"

"The most blissful light of all of heaven," Gabriel whispered, unashamed of his tears of joy at finally understanding just how wonderful these creatures were the Father had created in his image, "pales in comparison to the love you just taught me how to feel. Nothing will ever take that from me, my wife."

When he finally shrank down to the point he had no choice but to withdraw, he pulled her into his arms and wings, relishing the feel of her bare skin touching his, no barriers between them any longer. They were one now, he understood. Communed in holy matrimony that even the Father himself could not rent asunder.

"I love you," Audrey whispered, her voice husky with sleep. "I won't let him take you from me."

"I love you more than my own existence, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered in return. "My wife." He didn't know how long he would have before the Father would punish him by separating them, but he knew down to the core of his being that, no matter what happened, the Father would never be able to steal that which Gabriel had just gained. The other half of his spirit.

His silent prayer to the Mother, that just for tonight their happiness would be unmarred by dark visions of the future, was answered.


	65. Chapter 64

Chapter 64

The presence tugged at the edge of his consciousness.

"I'll be right back, little Prophet," he whispered to the sleeping goddess who lay in his arms, her breathing deep and even in the darkness.

The yellow glow from the lanterns had long ago faded, leaving only the tiny flickering light from one defiant little candle and the light from the moon streaming through the window of the cabin. She grumbled a complaint as he extricated himself from her sleeping form, gingerly sliding out the wing she held captive, and covered her with the blanket so she would not awaken. He grabbed at the mortal slacks tossed recklessly upon the floor before heading outside to face his brother.

"Gabriel," Michael said.

"It has been a long time, brother," Gabriel said warily.

Michael stood stiffly in the yard, a holy warrior sent by the Father on a mission, resplendent in his armor. The Father had restored Michael's strength, his glossy black feathers steel weapons once more, but nothing the Father did could remove the blend of wariness and compassion that shone in his brothers' eyes. Like Audrey, Gabriel knew Michael had forgiven him for killing him. But he also knew his blind obedience had irrevocably damaged his relationship with his brother, the closest of all the angels in heaven.

"You've been sent to kill me and drag my soul to the Keep?" Gabriel asked.

Michael shrugged. "Azrael refused. He didn't even bother to pretend he was relaying his refusal as a wager by the Mother first. He told the Father that if he was going to drag _anyone _to Sheol, it would be _him, _not you."

"What happens next?" Gabriel asked. If Michael intended to obey the Father and kill him, he would already be dead.

"It's already begun," Michael said softly. "Heaven is fractured because of your disobedience. Already, the angels are beginning to line up into factions, those who disagree with the Father, and those who support him."

"As happened when Lucifer defied him," Gabriel said. "I have divided heaven all over again."

"It was never _not _divided," Michael said. "It has been divided since even before we were made self-aware. The division is not of your or Lucifer's making. It was created the day the Father did something so heinous as to make the Mother stop loving him."

"I don't believe that to be true," Gabriel said softly. "I cannot fathom the Father's loss, but I understand what it was they had together now. If their union was once even one tenth as complete as mine, some small spark of the connection must still remain."

"I wouldn't know," Michael said, another emotion registering in his eyes. Not condemnation, but regret. All of a sudden, Gabriel _knew _why Michael had disobeyed the Father.

"Who was she?" Gabriel asked.

"A mortal," Michael said softly. "I was sent to protect her after her husband had been murdered. She had no interest in me other than as her protector, but I began to see why her husband had loved her so completely that he had sacrificed his life to save her species."

"Mary Magdaline," Gabriel said.

"The light of the Mother burned strongly in her, as well," Michael said. "Like your little Prophet. She made me … see. See things as they really were. It caused me to begin to remember things. From before we were made self-aware. It made me … question."

"You still wear the collar," Gabriel observed, pointing to the offending accoutrement that aroused a sense of outrage so deep within his soul that he wished to tear the offending instrument of enslavement off his brother's neck and tear it to shreds.

"The Savior had spoken to her about the collars the Father uses to enslave us," Michael said. "She taught me how to compartmentalize a portion of my consciousness and keep it hidden so the Father would not be aware my thoughts sometimes bordered on blasphemy."

"Have you ever…?" Gabriel asked.

"No," Michael said, looking down. "Not because I didn't want to. All she cared about was being reunited in the afterlife with _him._"

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said gently, remembering how miserable he had been when he had realized he served the Prophet out of love, not obedience, but had been aware his sentiments were not being returned. "I know exactly how that feels."

"She grew to love you," Michael said, meeting his eyes. "I had hoped she would. I saw the same spark in the divine in _her _that I had seen in Mary Magdaline all those years before. Only unlike Mary, the Prophet had never known true love. She was as Mary was before she encountered the Savior."

"She was … experienced," Gabriel said, and then hastily added, "not that it matters."

"They don't know the love of the Father like we do," Michael said, his eyes focused on some point in the past. "Mary tried to explain it to me once. She, too, had sinned before encountering the Savior. They grasp at any spark of the divine they can, hoping to catch a glimpse of what we already know. They engage in physical relations hoping to recreate the divine spark, when in reality the divine connection must already exist before physical relations can make their union complete. The Father doesn't really understand it himself, so the only instructions he gave them were that they should marry before attempting union."

"It's different," Gabriel said. "There are no words to explain what it's like when the union is complete. The Father tries to recreate it. I think he came really, really close back when the Mother was with us, when we still existed in the garden. But for some reason, the union failed. The Mother says it is important that I remember so that I don't repeat the Father's mistakes."

"I don't remember her," Michael said. "Not really. Mary tried to help me remember, but all I have ever been able to retrieve was fragments. What was she like?"

"She was like …" Gabriel tried to put into words something that defied compartmentalization. What was it the loa had said to him? "It's something you just have to feel, not put into words."

"You were always her favorite cherub," Michael said. "I remember that much. It's why it didn't surprise me when the Father sent _you _to kill their son. He wanted to hurt her for helping the Savior defy him."

"I remember Lucifer as being her favorite," Gabriel said softly. "And then she loved you best."

"We always had to clamor after her," Michael said. "She was always so busy, trying to love everybody equally, to be even and fair. But you were the only one she would actively seek out."

"She said I was most like the Father of all the angels," Gabriel said.

Michael did something Gabriel had never seen him do before. He threw back his head and laughed. A very real, human laugh. The kind of laugh Gabriel had only begun to touch the edge of and experience in little giggles of joy. Who had taught Michael to laugh? How was it he had failed to recognize that his brother had, at some point, become human?

"You find this amusing?" Gabriel asked, perplexed and without annoyance.

"I find it to be the truth," Michael said.

They stood there, across the clearing from one another, so close, and yet so many obstacles laying between them.

"Why did you really come, Michael?" Gabriel finally asked.

"The Father knows damned well he'd better not touch you while you're still encased in your mortal shell," Michael said. "He trusts that I will only obey him if it is in his own best interests. He sent me as a gesture of his displeasure."

"I no longer care about whether he is pleased or displeased," Gabriel said, annoyance rising in his voice, and then dissipating as he remembered just _why _the Father was so displeased. Compassion. Gabriel moderated his voice, wishing to convey the sentiment that _truly _resonated in his heart for the only Father he had ever known. "I only wish for the Father to be happy and well."

"You understand now what it is he needs," Michael said softly. "Not just what he wants."

"There is another way," Gabriel said, echoing the words Michael had spoken to him in the diner just before Gabriel had botched things by stabbing himself through his own shoulder in order to stab Michael in the heart. This time … he understood.

"Now all we have to do is find it," Michael said, nodding. Although the words were not spoken, they had reached an agreement.

"Tell the others I do not wish for them to take sides," Gabriel said. "It will break my heart to watch my brothers side against him. There has been enough separation as it is. When the time comes, I shall accept whatever fate the Father deems appropriate so long as it doesn't entail hurting the Prophet."

"The Savior already tried that self-sacrifice and failed," Michael said. "What makes you think you will be any more successful?"

"The Prophet has already intuited the key," Gabriel said, repeating the words the Mother had told him. "Only _she _can figure it out. Once she does, it will give the rest of you a chance to heal this wound in our Father's psyche."

"You have grown, little brother," Michael said, pride showing in his eyes. "I am very proud of you." He turned to go, preparing to leap into the air.

"Michael," Gabriel called.

"Yes?" Michael said.

"I'm sorry that I killed you," Gabriel said, his voice nearly a whisper.

"I have already forgiven you," Michael said. "Besides … we both know that death is merely a phase change. Only the Mother has the power to extinguish a life spark once it has been created."

"What did she do to force him to agree to a wager?" Gabriel asked. "After you petitioned Azrael to spare me?"

Michael pointed to one of the constellations in the sky. Orion. The hunter. One of the Father's favorites.

"Notice anything missing?" Michael asked.

Gabriel looked up at and noticed for the first time that the constellation had changed.

"Shit," he said, using the human expletive he now truly understood. "How in Sheol did I ever miss _that_?"

"The Father has the power to punish," Michael said softly before taking to the air and disappearing in a flash of light. "But the Mother has the power to destroy."

Gabriel stood under the stars, listening to the sparse crickets who still chirped this late in the autumn, and stared for a long time at Orion the Hunter. The constellation was now flat on its back, the three stars that represented Orion's 'belt' and other parts of his body still clearly visible at the new angle, but the smaller three stars that represented Orion's 'sword' were now missing. Orion's 'club' was off to one side, no longer in his hand. The constellation Taurus had also changed, now turned to charge at the prone Orion, the 'seven sisters' of the Pliedes who legend said Orion forever hunted across the heavens now riding the gigantic bulls back rearranged into the shape of a maiden urging the bull to charge. In the maidens hand lay Orion's sword, slicing down to decapitate the prone Orion.

Whatever she had been like before, the Mother had finally decided she wasn't going to let the Father push her around any longer.

He went back inside the cabin, stripping off his slacks, and nestling back into his beloved's arms, relishing the familiar feel of her body nestled in alongside his as well as the unfamiliar feel of her bare skin touching his, unhindered by clothing. She murmured his name in her sleep, making his heart do an endearing little flip-flop. She was beautiful, his wife. Curling up beside her, for the first time since the day they had met, he dared share the Mother's hope that maybe the Prophet would help them all find a solution so that everything would turn out all right.


	66. Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Audrey nuzzled her face into his warm, bare chest, reluctant to wake up. Both beneath and above her, his soft, downy feathers felt luxurious and silky beneath her bare skin.

"Si locutus fuero linguis hominum et angelorum," Gabriel sang softly in the ancient, heavenly language as he held her and gently caressed the length of her torso, starting from her shoulder and running his hand all the way down to her buttocks, and then started at the top again to repeat the familiar motion once more. "caritatem autem non factus sum aeramentum sonans, aut cymbalum tinniens."

"Gabriel," Audrey sleepily murmured and smiled. Although he had held her while she slept for nearly as long as he had known her, especially after her visions had started to become truly terrifying, Gabriel had always diligently avoided touching any part of her body except those areas a brother might hold an injured sister to comfort her. Not so this morning. Not unless she considered the firm 'tent pole' rising up to greet her to be … brotherly. Nothing brotherly about his demeanor this morning.

"Et si habuero prophetiam," Gabriel continued to sing, moving a stray strand of hair away from her mouth with one finger. "Et noverim mysteria omnia et omnem scientiam et si habuero omnem fidem ita ut montes transferam, caritatem autem non sum nihil."

Gabriel had the most beautiful singing voice of anyone she had ever heard. Not even the 'Three Tenors," Domingo, Carrera, and Pavoratti, who her grandmother had dragged her to see when she was still a little girl. It was rare to hear him sing, not even hum, unless he was truly happy or wished to please her.

"What do the words mean?" Audrey asked, stretching and opening her eyes to stare into his beautiful, inhuman ice-blue ones. She reached up to caress his cheek and was rewarded by one of his beautiful, rare smiles.

"Corintheans 13," Gabriel said. "Most books in what you call the bible are really fragments of heavenly songs. The words were written down, but the songs which were the _real _message were lost in the sands of time."

"I see somebody's an early riser?" Audrey said, running her hand down his abdominal muscles to caress his manhood, which had already risen up to greet the new day. Gabriel hissed with pleasure, trembling under her fingers, but did not pull away. His expression was open and happy, not the carefully guarded, unreadable expression he cultivated for the rest of the world. "And what, my husband, would this Corintheans 13 be all about?"

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels," Gabriel sang the same song, only in English this time. "But have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

"It's beautiful," Audrey said, stretching up to kiss him. "I love to hear you sing. I wish you would do so more often."

"We only sang in heaven to please the Father," Gabriel said. "We used to see who could come up with the most beautiful song to try to get him to smile. He doesn't smile very often, but when he does, all of heaven resonates with his joy."

"You still love him," Audrey asked, touching his face. "Even after all he's done?"

"If he hadn't offered my life to the Mother in sacrifice," Gabriel said, "and she not chosen to transform that offer into a wager to protect you, I would never have known true love."

Audrey suppressed her annoyance. She had come to terms with the fact that Gabriel, while now seeing the Father as a deeply flawed being, was not about to stop loving him. He was the only father Gabriel had ever known. Railing against the Father got her nowhere. It should be enough that Gabriel placed his love for her over his loyalties to the Father.

"Sing to me some more of this hymn of love," Audrey whispered, kissing him as she caressed his bare flesh. "It pleases me to hear you sing."

"Caritas numquam desinit," Gabriel continued in his song. "Ut prophetiae atis; quam linguae cessabunt; ut cognoscat, peribit."

Audrey smiled as he finished the song and then kissed her. Who'd have thought she'd end up married to what she'd perceived to be a brutal, homicidal maniac bursting through the front door of the diner? Life was pretty … strange.

"We had a visitor last night," Gabriel said, his expression growing serious.

"Another loa?" Audrey asked.

"Michael," Gabriel said softly.

She stiffened in his arms.

"Why now?" Audrey asked. "Did he come to warn us?"

"More … a reminder," Gabriel said. "What we have done here is having enormous repercussions in heaven. In taking you to be my wife, I have reopened old wounds."

"Lucifer?" Audrey asked.

"Michael thinks the wound is older than that," Gabriel said. "He thinks it goes all the way back to whatever caused the Mother to stop loving the Father in the first place."

Audrey was silent, mulling that piece of information over in her mind.

"Lucifer is the key," Audrey said. "I can sense it in my bones."

"When the Mother took possession of your body," Gabriel said, "she said it's really important that I remember the time before the Father made us self-aware so I don't lose you by repeating the Father's mistakes."

"You're nothing like the Father," Audrey snorted, anger flashing in her eyes.

"I'm everything like the Father," Gabriel said softly. "And we both know it. The same way you're very much like the Mother."

"You earned my love the hard way!" Audrey snapped, instinctively pulling away from him and suppressing the urge to scream obscenities at him that it wasn't true. "_After _you had spent a considerable amount of time earning my trust!"

"Don't reject me, little Prophet," Gabriel said, caressing her cheek, "for pointing out the truth. Your gift is the gift of truthfulness. Even when it hurts. In your heart, you know this to be true."

Her anger fizzled out. Gabriel was right. Like it or not, there was a little bit of both the Mother and the Father in _both _of them. It was up to _them _to be clear-headed about their defects so they didn't repeat the two creation deities mistakes.

"Why haven't they been able to just work things out?" Audrey asked. "Why do _we _have to get caught in between their little tete-a-tete?"

"Because they don't have marriage counselors in heaven?" Gabriel asked, a hint of amusement in his eyes.

"Or a big daddy or mammy with a paddle to drag the both out to the wood shed," Audrey joked, "and spank some sense into the both of them."

They both laughed. Hearing Gabriel laugh was a rare treat, never more than a brief chuckle or guffaw. But it was music to her ears every bit as beautiful as the beautiful, heavenly song he had sung to awaken her.

"I don't want to repeat the Father's mistakes," Gabriel said, his eyes turning serious. "Although I wasn't fully self-aware then, I remember his sorrow when the Mother left. All of heaven wept with him and creation on all of his worlds ground to a standstill. If I were ever to lose you like that, I would beg the Mother to uncreate my soul and return my essence to the void so I would not have to feel the pain."

Audrey suppressed the urge to tell him she felt the same way about _him._ She dreamed of his death every night and he knew it. It would not reassure him to fear she might do something drastic once the Grigori killed him. The only happiness he received right now in a love with no future was seeing _her _be happy.

"Why doesn't the Father just admit he was wrong and change?" Audrey asked. "From what I sensed when the Mother possessed my body, she seemed quite willing to admit she wasn't perfect."

"I don't know," Gabriel said, absent-mindedly trailing his hand up and down her torso as he mulled things over. Audrey could almost smell the wheels turning in his mind. She remained silent while he thought things through. "Maybe because he's so used to being in control that he doesn't understand how _not _to be in control?"

"They knocked you down pretty low when I found you," Audrey said, caressing his cheek and meeting his gaze. "Really low. It wasn't enough that the Father had broken you, but he left you without the most rudimentary knowledge of how to survive down here. You're lucky your body still possessed instincts from the time before you became aware or I suspect you simply wouldn't have known enough to breathe. You'd have died within minutes."

"That was the Father's intent," Gabriel said. "I wasn't supposed to live. I suspect he viewed it as a mercy."

"Merciful my ass," Audrey snapped. "He wasn't the one who had to keep you alive until you figured out how to exist down here in the physical realm."

"When you found me," Gabriel said, "I was every bit as arrogant as the Father."

"But you're not like that now," Audrey said. "You're nothing like him."

"I'm _everything _like him," Gabriel said. "You've only ever seen his indifferent side. Or his wrathful one. I grew up seeing his tender side. Although not the perfect god he orders us to worship, there is much goodness in him."

"Good people don't order the murder of innocent babies," Audrey snapped. As she did, some little voice in her subconscious warned her that this was an old argument that went nowhere. Today, of all days, she did not wish to have it.

"Your first instinct," Gabriel said, "to hate me, was the proper one. I never shared my brother's affinity for your species. I never hated humans, but I didn't like them, either. When the Father issued the extermination order, I felt as though the Father had finally issued an overdue order to fumigate your planet to rid it of cockroaches. I was _glad _to be chosen to carry out that task because all I have ever wished for in my life was to please him. For some reason, your species aggravated him to wits end. For millions of years I carried messages to the progenitors of humans and I never felt anything but contempt."

"That's not true," Audrey whispered.

"It _is _true!" Gabriel said. "Or at least it _was._" He took her cheeks between his large hands and looked deep into her eyes. "You changed all that. You changed _me. _If we are to change the future you see every night in your visions, than you need to understand the true nature of what you're dealing with! If I am like him, than you need to understand what I was like before fate intervened so that you can understand _him_. Only if you understand can you figure out a way to change the outcome."

"The collar made you like that," Audrey said. "The Mother showed me a vision of what you were like _before _the Father made you self-aware. You were a beautiful, shy child. Not a monster."

"Everybody starts out as an innocent child," Gabriel said. "But at some point, you become your own person. You have to accept responsibility for what you've become."

"The collar prevented you from feeling," Audrey said. "I don't understand how it works, but if there's one thing I understand, it's what happens when a bodybuilder or professional athlete has been juicing it for a long time and then suddenly stops. He didn't just steal your ability to feel and control your mind. He drugged you to make you incredibly strong and jacked up your ability to heal so he could send you off to fight his little wars without question. And then when he was done using you, he kicked you to the curb to suffer withdrawal."

"It was the holy fire," Gabriel said.

"It was fucking steroids!" Audrey yelled at him. "I used to date a fucking drug dealer! He was so juiced up he put Arnold Schwarzenegger to shame. I know the signs!"

Gabriel was silent, the unreadable expression back upon his face. Audrey immediately regretted her outspokenness.

"I have no recollection of being given what you call drugs," Gabriel finally said quietly. "But when the Father gave us the collar, he said it was to make us strong enough to defeat the Nephilim. Up until that point, we had been losing the war. The half-human angels were fighting to protect their home and many of the full-blooded angels had no desire to fight them. Lucifer's children were like _you._ Defiant. We underestimated their resolve. I have no recollection of ever having bulletproof feathers until the Father made us take the collar."

Silence. Awkward, terrible silence. Their first argument and they'd been married for less than twelve hours.

"Honey," Audrey coaxed. "I don't want to fight. I despise the Father. You love him. I want to see him kicked to the curb and suffer the same way he kicked _you _to the curb. You want to see him happy. That's unlikely to ever change. Can't we just agree to disagree?"

Gabriel reached out to touch the tattoo upon her forehead, the one that identified her as a carrier of truthful blasphemy, and commanded that others should take heed of her hurtful words.

"I _need _to believe that all this work we are doing," Gabriel said, imploring her with his eyes. "Wandering the world looking for disciples, the visions, serving a Savior who won't even be old enough to assume leadership for many years, all that we've been through, I have to believe it will make a difference. That means not hiding from the truth. Even when it's really ugly."

"Even if it means, in the end, the old fool gets what's coming to him?" Audrey asked.

"Even if it means, in the end, the Father gets smacked upside the head the way I got smacked upside the head and realizes what he did wrong so he can move past it," Gabriel said.

More silence.

"As long as your version includes some serious head-smacking and some sort of apology," Audrey finally said, "I think I can live with that."

"The only thing that matters is that we end up together," Gabriel said, pulling her in for a kiss, a deep, anguished groan escaping his throat. "So long as we end up together, I don't care _what _happens."

"We weren't supposed to end up together like this, were we?" Audrey asked.

"No," Gabriel said. "Only Michael saw the potential. He still has hope we can find a solution."

"So what do we do now?" Audrey asked.

"The Mother spared you the visions for our wedding because she is pleased at how things are progressing," Gabriel said. "But the next time you have them, you must look beyond my death to examine the threads that make up the tapestry of this problem."

"But I don't want to lose you," Audrey said, tears suddenly springing to her eyes.

"Death is only a change of state," Gabriel said, gently wiping her tears. "It is only a temporary separation. It will hurt to be apart, but your species lifespan is brief. One of us could die of natural causes tomorrow, with the same result. But unlike other creatures, you have proof that eventually all creatures reunite in heaven. I grew up there. Heaven is _real._"

"But my vision says the Father will punish us by keeping us apart," Audrey sobbed.

"Do you ever continue with the vision to see if he actually _does _keep us apart?" Gabriel asked. "The Father _is _known for changing his mind."

"No," Audrey said, her voice small. "I'm too … incapacitated."

"Then we must continue to search for a solution to the problem," Gabriel said, speaking softly into her ear and nuzzling her hair the way he comforted her when she had a vision. "Until then, let's just enjoy the time we are given, okay? Life is beautiful down here. Let's just enjoy our love."

"Okay," Audrey sniffled, her voice little more than a whisper.

They lay together, their limbs intertwined like the lovers they now were, for a long time, just getting to know the tiny imperfections of each others' skin. Gradually, Audrey dropped back off to sleep in the safety of his arms and wings.

"Non gaudet in iniquitatem congaudet autem veritati," Gabriel softly sang, caressing her as he poured his heart into finishing his hymn of love. "Is usquequaque servo, semper deposita sperat perseverat."

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


	67. Chapter 66

Chapter 66

_The table was so big he could never quite see the top of it. Not even on tippy-toes. He could fly, of course, but that made the Father angry, distracting him from his work. The Father was busy. He was always busy. But Gabriel had learned that if he just sat quietly at the Father's feet long enough, not moving so he didn't distract him, at some point the Father would take notice. He sat, for hours, sometimes for days, forsaking play with his brothers and sisters just to pick up a few breadcrumbs of his Father's attention._

"_Father!" Lucifer cried, bounding into the workshop. "Look what the Mother helped me create!"_

"_What, my dear boy?" the Father asked, holding out his arms to welcome his favorite son. "What did the Mother help you create?"_

"_I made another lizard creature for the new world you're shaping," Lucifer said. "See! Look at its long neck!"_

_The tiny brontosaurus looked at the father and squeaked in fear, attempting to get away. It was very large for a creation and already alive, but not very smart. Gabriel felt a smug sense of superiority. Because he spent so much time at the Father's feet, silently observing everything he did, he understood that lately the Father had been obsessed with creating a creature that was intelligent._

"_The Mother already gave it a life spark?" the Father asked, annoyance lacing his voice._

_Gabriel was a very sensitive child, well attuned to the nuances of the Father's emotions. The Father did not like it when the Mother created on her own. Even less when she allowed the cherubs to create. He only liked it when –he- created. The Father was very wise. Only the Father thought in terms of how each creature fit into the ecosystems he created. He thought the Mother was foolish, encouraging the cherubs to create creatures just because it brought them joy._

"_Yeah!" Lucifer said enthusiastically, bouncing up and down with excitement. "She said we're old enough to start helping you create new worlds."_

_Gabriel noted the stiff set to the Father's shoulders. The color that rose in the semi-corporeal form he preferred to assume when working in the garden. The angry line his lips made. The slight clenching of the sculpting tool in one hand. Hah! Lucifer had angered the Father._

"_The worlds I create are like a fine-tuned clock," the Father said, his words measured and strained. "One tiny mistake could upset the delicate balance between the other life forms on that world and destroy it."_

"_But …" Lucifer said, his voice hurt. "I made it for -you.-" Lucifer began to cry._

_Gabriel observed Lucifer turn on his considerable charm. Like the Mother, Lucifer was expressive. He was most like her of all the cherubs. The Father didn't know what to do with the Mother when she cried, nor did he know what to do with the offspring they had co-created those first heady moments when they had commingled their consciousnesses together for the first time to co-create the universe. The cherubs represented all the love and hope they had shared at that time. Their children. Shaped by the Father from leftover stardust and light into tiny replicas of the best features of both parents and breathed into consciousness by the Mother._

_It was a success the Father had never been able to recreate…_

"_There, there," the Father coaxed, stiff in his chair. "Don't cry."_

_Lucifer threw himself into the Father's arms, sobbing plaintively. "I'm so sorry Father! I didn't mean to anger you. I only wanted to please you!"_

_The Father sat stiffly while Lucifer crawled up into his lap. Gabriel felt a surge of … jealousy … and then suppressed it. The Father knew what was best. If Lucifer had made a mistake, than it was important that the Father teach him how to do things properly._

"_I can't put this onto my world," the Father finally said. "Look at this creature? It is too stupid to avoid danger, too clumsy to run away, and too large for its ecosystem to support it. It will devour all the plant life wherever you put it and starve to death, but not before causing every other herbivore in the area to starve to death as well."_

"_Please don't destroy my creation," Lucifer wept. "I made it for –you.-" The little cherub cried, great sobs wracking his body. Gabriel, who had been silently watching the entire time, began to realize Lucifer wasn't faking it. His brother had poured his heart into his gift for the Father and was heartbroken the Father didn't like it._

"_Let me see what I can do," the Father finally said, awkwardly reaching around to give Lucifer a hug. "Go play with your brothers and sisters. I'll make it work somehow."_

_Lucifer smiled, a great cheerful smile. Of all the cherubs, Lucifer's features most closely resembled the beautiful, chiseled features and flowing wings of the Mother, but he had inherited the Father's fair coloring. He gave the Father an enormous hug, kissing him on the cheek, and cheerfully hopped off his lap, eager to go play. Despite his annoyance, the Father smiled. There was a good reason Lucifer was his favorite cherub. Only Lucifer ever got the Father to change his mind._

"_The Father is going to use my creation in his new world!" Lucifer shouted happily as he ran out the door of the workshop, back into the garden. "He said he's going to fix it for me!"_

_The Father sighed, absent-mindedly reaching down to pat the top of the ever-present Gabriel's head like a dog, before taking the small creation Lucifer had made and placing it upon his workbench. Gabriel was very happy. The Father had paid attention to him._

"_What am I going to do with this thing?" the Father muttered to himself._

_Gabriel sat silently at his feet, quietly observing the Father as he picked up some clay. As he watched, the Father shaped a –new- creation, similar in size to the one Lucifer had just created, but very different from it. _

"_There," the Father said. "That should rectify the imbalance in the planets ecosystem." He reached down and patted Gabriel on the head once more, finally making eye contact._

"_You're such a good boy, Gabriel," the Father said. "Never giving me any trouble. Now I've got to go find the Mother and explain to her why she needs to breathe this new creation into existence. –She's- as irrational as –they- are."_

_As soon as the Father left, Gabriel climbed up onto the Father's enormous chair and peeked over the edge of the workbench to see what the Father had created to fix Lucifer's mistake. The little brontosaurus grazed off to one side, happily munching away on the plant life the Father had originally been working on before Lucifer had interrupted him. In the middle of the workbench sat the Father's solution to the problem, lifeless clay, awaiting the life spark from the Mother to bring it to life._

_It was a tyrannosaurus rex…_

_X X X X X X X X X_

Gabriel's eyelids shot open. A dream. Of the time before he'd been self-aware. Only, for some reason, he'd _felt _self-aware in the dream. Not only self-aware, but also painfully aware of the nuances of those around him, especially the Father. Was it just a dream? Or a memory of the time before?

His little Prophet dozed peacefully in his arms, her pink lips parted slightly in sleep, inviting a kiss. He couldn't quite reach her lips from this position without jostling her, so he kissed the top of her forehead instead. The dream had been too vivid to be a mere dream. A memory. He was sure of it.

He tried to shift his position and hit the wall of their tight quarters on the riverboat, the 'thunk' of his wings hitting the wall obnoxiously loud to his own ears. Gunnlaif shared a room with Jose' next door, tightly crammed into bunk beds against the wall. Gabriel suppressed a snort of laughter. Gunn had already teased him about their 'activities' in the tiny room with the paper-thin walls. It was hard for a creature whose every instinct screamed at him to take flight during ecstasy to avoid pounding the walls with his wings during their frequent lovemaking sessions.

"Gabriel," Audrey murmured. "What time is it?"

"Just before dawn," Gabriel said, caressing her hair out of her face. "Too early to get up. Go back to sleep."

Audrey dutifully went back to sleep, relishing the downy softness of the under-feathers of his wings. Gabriel stayed awake, mulling over the dream in his mind, analyzing every detail. It was the first complete memory he'd ever had of his time before.

Gabriel stored the dream away for future reference…


	68. Chapter 67

Chapter 67

"Audrey, it's back!" Lena said, grabbing Audrey's arm.

"Huh?" Audrey asked, drawing her attention from where she'd been dreamily staring at the Tennessee shoreline of the Mississippi river.

"The compass rose," Lena said. "I just noticed the arrow has reappeared on your hand."

For the past week, while the old-fashioned steam-powered paddlewheel replica slowly chugged up the Mississippi river towards Saint Louis, Audrey had experienced neither vision, nor had the compass rose displayed a direction. They had only dared steal two nights at the remote cabin on the bayou, Gabriel's endurance to carry her weight in addition to his own only being so far before his ability to catch up with the riverboat would be exceeded. Now, however, it appeared the Mother, or the Father, or whatever combination of both was leading them in a direction to search out disciples for their son, had decided the honeymoon was over. Time to get back to work.

"Who has the map?" Audrey asked.

The yellowed road and tourism atlas Michael had left in the police cruiser had served her well thus far. Although bulky, it had listed every major highway, city, town, national park, and other facility in the country, as well as descriptions of interesting geographical features. Although Jose' could uplink to dot gov and get information, having a paper atlas was more reliable. Michael had chosen that particular ancient atlas for good reason … the roads they traveled had changed little since it had been published in the late 1950's and the book presumed cross-country travelers would be interested in geographical features and camping, not the latest 'canned' tourist trap. Within minutes, Jose' had run back to the room and retrieved the atlas.

"Where are we now?" Gunnlaeif asked, his curiosity aroused by the commotion.

"Just downstream of Memphis," Audrey said, pointing to the map. "We left Friars Point several hours ago. That island on the map is probably one of these islands over there."

"When will Gabriel be back?" Gunn asked.

"He's patrolling for trouble," Audrey said. "This part of the river is pretty uninhabited. The law has no reach this far from the port towns."

They all glanced up nervously at the gunman patrolling the rails. Gunn was one of them, having been deputized by the captain as soon as he found out Gunn was a former Army Ranger. There had already been several attempts to raid the riverboat, ranging from small canoes feigning trouble to a power boat that somehow had gotten their hands on some gasoline. One of the passengers had been shot, although survived. Piracy of the supply chain which kept the towns along the highly navigable Mississippi river from devolving into complete dead zones the way inland cities had imploded was now an everyday occurrence.

"Is there a tributary ahead?" the Reverend asked.

"The Ohio/Tenessee River fork is several days ahead," Audrey said, looking at the map. "The arrow is already pointing due east. We're supposed to get off at the next stop."

"We're going to have to inform the Senator," the Reverend said. "He's got appointments all the way up to Saint Louis."

"We need to stay together," Audrey said.

"Maybe's we's can keeps in touch by dot gov?" Jose' asked. "We's been able to keeps the Senator in touch with Austin pretty good."

"I'll go talk to him," the Reverend said. "He needs to make a decision before we reach the next port."

"What's in Memphis?" Lena asked. "Have you received instructions about another disciple?"

"No idea," Audrey said. "I haven't even dreamed of anything since the day before the wedding."

"You've got to fall asleep first before you can dream," Gunn cracked. "Jose' and I …. we ain't been getting no sleep since you two started going at one another."

Audrey looked down at the ground, her face turning pink with embarrassment.

"It's like," Jose' laughed, "thump, thump, thump all night long. All we's hears is thems wings of his thumping the walls while he's a serenading his new wife."

"It's like having two energizer bunnies in the next room," Gunn joked, giving Audrey a wink.

"Ah … sweet mystery of life at last I've found you," Lena sang at the top of her lungs, earning curious glances from the other passengers on the ferry as she sang the relevant song from the movie Young Frankenstein.

"Enough!" Audrey snapped, glaring at them. "If you don't knock it off, I'm going to … to … to …" Audrey trailed off. She couldn't think of an appropriate threat to get them to lay off their constant, nonstop ribbing. After watching her and Gabriel bounce off of one another for anywhere from months to over a year, the disciples were quite happy they had finally worked things out and gotten down to business.

"What?" Gunn taunted.

"She's going to send Gabriel to rip off your head and shit down your neck," Lena said.

"Oooooo…" Gun taunted, making a big 'O' with his mouth and putting on his best fake scared face, made all the more ludicrous by his long, grey-streaked beard. "I'm so scared…"

Gunn _wouldn't_ be scared. Not much. Gabriel had been training him how to fight off all manner of predators, both human and otherworldly, and the former-soldier-turned-biker-turned-disciple had begun to bulk out nearly as much as Gabriel. Gabriel had told him only within the past week that he'd now be a match for many of the smaller, less ferocious angelic soldiers, although Gunn was still no match for the Grigori. Gunn was beginning to give Gabriel one hell of a run for his money. Audrey's visions indicated Lucifer and the Nephilim had teamed up with the winged Grigori to escape. Gabriel felt it was important they all learn to fight a winged opponent.

"What possibilities might be in Memphis?" Lena asked. After a year on the road together, Lena knew the drill. Scope out each settlement on the path. Discern if it was either desirable or necessary to enter. Scope out what potential resources could be garnered there, as well as potential threats. Figure out where the hell the compass rose might be pointing to _after _that if they'd received no instructions via a vision.

"Only navigable waterway is the one we're on," Audrey said, scoping out the map. "Commuter rail, but no major rail routes other than the one that skirts the river. Several highways, but Interstate 40 comes through here headed east. That's a likely candidate."

"Any word from the Captain about how unsettled Memphis is?" Mambo De Vivre asked, having just come up to investigate.

"Not a death zone," Gunn said, "but the Captain said it's devolved to around the level of civilization of an old west frontier town. Lots of crime. The law does the best they can, but don't have a good grip on it. Some of the decent folk who fled the city after the apocalypse have trickled back, but lots still out in the hills to avoid organized crime gangs. It goes downhill fast the further you get away from the river."

"Oh … joy," Audrey said. "Goodbye civilization. Any natural resources?"

"Too far from the coal mines to ship much by rail," Gunn said. "The boats grab the Tennessee river tributary further inland. Land is fertile near the river due to silt, but further inland it's mostly shale. Biggest crops are the usual … corn … peanuts … sweet potatoes. The cotton market collapsed along with the textile industry."

"And nows, we's gots developments in the continuing search for the next disciple," Jose' narrated into his webcam, sneaking clips of their conversations for his nightly broadcast.

'_Good,' _Audrey thought to herself. '_It will give him something to report about besides my sex life.'_

Audrey knew the computer genius would have something spliced together and uploaded via satellite to the dot gov website by nightfall to share with their ever-growing viewership. They _had _garnered one privacy concession from the socially-challenged disciple, however. After Jose' had broadcast the sound of Gabriel's amorous wing-thumping against the wall, along with a few of Audrey's peals of laughter their first night back on the boat, Gabriel had threatened to permanently destroy Jose's equipment if he didn't exercise a little discretion. There was a fine line between good-natured ribbing between close friends and broadcast voyeurism. Jose' had crossed that line. Gabriel had made certain Jose' understood not to make that mistake a second time.

"Who wants to set up a betting pool about where we're going from here?" Gunn asked.

"Interstate 40," Lena called.

"The light rail line into the suburbs," Mambo De Vivre said.

"I vote the mountains beyond," Audrey said.

"No fair," Jose' complained. "You's don't get to vote 'cause you gets inside information. Yous'll skew the betting pool."

"I haven't had a vision in days," Audrey said. "I'm as blind as the rest of you."

"I agree with Jose'," Lena said. "The audience won't understand that. All in favor of barring Audrey from the betting pool, say aye."

"Aye!" they all called.

"The ayes have it," Lena said.

"Traitor," Audrey muttered.

Within the hour, Gunn had garnered wagers of one kind or another from just about every passenger on the boat for one thing or another. Would the Senator follow or stay? Would they stay in Memphis? What route would they take? When would they bump into the next disciple? Would the next disciple be another 'freak' like them? All fodder for Jose's neverending broadcast on Savior dot gov.

"Great," Audrey muttered. "I'm a reality television star."

She went downstairs to pack, sorting her belongings into an 'on the road' backpack and a 'hope to retrieve later' backpack. It was with considerable reluctance she placed her wedding dress, shoes, and veil into the latter. If it turned out they would be hitting the road again, they would all need to shed belongings in the care of a trustworthy caretaker and hope to someday retrieve them. Every pound mattered when you were walking.

How she longed for those quiet days at the base of the cliff when it had just been she and Gabriel getting to know one another. She was tired of travelling. Tired of explaining the same story over and over again at each new settlement or town. Tired of having her life broadcast on dot gov. Only fear for the future, of losing the man she loved, kept her moving forward.

"Michael," she whispered, saying not so much a prayer as an ongoing conversation with an old friend who she knew sometimes had the time to listen. "Did you know it was going to be like this? Please tell me it's all going to work out in the end. I want him to live as much as you do."

She put her head down into her hands and shut her eyes. The road. Oh … joy.


	69. Chapter 68

_Note:__ Thanks to all who've read and reviewed so far, especially XDFX who has diligently reviewed almost every single chapter. The little 'review' emails in my inbox are like my next 'hit' of some highly addictive drug, although that's not why I write (this all started out as an exercise to break through some pesky writers block after spending two months staring at a blank computer screen). Believe it or not, this innocuous little chapter took a TON of research, as did the upcoming disciple. I hope everyone enjoys. Just an aside … how much 'smut' should our newlyweds engage in on the road? Want to walk that fine line between romance and adventure._

Chapter 68

"The compass rose says we need to go straight," Audrey said.

"But our transportation is headed down into Collierville," the Senator drawled. "Isn't it possible we might head back up in the general direction later?"

The Senator looked skeptically at his wife. This was their first real experience trusting in the direction of the compass rose and Audrey's prophecies, not simply having the disciples tag along on a trip the Senator intended to undertake anyways. The Senator had ceded governorship of the Restored Republic to his lieutenant-governor, reminding his wife that the night of the apocalypse he had announced to the world he was giving up his position of leadership to be with _her_. But … he was a lifelong politician. He was used to _giving _orders and being the one to make things happen, not taking orders on blind faith.

"It doesn't work that way," the Reverend patiently explained. "Every time we've failed to heed the directions of the compass rose, we've run into trouble."

"Big time trouble," Gunn added, remembering the skinhead gangs in Amarillo. "It's impossible to avoid all conflict on the road, but the compass rose appears to route us away from conflicts we have little chance of winning."

"Where does this road continue to?" the Reverend asked the driver of the wagon they were riding.

"Nowhere, really," the driver said. "Route 57 just winds through a bunch of farm towns until it finally hits the mountains. We're from Colliersville, so that's as far as we go. It's as far as the law, or what's left of it, reaches these days. Nobody dares go any further."

They had been lucky enough to catch a wagon train out of Memphis headed in the direction of the compass rose, saving them two days of walking thus far. What had once been a two-hour commute on the interstate now took two days via walking or horse-drawn carriage. The leader of the supply train had jumped at the chance to have two trained soldiers along with three experienced marksmen to defend the supply convoy. Cindy, it turned out, was an even better shot than her husband or the Reverend.

"Problems with gangs?" the Reverend asked.

"Worse," the driver said. "Hill folk and travellers. Never took too kindly to strangers even _before _the apocalypse hit. Some of 'em make the Hatfield's and the McCoy's look tame."

Audrey picked up the dog whistle she now carried around her neck and blew. It was the ultimate irony that Gabriel, with his enhanced angel hearing, could only hear the ultra high-pitched sound of a dog whistle cut through the air when he was flying patrol. She used it sparingly. Every time she blew it, it made her cringe with shame.

The driver shrilled out a series of whistles to signal the other wagons to come to a halt. Not really wagons, per se. Being horse country, Tennessee had an abundance of riding horses and even some draft animals once the apocalypse had decimated humanity. What it didn't have was work wagons. The survivors had quickly rectified that problem by stripping out the heavy engines and drive trains from an assortment of vehicles, pickup trucks and vans being favorites, and converted them to wagons. The roads were still paved. Vehicles with rubber tires worked best on them.

"We've got to go straight," Audrey told the wagon master as soon as he walked back from the wagon ahead to investigate. When the compass rose had led them to the wagon train, it had led her to hope they wouldn't be walking across the _other _half of the country. Fat chance!

"We're going to miss you guys," the wagon master said, walking back from the wagon ahead. "One look at that husband of yours and nobody dares mess with us."

"What am I?" Gunn complained, his shotgun slung casually over his shoulder. "Chopped biker?"

"Husband and _friend _of yours," the wagon master said diplomatically. "This is the first time we haven't been hit at least twice on this run. Be careful. It all goes downhill fast from here."

"You's gots the equipments and directions to makes the uplinks from Collierville?" Jose' asked. "We's promised you's all we'd teach you folks how to do's it."

"Jose' showed me how to do it last night," the driver of their wagon Audrey was currently riding said. "It looked pretty straightforward. With the equipment they traded us for the ride, I'm sure I can recreate it. Dot gov can tell us how to scrounge up more from there."

"We have plenty of dead computer equipment in Collierville," the wagon master said. "Too bad you can't stay. My kids would have loved meeting Gabriel."

"There's six more hours of travel time before we'd normally make camp," Audrey said. "Time is of the essence. I'll be thinking of that warm bed you promised us with much regret." Although it didn't drop below freezing many nights in the Mississippi River valley, it was December and the temperature dropped to around 38 degrees most nights. To a former California girl, it felt downright frigid. She felt bad for the others, who didn't have a nice, warm husband with a built-in down comforter to keep their tents toasty and warm.

Gabriel dropped out of the sky in a rustle of feathers.

"What's the problem?" Gabriel asked. "Trouble?"

"Time to part ways," Audrey informed him, pointing to the compass rose. "We need to go down _that _way. Notice anything?"

"The Collierville town center is about an hour down that road," Gabriel said. "Everything appeared to be fairly orderly in the town. No signs of any trouble."

"That's always good to hear," the wagon master said. "Once people pulled in from the outlaying farms and banded together, we did a pretty good job of pushing back at the riffraff."

"What about this new direction?" Audrey asked.

"Didn't scout down that way except to circle around," Gabriel said. "Not much down that way. Just a couple of intact farms and a bunch of burned-out ones."

"Any chance we could scrounge up some horses and a wagon?" the Senator asked.

"Regular horses on a wagon are no good once you get past Grand Junction," the wagon master said. "Not unless you want to lose more than 18 hours every day letting them forage. Once you start climbing into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, they wear out fast and there's no place to get grain. You need mules."

"What about riding horses?" the Senator asked. "A wagon would be nice to get in from the cold or rain, but it's not necessary. We have tents."

"I'm 67 years old," Madam De Vivre said. "And I've only ridden a horse twice in my life. I'm a little old to start taking up equestrianism."

"Would you rather walk?" Cindy asked her, no hint of chiding in her voice. She was pointing out an obvious fact.

"Harumph!" Mambo De Vivre grunted, doing an amazing accurate reproduction of Gabriel's customary unreadable expression. She wasn't happy with the idea, but saw the logic of their thinking.

"_He's_ too big to ride anything except a destrier such as an Andalusian or a Freisian," the wagon master said, pointing to Gabriel. "Even then, he'd need to get a pack horse to carry his gear. Once you start carrying more than 20% of their weight, you start running into trouble."

"I fly," Gabriel flatly stated.

"Not ten hours per day, you don't," Audrey reminded him. "If we're on horseback, you're not going to be able to just walk along and keep up. We'll never get to talk to you."

Gabriel retreated behind an unreadable expression, but didn't argue. The thought struck Audrey how much her husband and the Mambo looked like unhappy bookends, with a bunch of horse-loving happy disciples in the middle making up the 'books.'

"The Reverend and the Senator could get away with a regular full-sized horse," the wagon master continued, "but Gunn's pretty heavy, too. He'd need at least a warmblood or quarter horse. The ladies and Jose' would do well on a Morgan. They're good little horses and will tolerate nothing but forage for extended periods of time. I'd recommend you get at least three pack horses or mules for your gear, too."

"That's a lot of horses," Audrey said. "How many miles could we get per day on horse, versus on foot?"

"Down here on the flatlands," the wagon master said, "you can easily get 25 miles per day before you'd need to make camp for forage. Possibly more if you can trade for some grain to supplement their diet. Ten hours on the road per day is average, same as on the wagon train."

"What about once we start climbing up into the foothills?" the Senator drawled, and then looked sheepish. "I'm a citified flatlander. There's nothing but flat plains and a few canyons in my part of Texas."

"Count on 15 miles per day once you start to climb," the wagon master said. "You're going to need extra time for forage this time of year because you're going to start encountering light snowpack and the grass is less nutritious. If you go off-road on the old lumber roads to avoid the riffraff that attacks passengers on the highway passes, count on 5 or 6 miles per day."

"About the same as we got on foot in the Rockies," Lena said.

"But better than we got on foot in the flatlands," the Reverend added. "Fifteen miles per day was really pushing it on foot unless we were in an area with plenty of water."

"Clean water isn't really a problem around here," the regular wagon driver chipped in. "Especially not this time of year."

"Where can we buy these horses?" Gabriel asked, not looking entirely convinced this was something he wished to undertake.

"Lots of Morgans around here," the wagon master said. "They were a favorite of the local riding academy for all the pretty little city girls used to come out to Collierville to take riding lessons. The old riding academy is around eleven miles down the road that there tattoo of the missus is pointing down."

"And the other horses?" the Reverend asked.

"Have to find out what they still got once you get there," the wagon master said. "Horses are in demand right now, as you may have noticed. The trade price has gotten pretty steep. You might want to just pick up a few Morgans to carry your gear, see what you can scrounge up as you move through the farm towns."

Audrey and the others discussed the matter and decided to follow the advice of the wagon master. The wagon master had been put in charge for a reason. He knew his horses. A few Morgan ponies and a lightweight wagon if they could find one for now, see what they could scrounge up later on the road. The worst-case scenario was that they wouldn't have to carry their gear while they walked. The best case scenario was that they'd scrounge up what they needed over the next few days and cover three times the amount of ground as they did before on foot.

Everyone was pleased with their plan as they parted ways with their hosts and headed down the old Route 57 towards the riding academy. Everyone, that is, except for Gabriel.

"You don't look very happy about this," Audrey said as soon as he assumed his favorite position at her back.

Gabriel was silent.

"It's been a long time since I've ridden a horse," Audrey said enthusiastically. "Not since my mom had me take lessons during summer camp as a little girl."

Gabriel grunted an affirmation.

"How long has it been since you've last ridden?" Audrey asked.

"Never," Gabriel said flatly.

"You've never ridden a horse?" Audrey asked.

"Why would I?" Gabriel said. "I can fly."

"But didn't you ever have to ride with humans before?" Audrey asked. "What about the time you helped John the Baptist and his mother Elizabeth escape Herrod the Great's genocide?"

"The Savior walked everywhere," Gabriel said flatly. "So did the disciples. Very few people rode horses back then."

"Oh," Audrey said, immediately squelching the stupid comment she had been about to make about finally finding something (besides making love) that Gabriel hadn't done before. Tact. Why rub somebody's face in a truth when it served no purpose? Instead, she laced her fingers through his and tugged him along as they made their way towards the place where they could get horses. "Don't worry. Lena and Mambo De Vivre haven't ridden much either. We'll all figure it out as we go."

Gabriel's face hadn't been this unreadable and sullen since the time he'd mistakenly thought she'd taken a liking to the Mormon boy and had to endure two weeks on the road watching Audrey chatter with him.

Distraction.

"How do you think I learned to ride Little Gabriel so well?" Audrey murmured, deliberately distracting him with the naughty thought. "It's all in how tightly you clench your thigh muscles around the horse flesh to keep your seat."

The unreadable expression immediately disappeared, replaced by one of intense interest.

"A good horse can sense how fast its master wants to ride by the pressure of your legs wrapped around their girth," Audrey said, deliberately lowering her voice to make it husky and deep. "A really good horse and rider can sense what each other needs by the feel of each other's muscles without saying a single word."

"You're deliberately teasing me to distract me," Gabriel said, his ice-blue eyes darkening to a darker shade of cerulean that Audrey had learned meant mild sexual arousal or interest.

"I am," Audrey confessed, giving him her most innocent smile. "And you love me for it." She hop-skipped like a little girl on her way to the playground. Gabriel growled the funny little grumble he often made when she was teasing him just before they bedded down together for the night.

"How long do you think it will take me to learn?" Gabriel asked, his voice now apprehensive.

"Staying in the saddle is fairly easy once you've won the horses respect," Audrey said. "To get _really _good at it … that takes time. Given how long we can expect to be on the road, you'll probably have _plenty _of time to master the skill before anybody besides _us _sees you ride a horse.

"Good," Gabriel said quietly. There weren't many things that intimidated Gabriel, but ever since he'd fallen to Earth he'd had to learn many new skills that he'd never had to learn as a soldier for the Father before and he'd discovered he wasn't a 'natural' for everything. Like dancing. Audrey had _yet _to get Gabriel to truly dance.

Giddyup!" Audrey said, an evil smirk on her face as she smacked her husband in the ass as though she were hitting a horse in the haunches and then pretended to gallop.

Audrey couldn't wait to see Gabriel get on a horse. _If _they could find a heavy breed that was big enough…


	70. Chapter 69

Chapter 69

"_Get away from me!" Audrey screamed, holding Gabriel's unearthly blade out in front of her. She resisted calling for help as long as she could, knowing that to summons him would cause him to exchange his life for hers. But his was no longer the only life that mattered. She was outnumbered three to one._

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered reassuringly into her ear, caressing her as she thrashed in her sleep. "Whoever dare molesteth the Prophet of the Savior shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God."

"_This was –our- world long before your species ever existed," the Grigori leader snarled in hatred. "And now it will be ours again." The Grigori slashed at her with his claws. She stabbed back, but deliberately avoided the eye that was momentarily an easy target. The other Grigori circled, waiting for a signal from their leader._

"You must look beyond the obvious weave of the tapestry, my love," Gabriel whispered to her, holding her to reassure her he was still here. "You must examine the individual threads so we can find a solution to the problem."

"_We are the same," Audrey said, trying to reason with the leader. "The Father tried to wipe –us- from the Earth the same as he wiped –you- from the Earth. There is no conflict between us."_

_The Grigori leader paused. "And yet your species still lives free from Sheol."_

"_Only because Michael petitioned the Mother to intervene," Audrey said. "She is done allowing the Father to murder her children. She has left her sign for all to see in the heavens." Audrey pointed to the constellation of prone Orion and the bull riding maiden swinging down the sword to decapitate him._

_For a moment, it appeared as though she had reached the Grigori leader. He cocked his head to examine her closely, his gold eyes widening in interest and the sneer of his fangs momentarily softening from his lizard-like snout, as though taking her measure. Then his eyes narrowed into slits. The Grigori leader grabbed his head, as though in pain, and began a two-sided conversation with himself._

"_She is an ally," the Grigori leader muttered, clutching his head between his claws. "The Mother burns strong within her flesh."_

"_She is an obstacle in your way," the Grigori leader then muttered to himself, pulling his claws off his head. "They are a filthy race. Created by –him!-" _

"_There are very few of them left," the Grigori leader said, clutching his head between his claws again and continuing the odd conversation with himself. "We are stronger if we stand together against the Father."_

"_THIS one is the mate of the Left Hand of the Father," the Grigori leader snarled to himself, his eyes narrowing in contempt. The sneer reappeared on his face. "The one who defeated you and threw you in the Keep. Her mate still serves the Father. Kill her and thou shalt carve out thine enemies heart!"_

"_There need be no enmity between us," Audrey pleaded. "There is another way." _

"_The Mother didn't intervene to save –us-," the Grigori snarled in hatred, rushing at her once more. "Thou relationship with a divine consort is an abomination! Whore of Babylon! Thou shalt die like the sinner thou art!" His jaws locked around her left wrist. _

_Audrey screamed in pain as she slashed down with the blade, gouging out the Grigori leaders eye. He howled in rage and threw her to the ground, clawing at her belly with his claws and screaming expletives at her. She curled up in a ball, trying to protect herself, protect her belly, resisting calling Gabriel's name, the call that would lead to his death._

_She had no choice. His was no longer the only life that mattered. It was no longer just her sacrifice to make. Perhaps it would end differently this time?_

"_Gabriel!" she screamed, sobbing his name, knowing what the outcome would be. No matter what she did, it was always the same._

"I am still here, my love," Gabriel said. "You must step out of your own pain and examine the other threads."

_Gabriel dropped into her midst, pounding the Grigori leader with his mace. The Grigori leader bellowed a command, drawing its own sword. The Grigori were sentient creatures. They had taken the time to forge weapons before attacking. Gabriel stood over where she lay bleeding on the ground and defended her position._

"_Uriel will bring you to safety, my wife," Gabriel said, pulling her to her feet. "I will finish this."_

"_Don't do this," she cried. "Come with me."_

"_You know why I must," Gabriel said, tears coming to his eyes as he kissed her goodbye. "My life is not the only life that matters anymore. You must survive." He shoved her into the waiting angel's arms._

"_No!" she screamed as the other angel pulled her into the air. All around them, the battlefield teamed with combatants. So many. The battle was so large. Off to one side she could see the disciples encircle the Savior, now only a boy of several years. Too young to fight. Around him, humanity was divided. Most stood idly by and simply watched, but some joined the fight. _

_Humans weren't the only spectators. Two hundred angels wearing collars stood by, arms crossed contemptuously, and did nothing. Most wore the same indifferent expression of contempt she had first seen upon Gabriel's face the day he had smashed down the door of the Paradise Diner and come to kill the Savior._

"_Get him!" the Grigori leader howled in rage, charging at Gabriel. _

_Other Grigori charged to surround Gabriel, resplendent in his armor, but the light of the heavenly Father no longer flowed through his veins. His strength was formidable, but not superhuman. His wings were no longer weapons. His wounds no longer healed within seconds. The Grigori charged. All around them, deformed Nephilim, their minds twisted by radiation sickness and madness, chittered and egged them on. Gabriel took many with him, but in the end, there were too many. Audrey wailed in anguish as she helplessly watched them drag him to the ground and tear him apart._

_Across the battlefield, Audrey locked eyes with Lucifer, his eyes filled with indecision and sorrow._

"_Help him!" she pleaded, pounding upon the angel who held her captive and trying to escape so she could get to fight at Gabriel's side. "Please! He is your brother."_

"_Lucifer is a traitor and a coward!" Uriel sneered, more at Lucifer than at her, as he pulled her head back by the hair to break her eye contact with Lucifer and glare into her eyes. "Be thankful your husband has offered his life in sacrifice to the Father to spare YOU from the same fate as Lucifer's mate!"_

_The disciples fought mightily alongside the humans they had gathered, but it wasn't enough. One by one, they fell, mighty Gunnlaeif smiting one last Grigori with his dying breath. The humanity they had rallied fell as well. All that was left were the humans who had stood on the sidelines. Michael swooped in at the last possible moment and pulled the Savior to safety, depriving Earth forever of his guidance. The Grigori finished off those who fought, and then trumpeted a retreat._

"_Go to him now, unworthy harlot," Uriel sneered at her in hatred. "This is YOUR fault! If only it was YOU who burned in Sheol in his stead." Uriel callously threw her down upon the ground, taunting Lucifer as he did so._

_Lucifer's eyes hardened. He gathered his children and headed off into the sunset. Behind him, what remained of humanity followed. They saw fellowship with the children of the fallen angels the Father had wronged and wished the protection of the Grigori who had just proven they could defeat him._

"_Gabriel, I'm so sorry," she sobbed, crawling upon her hands and knees to where what was left of her brave husband as he lay dying upon the ground. "I tried everything I could think of. It just wasn't enough to save you."_

"I'm still with you, my love," Gabriel whispered to her, caressing her body. "You must look beyond my death. You must examine each individual thread so we can find a solution."

"_You must survive, love of my life," Gabriel gasped in pain, blood streaming from his mouth. "Not even death can take away what you have given me. We shall reunite someday in heaven."_

"_You shall –never- be reunited with your love," Uriel said, his expression flat and unreadable as he looked at his dying brother. "The Father bid I make this message clear before you expired. You shall spend all eternity alone in the Keep apart from your love. The Father shall honor the terms of your sacrifice, but he shall wipe all memory of you from her mind the moment she enters the garden. From this day forward, all of heaven has been prohibited from ever again speaking your name, fallen one. You shall be erased from the memory of all creation the same way the Father erased all memory of the Mother."_

"_Audrey…" Gabriel whispered, speaking her name with his dying breath as his beautiful, ice-blue eyes grew blank. _

_Even as she tried to grab at him, to hold him here and prevent his body from dissipating, his mortal shell shimmered into holy fire, leaving her with nothing but the blood he had shed upon the ground on her behalf._

"_No!" Audrey screamed in agony as she clutched at handfuls of bloody earth, all she had left of him and clutched it to her heart. "Gabriel! Please! We need you!" The last words came out as little more than a whisper._

"It is only a dream, little Prophet," Gabriel said, hugging her close in his arms as she shuddered in grief. "I am still here with you. You must look beyond the death you foresee to see what good can come of it."

"_Be thankful the Father doesn't punish –you- as well," Uriel said flatly, his words clipped and voice laced with hatred. "If only he had wiped your species out when he first tried, my brother would still be with us." Uriel flew away, taking the other angels who had stood by and watched. Not simply watched. The other angels had been there for a reason. They were the angels who had sided against Gabriel with the Father. They were there to make sure none of the other angels –interfered.-_

_Heaven itself had fractured…_

"_Gabriel," Audrey whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks as she gathering the earth that contained his blood and painted her face, her hair, her arms, her entire body with it. All she had left of him. She would suffer the rest of this mortal life without him, and then she would be forced to forget why she had ever even grieved. She curled up on the spot where he had just died and wept._

"True love can never die," Gabriel whispered in her ear as she sobbed uncontrollably in his arms, too weak to remain in the vision any longer to see what happened next. "It simply changes form. You must move past the expiration of my mortal shell so you can follow the threads in the tapestry."

Audrey sobbed until the quiet whisper of possession touched upon the fringes of her senses and channeled through her. She now realized the sensation was not to be feared and didn't fight it.

"The seventh disciple whirls in the battlefield where the coloreds defended the wolf," the Mother whispered through the Prophet. "Tell the bare' roma that Sara e Kali demands as recompense the service of his fourth child."

"Mother?" Gabriel asked, his touch changing somewhat from the touch of a lover to the respectful touch of a son, the touch he had used before they had been married.

Audrey was not surprised when the Mother did not answer. Whatever fucked up wager the Mother had with the Father, she only ever got one cryptic message per disciple to tell them.

"She's already gone," Audrey whispered, fighting her way through her grief as she reminded herself she was _here _in the present with Gabriel still alive, not grieving in that future battle over his death. Gabriel gave her time to weep, understanding that she needed it, before pressing her to answer questions. Within moments of ending, exhaustion always caused the details of her visions to fade. They had agreed he would press her for details from now on despite her exhaustion in the hopes Gabriel would recognize details she didn't realize were significant.

"The vision sounded different this time," Gabriel finally whispered in her ear, nuzzling the hair above her ear as he did. "What changed?"

"I made myself avoid stabbing the Grigori leader in the eye at first," Audrey said. "We spoke … more. It was like dealing with two different people in one head. One rational. The other insane."

"We were ordered to never to speak to them when we did battle," Gabriel said. "But I have noticed such odd behavior. The Father claimed the Grigori were all insane and needed to be killed."

"It was like the Gollum in Lord of the Rings," Audrey said. "Only instead of ranting about a Precious, the leader seemed more concerned with humanities sins. It was almost like talking to that crazy old lady at the diner."

"The Grigori were not always so," Gabriel said softly. "I have a fragment of memory from the time before. Lucifer made the Grigori as a gift for the Mother. They were more like big friendly dogs than the creatures you see now. We used to play with them."

"_Lucifer_ made them?" Audrey asked. "Not the Father?"

"I have memories of the Father being upset because the Mother would encourage us to shape creations of mud from the soil of the garden," Gabriel said. "She would breathe life into them so we could play with them. We made many such creatures to please her, although I have no memory of making any personally. Creating new creatures that didn't fit in with whatever plans he had for the ecosystem of a new world he was shaping used to drive the Father nuts."

"If Lucifer made the Grigori," Audrey said, her voice exhausted. "Then that might explain why they banded together. But it appears to be an alliance of convenience. The Grigori left the battlefield right away, while the Nephilim lingered and only left once Lucifer gathered both them and the humans who stood by and did nothing."

"Lucifer had many great-great-grandchildren who survived the Father's rage," Gabriel said. "Being one-quarter angel, they had a survival edge over pure humans. The Father only had us gather them to the fourth generation. There were only a few million people in existence in the world then. It wouldn't surprise me if every human alive today has at least _some _of Lucifer's or the other fallen angels DNA."

Audrey groaned in exhaustion. She wanted to sleep. If she slept, small details such as this would be lost. The only detail which ever stayed with her with any great clarity once she reawakened was her feeling of overwhelming grief as she watched him die. Cold sweat beaded her brow. She forced her rubbery arms to move, to touch her love and reassure herself he was really still here.

"That is how he treated the humans left behind," Audrey finally said. "The Nephilim all appeared to be very sick and deformed. He gathered them like the poor, sick creatures they are, and then he gestured for the surviving humans to follow him as well. His demeanor was not that of a victorious military leader. It was the gesture of an exhausted father trying to herd his children to safety."

"Not the Lucifer I remember from before the fall," Gabriel said. "Lucifer was always the favorite. He was self-confident, bordering on arrogant."

"Perhaps my vision is not accurate, then?" Audrey asked hopefully. "My vision is wrong?"

"No," Gabriel said, pausing thoughtfully. "You describe his resignation when the Father ordered Michael and I to lead him to the Keep. He went willingly, hoping the Father would spare his children. His only thoughts were for the well-being of his wife and offspring. He had been banished to Earth for so long … it was a side of our brother we had never seen before. I don't think Lucifer anticipated his children would storm heaven trying to get him back."

"He was incarcerated with the Grigori?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "He has spent the last 6,000 years incarcerated with them. Azrael said it was more the fact Lucifer refused to order his men to abandon their families and fight the Grigori than that he had intermarried with humans which upset the Father. It makes sense that eventually they would team up to escape. What happened when you tried to speak to the Grigori leader?"

"He paused when I suggested an alliance with humans," Audrey said. "But then he started talking to himself and attacked. I tried not to call you."

"You are _supposed _to call me," Gabriel said, his voice scolding. "I am your husband now, not just your protector. It's my _job _to take care of you."

"Mpfhhh…" Audrey groaned, her limbs too exhausted and spent to move. "I'm so tired." Shivers wracked her body despite Gabriel's reassuring warmth. The visions always left her with a bone chilling cold that mere temperature could not explain.

This was the first full-blown vision she'd had in nearly three weeks. Since before their marriage. Lingering pain where the Grigori in the vision had bitten her wrist and clawed at her abdomen warned her she needed medical attention, but she was so tired. She didn't want to deal with it right now. Gabriel had no understanding of why she manifested wounds she would receive in the future, only that occasionally prophets experienced stigmata of one form or another, often when their consciousness was transported back in time to witness the crucifixion of the Savior.

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered, gently kissing her forehead as he nestled her into a more comfortable position in his arms and wings. "You did well. You took control of your vision and explored a new thread. We have a new disciple to meet tomorrow and time still to find a solution."

Audrey drifted back to sleep. So long as she continued to wake up in the arms of the man she loved, she would continue to slog forward. As for what happened when the day came that she _didn't _wake up and discover it was but a dream_, _she couldn't fathom getting past that point. Gabriel had become the other half of her soul. Without him …

'_If I were to ever lose your love,' Gabriel had said, 'like the Father lost the love of the Mother, I think I would beg the Mother to uncreate my soul and return it to the void so I would not have to feel the pain.'_

Yeah. It was something like that.


	71. Chapter 70

Chapter 70

"Entering Moscow," Gabriel read off the sign, tugging the reins of his little Prophet's pack horse as he walked. "Population 550."

"I doubt it's that much now," Mambo De Vivre said from horseback. They had all agreed the voodoo high priestess with the gimpy leg would get preferential treatment to ride the three Morgan horses and broken down old nag they'd scrounged up at the edge of Collierville yesterday. "Only around 7-8% of the people survived in New Orleans and the surrounding area."

"They'd be wise not to advertise that fact," Gunn said. "Alamosa had enough combat vets who survived to defend the town. A town with a total population of less than 50 would be easily overrun."

"Dobro pozhalovat v' Moskvu," the Senator said. "Interesno, yestʹ li Rossiyu v etom voprose?"

"What?" Audrey asked, wondering if she'd gotten broccoli in her ears or something.

"He said welcome to Moscow," Gabriel translated. "He wondered if there are any Russians here."

"Vy govorite Russiyu?" the Senator asked.

"Da," Gabriel answered. "Ya govoryu na vseh yazykah , kotorye kogda-libo sushchestvovali , v tom chisle mnogie predvaritelʹno zhivyh iz nih . Gde vy nauchilisʹ govoritʹ na russkom?"

"You two want to let us in on the conversation?" the Reverend asked.

"He asked if I speak Russian," Gabriel translated. "I informed him I speak all human languages that have ever existed, as well as a few non-human ones."

"What's a town named Moscow doing in the middle of Tennessee?" Cindy asked. "Tennessee is a solid Republican state. I thought all the tea partiers hated pinko commies?"

"Founded 1828," Lena read off the sign they still slowly walked past. "A bit before the cold war. Russia was an imperial empire back then with close ties to the other European monarchies."

"I'm learning more about obscure America by walking across it than a billion history books," Audrey groused. "I'd make a great Jeopardy contestant."

"Why would you wish to place yourself in jeopardy as a contest?" Gabriel asked, perplexed. The others burst out laughing. He immediately retreated behind his customary unreadable expression and glowered. Humans and their obscure social references! Audrey sensed his displeasure and dropped back with her horse to walk alongside of him at his customary place watching the groups back, lacing her hand through his and giving him her warmest heart-melting smile.

Off in the general direction they were headed, music could be heard. A wild, melodramatic music comprised largely of guitar, clapping, and occasional shouts to accompany the song.

"Battle of Moscow," Gabriel read aloud. "Three thousand confederate cavalry tried to burn the bridge over the Wolf River. The Union army pushed them back. I take it we found our battleground."

"Union troops of African descent," Audrey read off the back of the sign. "The coloreds who defended the Wolf."

"Harumph!" Mambo De Vivre snorted. "Of course the all-black regiments prevailed. They had something to prove against the southern slave owners."

"That doesn't look like much of a river," Lena said. "More like a marshy swamp. Where's the battleground?"

"Why don't we go ask the bare' Roma?" Gabriel said, pointing to the group of people singing and dancing in a nearby field, a group of makeshift wagons and RV's converted to horse-drawn carriage parked in a circle like a wagon train of old.

"Bare' Roma?" the Reverend asked, his expression puzzled. There weren't many obscure social references that got past the Reverend, but this was obviously one of them.

"King of the Gypsies," Gabriel translated. "Romani people. Wanderers."

As they got close enough to see the source of the singing and music, Gabriel could see a young girl, no older than twelve or thirteen, whirling in a dance, her colorful long skirt swirling as she danced. The young girl whirled in their direction, her arms outstretched, spied Gabriel, and stopped. She stood there, frozen for an instant, an odd expression upon her face, as the musicians realized something was amiss and stopped along with her. The disciples assumed their customary meet-and-greet position when coming into new settlements, Gunn at the front, Gabriel at the rear, the Reverend and the Senator on either side, the others in the middle. Mambo De Vivre stayed on her horse.

"Papa!" the girl called, running towards one of the recreational vehicles, converted in the front with what appeared to be a four-horse harness and yoke. Off in the fields behind them, numerous draft horses, some mules, and a couple of oxen were visible.

"The seventh disciple, I presume?" the Reverend asked, pointing to the young girl. "Whirling on the battlefield where the coloreds defended the Wolf?"

"I shall know when we speak to her," Gabriel said. If there was one thing he was getting good at, it was discerning that spark of the Mother which burned so brightly in his own wife's breast, the spark he had at first mistaken to be of the Father when he had lain broken at the foot of the cliff, it being powerful and familiar despite his having no conscious memory of the Mother. All of the disciples possessed the spark in varying degrees, though none quiet so bright as the Prophet.

The band of gypsies, or Romani people, immediately grouped together for maximum defensive effect, eying them warily and feeling for the current location of guns, bullets, and knives, but otherwise making no visible threat. All eyed the disciples warily, especially him. Within moments, the young girl came back, chattering to a man who could have been no more than thirty who the others immediately parted and appeared to defer to.

"Bare' Roma?" Gabriel asked.

"Lyubitshka foretold the coming of an angel to take her away," the gypsy leader said in heavily accented English. "We were afraid she was foreseeing her own death."

"We are all very much alive," Gabriel reassured him. "Lyubitshka is the young lady who was dancing?"

"Yes," the man said. "I am Besnik, current bare' leader of this group, although leadership rotates as the need dictates."

"Speak to me, young lady," Gabriel ordered, deliberately flaring his wings slightly to convey the proper amount of authority to the Romani males. He knew the female would not speak to a male stranger unless directly addressed in the male-dominated Romani culture. He needed to hear her speak to discern if she was the one he sought. "Tell me of this prophecy you have foreseen?"

"My Papa sought to betroth me to Marko," Lyubitshka said in flawless English, pointing to a man in his mid-forties. "He has offered Papa the bride price. His wife died last year and he wishes to take me as his new wife. I dreamt an angel would bring a gadjo to be my husband and take me to meet O' Devlo o Nevo, the new god. Every night since then, I have dreamt of the angel and my husbands' face. I would know him anywhere."

Definitely a disciple. The spark of the Mother burned nearly as bright in this one as the spark which burned in his little Prophet.

While Lyubitshka spoke, the raven-haired young woman walked over to where the Reverend now stood and took his hand. "I am ready to go with you, my husband. Sara e Kali said she has already paid Papa the bride price."

"B-b-b-bride price?" the Reverend stammered, turning purple with embarrassment. The girl was exceptionally attractive with her wavy, raven-black hair, olive skin, and strong facial features, but she was less than one-third his age.

Gabriel had directly encountered very few Romani during his service to the Father. The Father repeatedly sent the heavenly host to whisper to the authorities in whatever land the Romani people traversed to cast them out like the Isrealites in the desert after the Exodus. The Father had never said _why _he had it out for the Romani people, but given last night's vision, a theory was beginning to form in Gabriel's mind. He had, however, picked up a few oddball tidbits of knowledge of their customs. To survive, most Romani superficially adopted those customs of the dominant religion in whatever land they were currently settled in which did not conflict with their traditional Romani culture. No matter what country or religion the tribes adopted, all Romani placed a premium on 'purity,' especially virginity. Although exceptionally young for an American bride, Lyubitshka was precisely the age most European Romani tended to marry off their daughters.

"Sara e Kali has sent me to tell you she demands recompense in the form of your fourth child," Gabriel said to Besnik. "She is to accompany us in our quest to gather support for the Savior, who has been reborn into this world."

"This one bears the signet of Sara e Kali, the Black Madonna," an elderly Romani male who spoke perfect English said, pointing to the compass rose on Audrey's wrist, in which the 'arrow' had assumed the shape of a triangle pointed straight down.

Audrey started to speak and Gabriel shushed her, bending down to whisper that the Romani were a heavily male-oriented culture.

"But … I'm … old!" the Reverend stammered, taking a step back from the beautiful gypsy girl who had just walked right up to him and announced he was to be her husband.

"You always said you never had time to find the right one," Gabriel said wryly. "Guess the Mother chose for you."

"Tell me of this vision, child," Mambo De Vivre asked, her voice authoritative. The Romani males drew back from the Mambo in fear, many of them making the sign of the cross as they did so. Besnik protectively drew his daughter behind him. Whatever issues the Romani had with women, it didn't appear to extend to the voodoo queen.

"The Black Madonna came to me in a dream," Lyubitshka said. "She said I had been promised at birth to serve her son. I am to follow the angel. Since it would dishonor my family to wander amongst mixed genders, the Black Madonna said one amongst the group was sufficiently pure to be Romanipen. I am to marry him so Papa suffers no dishonor amongst our people."

"M-m-m-marriage," the Reverend stammered. "But I hardly know you!"

"You're a marriage minister who's never gotten married," Gunn joked slapped the Reverend on the back. "Congratulations!"

"But I'm more than three times her age!" the Reverend exclaimed.

"You're the same age as Markos," Lyubitshka said, tugging the Reverend by the hand towards one of the recreational vehicles turned wagons.

"Ain't n-n-nutin compared to the age difference b-b-between Gabriel and the Prophet!" Jose' snorted, slapping his hand on his thighs in laughter. "Why's this Black Madonna of hers not s-s-say the pretty gypsy girl marry m-m-me?"

"What bride price has the Mother already paid?" Gabriel asked. "She didn't elaborate."

Besnik looked around warily at his compatriots, and then decided to invite them to sit down.

"Lyubitshka!" Besnik ordered. "Finish the dance!" He nodded to the musicians, who fanned back out to their original spots around the clearing, but continued to eye the newcomers warily, and began to play the song again. Lyubitshka began to dance again.

"Our family was from Srebenika, Bosnia," Besnik said. "The Serbs came into the village and slaughtered 70 Roma and herded the rest of us into concentration camps. We escaped. No country would take us. Nobody wanted gypsies. We ended up in Chernobyl, Ukraine."

"Chernobyl?" Lena asked, fanning herself. "The place where the nuclear power plant melted down and irradiated the surrounding area?"

"Why would you go to Chernobyl?" Mambo De Vivre asked. "I'm no geography buff, but that's at least 800 miles away."

"Nobody bothered us there," Besnik said. "There are empty houses, abandoned farms, water, even livestock and farm implements, free for the taking. Everyone is afraid of that place, so they left us alone."

"Only after a while you started to become sick," the Reverend guessed, his eyes filling with compassion.

"Lyubitshka's mother began to lose her hair and got a rash on her skin," Besnik said, gesturing for a very attractive still-young woman who bore a striking resemblance to her daughter. "When she started to vomit, at first we thought it was just the sickness that everyone who moved to Chernobyl got. We viewed the sickness a small price to pay to not be murdered or persecuted. But then she started to bleed. We brought her to see a doctor. We found out she was carrying Lyubitshka."

Lyubitshka's mother did not appear to speak any English, but she knew they were talking about her. She looked down.

"The doctors told you she would be born deformed due to the radiation?" Gabriel asked the girls' mother in perfect Romani.

"Yes," the mother said. "They told me I should abort the baby because she was deformed and, if I didn't, I would bleed to death."

"What happened next?" Gabriel asked, in English, the girls' father.

"I made a pilgrimage to the icon of the Black Madonna at Czestochowa, Poland," Besnik said. "The Romani periodically make pilgrimages to lay flowers at the black Madonna's feet wherever such religious artifacts reside in Europe. I prayed that if the Black Madonna spared the life of my wife and unborn child, I would do whatever she asked."

"Obviously Lyubitshka is alive and well," the Reverend said, his expression warming for the young girl who had finished her dance and come over to possessively plaster herself at his side. "How did you end up coming here?"

"The pilgrimage took many days," Besnick said. "I expected my wife might already be dead when I got home, but she was alive. A few days later, the doctor at the clinic said he had applied on our behalf for a visa program that helps political refugees relocate to the United States. Because we had survived the Serbian massacre at Srebenika, our entire family qualified for immediate asylum. When we got here, they introduced us to American Romani living in Charleston, South Carolina, who helped us get settled in. Lyubitshka was born perfectly healthy. These are our friends who welcomed us to the new world." Besnick gestured to the American Romani and a few Irish-looking travellers who lived in the caravan.

"We, too, have adopted the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa as part of our religion," Mambo De Vivre said, pulling one of the small devotional cards she always carried out of her rucksack of a mother-and-child icon. Lyubitshka's father gasped as the Mambo pulled out a print of the famous Orthodox Christian icon. "She is also known as Gran Maitre, the black mother."

"Who is she, really?" Besnick asked.

"She is the former consort of the Father," Gabriel informed her. "We call her the Holy Ghost, or the Mother. Co-creator of the universe."

"She is Gabriel's mother," Audrey added quietly.

Gabriel shuddered as the Prophet spoke. He had come to recognize when the Prophet spoke with the power of holy blasphemy. She had not needed to curse to impart the power of her words for a very long time. When she spoke the truth, you just _knew. _Not just _the _Mother, but _his _mother.


	72. Chapter 71

Chapter 71

"We need her to come with us," Audrey said. "You heard her father. He's not going to let her go unless he's certain she'll be safe. In their world, 'safe' means married with a husband to protect her."

"She's only thirteen years old," the Reverend said. "It's … obscene! I feel like a pedophile for even considering it!"

"We've had issues with one of the fundamentalist Mormon sects in Texas marrying them off even before they reach puberty," the Senator said. "Thirteen is the minimum age we'll let them get married."

"Deny them an education so they don't know there are other choices available," Cindy snorted with contempt. "Keep them barefoot and pregnant and fearful of the wrath of god. And then seclude them away from and fearful of outsiders so they never question things. Same bullcrap, different freaks."

"It is their culture," Gabriel said bluntly. "If we wish for the seventh disciple to join us, we must find a compromise that will satisfy her family."

Audrey leaned back into his warmth and sighed as his arms found their customary perch around her shoulders. He automatically nuzzled her neck and inhaled her scent, something he had taken to doing long before it had even begun to dawn upon her that they _were _a couple. Even when having a debate with the other disciples, unless it involved an issue regarding her personal safety, Gabriel always had her back. What had she ever done to deserve such a beautiful, protective husband?

'_You forgave him his blind obedience,'_ a little voice in her brain whispered. Audrey never knew whether the little whisper was the Mother, some loa, or her own subconscious intuiting the greater picture. All she knew was that the little voice had never steered her wrong, so she listened to it.

"Elvis Presley met Priscilla when she was only fourteen," the Senator said. "He waited eight years to marry her. Would this be much different?"

"Pops is about to marry her off to Markos," Gunn bluntly pointed out, gesturing to the widower in question, who glared at them from across the campfire. "He's the exact same age as you. Personally, I think you're a better catch. Markos already has eleven children for Lyubitsche to mother before she even produces a single one of her own."

"Too cheap to hire a babysitter and buy the good popcorn," Audrey joked, referring to her _own _stints as a babysitter. "Why pay a babysitter $10 per hour when you can just marry one?"

"At least _you'll _make sure she gets an education," Lena suggested to the Reverend. "The Romani don't believe in education, especially for their daughters. The girl can barely read and write!"

"And _I'll _teach her how to think for herself!" Cindy snapped. "None of this male domination baloney."

Gunn pointed to the Senator from behind Cindy's back, where she couldn't see, and pantomimed sticking a dog collar around the Senator's neck and then following his wife around like a dog. The Senator shot Gunn a dirty look, gesturing 'cut' with one hand across his neck. There was a good reason Cindy had quickly moved up from legislative aide to the Senator's right-hand man politically. She was a formidable woman. And the whole concept of Romani male-dominated culture goaded her the same way Audrey's initial contact with the polygamist Mormon's had goaded _her._ Cindy had a lot to learn about the journey they were all on.

"Don't worry, honeychild," Lena joked. "We'll all have her horribly corrupted and declaring herself queen of the gypsies in no time at all!"

"What's wrong with a gypsy queen?" Mambo De Vivre chipped in, her eyes twinkling with mirth in her wrinkled skin. "Voudun was a male-oriented culture until Marie Laveau declared herself voodoo queen of New Orleans. Now people expect a voodoo queen, whereas a voodoo high priest is optional. Even surprising. Perhaps that is the reason this disciple has been chosen?"

"Voodoo queens don't have 19 children," Cindy snapped, referring to one Romani family with 19 children all packed into a single RV. "You have, what? Three children?"

"Yes," Mambo answered.

Lyubitsche was the fourth of nine children and her mother was in the early stages of pregnancy for child number ten. Families with twelve or more children appeared to be the norm, and one of the families had nineteen children. Considering the Romani only took one wife, the number of children most Romani families had were mind-boggling.

"We spent time amongst the fundamentalist LDS," the Reverend said softly to Cindy. "Although I still would not wish to adopt their ways, they turned out to be nothing like my perceptions of who they were."

"Audrey got a marriage proposal from one of them," Lena joked. "She would have been wife one of a dozen."

"It's just … wrong!" Cindy said, exasperated. "Reverend! You can't seriously be considering this!"

"Unfortunately," the Reverend said, "although I wholly agree with Cindy in theory, Gabriel is right. Besnik is inflexible on this point. Either she marries Markos and stays. Or I adopt enough of a veneer of Romanipen ways so that he is not dishonored amongst his own people and marry her. Quite frankly, if a bunch of strangers showed up at _my _door asking to carry off my teenaged daughter claiming they were on some crazy quest to help the Savior, I'd probably run them out of town on a rail. No matter _how _many conditions they were willing to consent to."

"Did you see the look on Besnik's face when Gabriel told him Sara e Kali had sent him to demand recompense?" the Senator said. "Besnick was not expecting to have the note to be called due in such a manner, but he appears willing to honor it as long as his daughter is safe. I suspect the Mother has been helping the Savior set up this little scenario for quite some time."

"When did you encounter Azrael?" Audrey asked.

"1979," Gunn said. "The dog you told us about?"

"2001," Audrey said. "They put him down right after September 11th happened."

"I suspect she's been setting _all _of this up for quite some time," Gabriel said. "Or the Savior. The Father didn't catch word the Savior was eight months along towards developing a new mortal shell until three days before the invasion. The Mother covered her sons' tracks pretty well."

"So the question is," Audrey said, looking pointedly at the Reverend as she redirected the course of conversation back in the direction she wished for it to flow. "Under what conditions would you find it acceptable to meet her father's demands while still remaining true to your own ideals?"

"She is very beautiful, charming, and comes from a culture where she would be both totally committed to her husband and family, and also to her husband's faith," the Reverend said softly. "Everything I could ever ask for in a ministers' wife. But I would feel like a pedophile if I ever consummated a marriage with one so young. She is just a child. Too young to know what else is out there for her to choose from. What if she were to later realize she made a mistake? I never married before because I _do _truly believe you should strive to take one mate for life, even if flawed human nature means it doesn't always work out that way."

Gabriel did not speak, but Audrey could tell by the tender way he pulled her closer and rustled his feathers that he agreed with the Reverends beliefs. She reached up to his forearm and slid her hand down to his, giving him a reassuring squeeze. Already her husband had been scoping out someplace he could whisk her away for a little privacy later, away from the paper-thin nylon walls of the tents they had set up around the outer edge of the Romani encampment.

"Is it necessary to consummate the marriage as a condition of her being allowed to go?" Audrey asked. "Why not marry her in name only, and then let her divorce you later once we get her out from under the yoke of her father. That way, if things don't work out, the marriage can be annulled."

"She said they make them display the bedsheets the morning after the wedding to demonstrate the purity of the bride to the entire tribe," the Reverend said, his complexion turning ruddy at discussing something so intimate. "If they aren't bloody, it would dishonor her father. Said she will refuse a marriage in name only. Although I have only just now met her, it seems the Mother has been sending her visions of _me _since the night of the apocalypse."

"Both the Puritans," Lena pointed out, "and also the early Mormons, married at that age. My grandmother got married at thirteen."

"Mary of Nazareth was only twelve when I was sent to inform her she had been chosen to incubate the mortal vessel of the Savior," Gabriel said quietly. "The Father believes humans should marry as soon as they reach sexual maturity and begin producing as many offspring as possible. Besnik's beliefs are more in line with the viewpoint of the Father than modern human sensibilities."

"Fuck the Father," Audrey automatically snapped without thinking, and then thought better of it when she felt Gabriel stiffen at her back. "At thirteen years old I was still playing with dolls when I thought nobody was looking!"

She realized she wasn't helping her own argument. In her visions, every disciple they had gathered so far prolonged how long the followers of the Savior were able to fend off the Grigori before they fell. The seventh disciple needed to come with them, and it appeared the Mother had offered up the first disciple as the apple to make that happen.

"Gabriel?" Cindy pleaded. "You can't possibly be condoning this? It's not just _her _age. The Reverend is three, nearly four times her age!"

"I'm the last person who should be throwing stones about differences in ages," Gabriel gently reminded the Senator's wife. His expression was serious, but Audrey could tell by the rise of his eyebrows and involuntary twitch at one corner of his lip that he found her reservations to be both hypocritical and also highly amusing. She and Gabriel weren't the only couple with an age difference. Cindy, herself, had only been more than half, nearly a third the Senator's age when they had fallen in love and decided to get married.

"Wh-wh-why don'ts –I- marries her?" Jose' cheerfully offered, the tremors in his hands increasing with his level of excitement. "I's only twenty-two. Nots even twice her age."

The Reverend appeared ready to say something, and then shut his mouth. The Senator gently kicked Cindy before she could blurt out what was on her mind. Tact. Why state a hurtful truth when it wasn't necessary. Jose' was nuts. Schizophrenia had a 50-50 chance of getting passed along to your offspring. Lyubitsche came from a culture where a woman was expected to bear many children. Talk about Russian roulette!

"It's because the Reverend is an idolater who worships the false god of Elvis," Lena said, breaking the silence with a joke. "The Mother wants to tweak the Father's nose by having the Reverend do the same thing his idol did, marry a very young woman and another disciple, to boot!"

They all laughed, if a bit overly merry about it. Nobody wanted to voice the thought on their mind. Someday Jose' might marry and beat the odds of passing along his condition to one child, but Lyubitsche had already spoken of her desire to bear the Reverend a dozen children. The Mother had her reasons for offering up the Reverend to the young woman in her vision versus one of the other single disciples, but Jose's schizophrenia had to be an issue. Thankfully, Jose' didn't press the matter.

"What else do we know about these Romani people?" Gunn asked. "Besides all the misconceptions I had about gypsies which, it turns out are totally wrong? Perhaps there is some obscure exception we could invoke to excuse the Reverend from, uh, taking the little woman for a ride before he's good and ready."

"Egyptians?" the Senator asked. "That's what I've heard."

"Hindu Indians," Gabriel clarified. "Descended from the Rajasthani people of Northern India. For some reason the Father took a dislike to them. Around 1000 AD he sent the heavenly host to whisper to Mahmud of Ghazni to decimate their homeland. The Roma took their families and fled throughout all of Europe and even to the New World, but the Father wasn't satisfied. No matter where they went, the Father tried to exterminate them. To my knowledge, he does so even now, as Besnik related. Living on the road to stay ahead of the heavenly host has been a way of life for them for so long that they know no other way of existing."

"Why?" Audrey asked, her expression troubled as she looked back and met his eyes. "Why target the descendants of an entire ethnic group of civilians for over a thousand years?"

"The Father never explained," Gabriel said softly, guilt tingeing his voice. "And I never asked. He said to exterminate them, so we exterminated them."

"Voudun and Romani both still have residual worship and legends about the Gran Maitre," Mambo De Vivre said, her expression intense and angry. "The Mother. It sounds like this Father of yours has an M.O."

"Classic batterer behavior," Cindy said, snorting with disgust. "If the little woman gets fed up enough to pull a restraining order and leave, then the batterer takes away her property, her kids, and targets her family, her friends, and anyone who tries to give her shelter to keep sending her a message that he's not going to let up."

"We just passed laws against that kind of stalking in the Republic," the Senator said. "The old federal government wouldn't enforce anti-stalking laws, but Cindy made sure that the Republic sure as hell did!"

"It sure fits in with what –I- know of the Father," Audrey said, contempt lacing her voice. "Founding member of the Controlling Asshole Club."

"Only according to Hindu legend, the goddess Kalika didn't take it laying down," the Reverend said thoughtfully, drawing upon his extensive obscure knowledge of biblical and other sacred text history. "The legends wildly vary, but some say she defeated a thousand demons in battle. Others claim that after battle her bloodlust was so great that she severed her husbands' head, copulated with his corpse to conceive the infant Shakti, and that her bloodlust wasn't satiated until the infant cried and she chose to calm down enough so she could suckle him."

"The Burning Bed," Lena said, referring to an old movie where the battered wife finally set the husband's bed on fire to kill him after numerous failed attempts to escape.

"Why wipe out some religions with residual memories of a dark mother, such as Voudun and Romani," Gunn asked, "and not others, such as Hindu Indians. Why the differential treatment?"

"You think that's where the Savior came from?" Audrey asked, looking at Gabriel. "His only _begotten, _not created, child. One the Father had no control over because the Mother stole the child from him. One which can get him to do things, but brings him no joy. It fits."

"All talk of the Mother was forbidden," Gabriel said, squirming under everyone's scrutiny. "But things some of what you are suggesting fits in with what little I know. The Mother herself said that that although the Father has the power to punish, only _she _has the power to destroy. Kalika … Kali the Destroyer."

"What did the Father do to anger her so much the last time?" Audrey asked him softly. "Do you have any memory at all?"

"No," Gabriel said, retreating behind an unreadable expression. "None at all. It has always been forbidden to speak about it, and strictly enforced. Lucifer isn't the _only _angel the Father incarcerated in Sheol for disobeying his orders. Just the most prominent. What little I remember is of a joyful, loving mother. I have no recollection of her being the destroyer other than Azrael's warning and the constellation she altered in the sky."

"The Father must have done something heinous to cause her to react that way," the Reverend said.

"He keeps pushing her," Lena said. "But he seems to know that if he pushes her hard enough, _she'll _be the one to finish it."

"Probably to get her attention," Cindy said. "Keep needling her until she finally gets tired enough to strike back, and then blame everything on her, claiming she's over-reacting. Classic batterer behavior."

"Oh, joy," Audrey muttered. "We've got two homicidal maniacs for creation deities." She could sense that Gabriel had completely emotionally withdrawn from the conversation by the unreadable expression which had returned to his face. Although he still had his arms wrapped protectively around her shoulders, his wings were stiff and upright. They were treading upon territory that he did not wish to tread upon.

"We still haven't solved the problem of the Reverend and his pretty little bride-to-be," Lena said. Audrey shot her a grateful look for getting the conversation back on track for the problem they needed to solve _tonight._

"I explained to Lyubitsche that a minister's wife needs to be highly educated to help her husband minister to his flock," the Reverend said. "Although it is not the custom of her people, they have no real prohibition against it, either. She appears to be very intelligent and is eager to learn all I have to teach her in her desire to make a suitable wife for me."

"What else bothers you?" Audrey asked. "Leaving the whole age difference problem out of it for a moment."

"I told her she must be willing to convert to our new faith," the Reverend said.

"And?" the Senator asked.

"We spoke of it to her father and the other Romani patriarchs," the Reverend said. "The entire clan except for the three Irish-Traveller families are willing to allow me to baptize them if I, in turn, agree to adopt certain Romanipen customs so I don't cause their daughter to become unclean."

"Double baptisms?" the Senator asked. "Is that even valid?"

"Besnik informed me that adopting the outer religious customs of the country the Romani are currently residing in which do not directly conflict with their core beliefs is as old as the wanderings of their people," the Reverend said. "Besnik and his family are Eastern Orthodox Christian, but some of the others gathered here are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and even Muslim. All that matters amongst the clan is that, when with the clan, they practice Romanipen beliefs, not what they do when outside in the larger community."

"Peculiar beliefs," Gunn said. "Beznik's wife made a big deal about only eating off of certain plates, and you'd have thought I murdered a baby when I tried taking a leak in one of the bushes near the river. Something about bodily excretions being unclean close to one area of the river, but okay near another."

"Were you aware that all Romani have three names?" Mambo De Vivre said. "One their mother gives them at birth which only she knows, one they are called within the clan, and a third name they go by with outsiders. Besnik is called Ben outside of the clan, and Lyubitsche is called Louise."

"They have done what they needed to do to survive the Father's persecution," Gabriel said quietly. "What's important is that enough of their beliefs are in line with the beliefs of both the Mother and the Savior that they have caused us to seek these people out. It is _us _who need to learn from _them_, just as we learned valuable lessons from everywhere else we were led to."

"Reverend," Audrey said, getting back on track once more. "What else causes you to hesitate."

"I just met her this afternoon," the Reverend said. "Marrying someone I just met is … well …" He trailed off. It was a sympathy they could all relate to. Especially Audrey.

It had taken her a long time to realize she had fallen in love with Gabriel, long past the time she had realized she had forgiven him, or become his friend, or even begun to realize he was somebody she was physically attracted to. Looking back, she realized it had happened when she had forced him to drink and he had silently wept after losing control of his basic bodily functions and realized he was mortal. That was when she had begun to care whether he lived or died. That was when the visions had begun to transform from mere vague informational dreams about the future to nightmares. That was when she had started to treat him more tenderly, somebody who deserved some basic dignity.

It had taken her a long time because, well, as a California girl, she had been raised to believe she wasn't _supposed _to love somebody like that until she was through college, had built a career, and was in her late twenties or early thirties. He had also needed to earn her trust. Her own preconceptions about love had been the final factor impeding her acknowledging the feelings she had possessed all along, not anything Gabriel did or did not do. It had taken nearly losing him to knock her out of her denial.

"Perhaps if you marry her and just, um, share sleeping quarters and warmth," Audrey suggested. "As Gabriel and I did long before we decided to get married?"

"She's a tempting little imp," the Reverend said, suddenly giving them his best 'Elvis' grin. "And the young woman knows what she wants. Do you honestly think my moral integrity would last as long as Gabriel's under those same conditions? I am most certainly _not _made of stone!"

Everyone laughed. Gabriel's self-control was formidable. He had cast aside his obedience in exchange for thoughtfulness, but he still carefully controlled his own actions and behaviors. Only in the throes of ecstasy did Gabriel ever cut loose his self-control and allow himself to just … be.

"Is that a yes, then?" Audrey pushed, and then more softly. "We need her. Every disciple we gather has prolonged the period of time we are able to fend off the Grigori once we begin the battle, but the Grigori are gaining strength faster than the Mother or the Savior anticipated. I foresee the battle coming while he is still a young boy. Too young to fight. Too young for us to wait for the seventh disciple to finish growing up before she joins us. If the girl is already receiving visions from the Mother, then we need her now. We're running out of time."

Cindy started to protest and the Senator put a hand on her forearm. They all looked at the Reverend expectantly. They had all made sacrifices of one kind or another on this trip. Now it was his turn.

"Let me go talk to her some more," the Reverend said resignedly. "At least give me a few days to get to know her. Let's see if I can get her to agree to some sort of middle ground." He got up and headed over to where Lyubitsche sat talking to her friends and siblings on the opposite side of the camp, gesturing for her to follow him off into someplace more private. One of the girls' brothers got up and trailed a respectful distance behind, just out of earshot, but not eye contact. A chaperone.

"Think he'll go for it?" Audrey asked Gabriel, snuggling back into his torso.

"He has spoken to me many times of his regret that he never made the time to find a wife," Gabriel murmured in her ear. "No woman was ever willing to share him with his flock, his ministry, and his secret passion for performing weddings as an Elvis impersonator. Seeing us together lately has only rubbed salt in those regrets. Now he finds out the Mother herself has selected a bride _for _him. If Lyubitsche is one-tenth as committed to our quest to help the Savior as the Reverend is, I think he will do it no matter what the age difference."

"Speaking of commitment," Audrey said, her voice husky and low. "It's getting late. Did you scope out any place where we could get a little private time together for some serious wing-thumping fun?"

Gabriel growled in her ear, nipping the side of her neck and letting his hand slide down just a little under the cover of his other arm to fondle her breast beneath her coat.

"Abandoned farmhouse about four miles from here," Gabriel murmured in her ear, his voice so deep and low it tickled her eardrums. "Already got it cleaned up and ready to go. Will take ten minutes to fly us there."

"When can we leave?" Audrey asked, tugging him out of his seat towards the edge of the camp.

"Now," Gabriel said, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into the air along with him as soon as they cleared the ring of vehicles. It was a good thing Gabriel could, in minutes or hours, cover ground that took the group days on foot or horseback. For someone who had diligently abstained from every desire for fourteen billion years, Gabriel sure enjoyed indulging in physical pleasure now that he'd given himself permission to enjoy it. He was insatiable!

And a wonderful lover…

It was a good thing the farmhouse had been abandoned after the apocalypse, because there wasn't a single picture left mounted on the walls by the time they finished their nightly lovemaking session!


	73. Chapter 72

_Note:__ Thanks to everybody who continues to read and review. I feel a need to clarify a culture I am writing about with which I have incomplete information (versus the serpent dance, which I –have- done) because they are so secretive. I encountered the Romani in the Moscow Region of Russia (not Moscow, Tennessee), where enormous numbers have resettled on the fringes outlaying towns because, although they are discriminated against, they are allowed to live openly. They are easily discernable by their beautiful, colorful (often red) clothing, somewhat Islamic-sounding music, and whirling dance. The Russians fear and discriminate against them, believing they worship their own god and can put curses on people as well as compel people to do their bidding, and also resent their high childbirth rate in a country where only one child is the norm. _

_My few words spoken with them directly were through my terrible 'tourist Russian.' My friend and hostess, a medical researcher, told me about the Romani refugees in Chernobyl who resettled there to escape the purges in Bosnia and other countries (the genocide described in the last chapter really happened). The story about radiation being preferable to genocide is also true, as is their reveration of the 'black Madonna' which, ironically, most Russians also revere._

_Since I have never attended an Eastern European Romani wedding and only have second-hand stories that stretch all credibility from my Russian friends, who fear them, I am relying heavily on Spanish-Gitano-Romani weddings. If anybody happens to be 'real' Romani and is offended by what I am certain are numerous glaring errors, please accept my apologies. The Muse was fascinated by the Romani people I crossed paths with in Russia and decided they would be one of the peoples who escaped the heavenly host. Since there is very little petroleum in post-apocalyptic Earth to fly our disciples there, I have brought them to join their American Romani cousins._

X X X

O O O

Chapter 72

"It's like this," Besnik said, clapping his hands and doing a foot movement, and then circling with his hands outstretched, and then slapping his thighs and heels as he tapped and rotated. Around them, men played the guitar, banged tambourines and small drums, an accordion, and just plain stomped their feet in unison to create a rhythm. Some of the men sang a semi-ululating tune, strains of Spanish, Islamic, and some other underlying tones blended through their song.

Gabriel carefully observed the other partygoers at the Reverend and Lyubitshke's 'pedimiento' (engagement party). Last night, the Reverend and the seventh disciple had reached an agreement which he refused to discuss. Since time was a pressing issue for the disciples and the Romani focus on virginity meant the gypsies pragmatically pushed for marriage as soon as the 'urge' presented itself, Lyubitshke's parents had wasted no time in announcing an engagement party. The Reverend had set the date for the wedding to be three days from now. It was still early, but by nightfall, the Reverend would 'seal' his engagement by dancing with his bride-to-be.

"Dance is forbidden in heaven," Gabriel informed him. "Only the souls of humans confined to the humans-only section of the garden are tolerated, and even then it is discouraged. No angel that I am aware of, other than Lucifer, has ever learned to dance."

"Dance is about expressing your inner light," Besnik said, his expression one of fondness for what he was doing. "It's like riding a bicycle or playing the fiddle. Once you learn the basic steps, it allows whatever exists inside your soul to tumble out and shine."

"This is fun!" the Reverend exclaimed, dancing a perfect Flamenco-like dance opposite his tutor, another Romani patriarch. "Perhaps I should incorporate some these moves into my Elvis routine?" The Reverend performed a few rapidly paced flamenco-style foot movements, vigorously slapping his thighs to create percussion in the absence of a dance floor, and then added his signature Elvis pelvis pose and finger point. On the sidelines, the Romani women twittered and pointed, including Lyubitshke. The dance they were learning right now was considered a purely masculine endeavor, powerful and athletic, while the Reverend's years of performing on stage as an Elvis impersonator made him a natural.

Gabriel on the other hand … not so much.

"I think I'm getting the hang of this," the Senator said. He got the first two-thirds of the steps down before flubbing it. "Most of it, anyways. Persevere. Persevere. Persevere! The wife declares she finds gypsy men dancing to be sexy, so I shall learn this sexy gypsy dance to please her." The Romani men roared in a knowing laugh and helped the Senator break down the intricate steps even further.

"I don't see why it is necessary to learn something that serves no functional purpose," Gabriel flatly stated, his feathers rustling in annoyance. "This time could be better spent sparring or perfecting our survival skills."

"Ahhh…" the Senator said, giving Gabriel a wolfish grin. "But it _does _serve a functional survival purpose! The guy with the hottest dance moves always gets the girl."

"I already _have_ the girl," Gabriel stated, his arms crossed and his back stiff.

"But to _keep _her," the Senator said, mimicking his patient tutor and only flubbing a few steps, "you must demonstrate you know how to please the little lady in other areas. Elsewise, she may grow bored and decide to run off and join the gypsies."

"He m-m-means please her in b-b-bed," Jose stuttered, the pronounced effort to get out his words not matching the ease with which his body performed a snake-like, gyrating dance move that had absolutely nothing to do with what the Romani were trying to teach them, but fit into the scheme of things nonetheless. "A g-g-guy lets the girl know he knows h-how to p-p-please her in b-b-bed by how g-g-good he moves on the dance floor!"

"Part of survival is procreation, yes?" Besnik said in his heavily accented English, laughing as he gestured to the substantial brood of Romani offspring dancing, playing, or performing chores wherever you looked. "As you can see, we Romani are very diligent about practicing that aspect of survival."

As if for emphasis, one of the young Romani wives waddled up to hand something to her husband, her belly swollen with pregnancy, and earned a fond pat on the stomach by her equally young husband. The wife gave him a sultry look and performed a hand movement and hip-bump gyration that melded perfectly with the dance moves being practiced by the husband before waddling off.

"His first!" Besnik said of the man. "But look at how he moves. He has already performed his husbandly duty, but still she wants more!"

The other Romani men laughed.

"Real men don't dance," Gunn grumbled, his movement nearly as stiff and awkward as Gabriel's with the intricate Romani dance moves. "Don't you guys have a Texas two-step or country western line dance?"

It turned out the Irish-Traveller members who had joined them _did _have a men's dance that wasn't too drastically different from a country-western line dance. Within twenty minutes, they had broken down the steps and taught Gunn a passably decent dance movement halfway between a two-step and a jig.

Not 'real' Travellers, Besnik had informed him. 'Real' Travellers still actively wandered, perpetuating scams on unwary 'country folk' and were too clannish to integrate with the Romani, who competed for a dwindling number of 'encampment' sites. 'Real' Travellers gave the Romani a bad name, perpetuating bold scams far exceeding the occasional pickpocket within the Romani ranks. But many 'settled' descendants of Travellers who dotted the Tennessee countryside were sympathetic to the Romani lifestyle.

The only surviving lawman in the area was a second-generation 'settled' Traveller. He had pragmatically offered the Romani band winter sanctuary at the battlefield next to the only bridge into town in exchange for their promise to treat the townspeople as 'clan' and act as gatekeepers. With fewer than 43 people left alive after the heavenly host had decimated their ranks and their proximity within several days walk of Memphis, a city which only still existed due to its placement along the Mississippi River, Moscow was an easy target for roving bands of predators raiding the countryside. The assorted gypsies had quintupled the population of the town almost overnight without straining its resources, creating safety in numbers.

The Romani, on the other hand, had been curiously untouched by the apocalypse despite many being hundreds of miles away from the newest disciple when it had happened. The ability of the heavenly host to seize control of a race that had already long considered itself outcast had been practically nonexistent. A pattern was emerging in Gabriel's mind about how the disembodied 'angels' might work. Why had so many of the worst predators and people living on the fringe of society been spared along with the most godly? Why had so many ordinary god-fearing people been possessed? It was a question his little Prophet obsessed over. He made a mental note to speak to her about his idea later.

Gabriel retreated to the periphery to observe. At the other end of the encampment, the Romani women were teaching Audrey and the other women, including Lena, how to perform the whirling dances gypsies all over the world were famous for, from Indian Rajasthan to Spanish Flamenco. Audrey looked very happy. He knew she wished he would learn to dance, which was the only reason he was subjecting himself to this indignity right now, but it was one of the few things in life that intimidated him.

"She is very graceful, your wife," Besnik said. "She would make a fine Romani."

"She would," Gabriel agreed cautiously, remembering the Senator's warning about needing to keep the little woman happy or she would run off to join the gypsies. "Although she would quickly declare herself to be king of the gypsies and have your females demanding equal treatment with the men."

"Dance has always been a way to maintain our cultural integrity," Besnik said. "They can discriminate against us, harass us, marginalize us, drive us off our lands, and even try to kill us. But when a gypsy dances, everyone knows he is a gypsy, and they know that he is free."

"I don't understand why the Father hates dance," Gabriel said, his thoughts trailing to the scant memories he had of the other cherubs joyfully skipping in a circle around the Mother and then falling down together, laughing, while he sat on the sidelines and watched. The Father had never understood the Mother's need to express herself physically, but although Gabriel had abstained from joining his brothers revelries, he understood. He had inherited at least _one _trait from the Mother. Her constant need to reassure herself physically that those she loved were within close proximity. The Father cringed when one of them bumped into him or tried to hug him, preferring to interact intellectually. It was why Gabriel had learned to patiently sit at the Fathers' feet while he worked, close enough for the Father to reach out and touch any time he wished, but never so close he violated the Father's personal space and was shoed away.

Like a loyal dog…

"The Mother _loves_ to dance," Gabriel said. "She told me I must learn to dance with my wife as it will help me understand her. But I feel so stiff and awkward. I just can't move the way that you do." Frustration laced his voice. When Gabriel tried to dance, he felt like … a rock. A big clumsy rock dropped into a fast-moving stream, too rigid and awkward to go with the flow.

Besnik regarded Gabriel for a few minutes, his dark Romani eyes and dark complexion giving his scrutiny the air of a magician discerning the secrets of the universe. For a man who couldn't be more than thirty years old, Besnik had the air about him of someone twice that age. They gypsy 'king' had married Lyubitshka's mother at fourteen and already had nine children, with a tenth on the way. He'd escaped genocide by the time he was eighteen and brought his family to assimilate into a new world by the time he was twenty. Besnik had been voted leader of the clan even though there were many older Romani in the encampment. Lyubitshka wasn't the only one with the light of the Mother burning strong within. Many the spark to some degree or another.

"Is it because moving that way feels unfamiliar to your body?" Besnik finally asked. "Or that others are watching you learn?"

Gabriel allowed the question to sink in and processed it for a few minutes. "Both," he finally replied.

"I watched you warm up with your mace this morning," Besnik said. "You have no trouble whatsoever swinging _that._ Your movements are tight and controlled, but also very graceful. When Gunn came at you with his machete, you were able to easily improvise to fend off his attack."

"That is how it's always been," Gabriel said. "I can't remember ever learning to use it. I just … knew."

"You also carry guns," Besnik said. "Did you also always just … know … how to use them?"

"No," Gabriel said. "Those I had to learn."

"How did you learn to fire a weapon?" Besnik asked.

"Where is this conversation going?" Gabriel asked distrustfully.

"I am trying to figure out how you learn," Besnik said, "so I can do a better job of teaching you."

"You sound like the Prophet," Gabriel said, regarding him carefully, and then deciding he would explain. "I break down each step of using a modern weapon and learn one step at a time until I master each component movement. Then I piece together the steps and practice it until it becomes automatic."

"It sounds like you learn by doing," Besnik said. "Not seeing it or hearing someone talk about it. My wife is like that. She used to frustrate me to no end until I finally learned to shut up and just show her how to do it enough times that she finally gets it."

"My brother Michael has always been a natural at learning new things," Gabriel said. "He sees something once and he knows how to do it."

"As am I," Besnik said. "But my wife complains I am sloppy on the execution. She likes things to move like a fine Swiss clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. Very precise. Always asking lots of questions about this tiny detail or that. You will see what I mean when she dances. It is perfect every time. It drove me nuts at first, but now I accept that that is just the way she is and let _her _do those things that require precision, while I do things that need a quick wit. Working together, we make a good team."

"I have always taken longer to learn than my brothers," Gabriel said thoughtfully. "But once I know how to do something, I do it perfectly every time. Better than them. If I choose to master a new skill, I will do it even better than Michael."

Memory of the end result of that tendency flitted through his brain and made him feel a momentary lapse of shame. When Gabriel fought, he did so with single-minded resolve. Kill this person. These are the steps to do it. Do it. Don't think about it. Don't stop no matter what else is happening around you. Don't deviate from your prescribed series of steps under any circumstances until the task is done.

It was the reason Michael had always been the general, while Gabriel had always been the enforcer. Michael started things, maneuvering as circumstances demanded until a clear course of action became apparent. Gabriel finished them. Once a course of action became obvious, Michael simply needed to order him what to do and Gabriel did it. Together, they were an unstoppable pair. Apart, each had weaknesses they depended upon the other to reinforce. For the first time since he had fallen, it occurred to Gabriel to wonder what was happening with the defenses of heaven without him there. Of all the angels, only Gabriel had inherited the Father's dogged determination to complete a task that had been started, perfectly, no matter what.

"Then that is the problem you are having learning to dance," Besnik said, slapping him on the back, being careful to avoid Gabriel's wings. "You learn by doing, and you have never done anything like this before to build upon. You need to start at the beginning." The dare' roma whistled, gesturing for a young man who looked remarkably like him to come over, perhaps around sixteen years old. "My eldest son."

"Yanko," Besnik said. "Teach Gabriel the dance you are teaching your little brother. Outside the camp … go someplace else to teach him. Bring Luca with you. They can learn together."

"Yes, Papa," Yanko said. The young man whistled and a boy of five or six years old came running over. "Luca … it is time for your lessons."

Gabriel followed the young man and child off through a path that wandered through the woods to a clearing. Great. He was at the level of a five-year-old child. Yanko banged a tambourine against his thigh, calling out the words to a song in a combination of the Romani language and several other languages, a creole song, while Luca easily leaped around him. Oh joy. He wasn't _even _at the level of a five-year-old boy.

"It's like this, Gabriel," the little boy said, enthusiastically slipping his small hand into Gabriel's larger one and rapidly performing some sort of one-two-three dance step.

"Slow it down, Luca," Yanko ordered. He started clapping and singing that part of the song over again.

They repeated the one-two-three step several dozen times before Gabriel got the move down, Yanko correcting them when they stepped wrong. As Gabriel perfected the move, he began to realize Luca really didn't have the dance move down the way Gabriel had initially perceived. The boy stepped however his whim directed him, his self-confidence giving the illusion of perfection to someone unfamiliar with the dance. Yanko was a perfectionist, like Gabriel. As they practiced again and again, Luca began to whine in protest, wishing to allow his feet to travel wherever his mood wished for them to travel, while Yanko wished for his brother to learn the moves _right._ After a while, Gabriel found himself inwardly smiling at the little boy's refusal to follow his older brother's orders. Defiance. It was a tendency his little Prophet possessed in droves which Gabriel had learned to respect.

"If you teach me how to do these dance steps so it pleases your brother," Gabriel finally told Lucas, "I'll fly you back to the encampment."

"Really?" Luca exclaimed. "You'll carry me into the air?"

"If it's all right with your brother," Gabriel said, looking to the brother in charge.

"_If _he teaches you _properly_," Yanko said, giving him a grateful look. "We can't have Gabriel going back to heaven and teaching all the other angels how to do a gypsy dance wrong, now, can we?"

Gabriel didn't correct the young man about the fact he was no longer _welcome _in heaven, or that the Father forbade the type of dance he was learning right now.

"Okay," Luca said cheerfully. "I'll do it for the angels."

From there on in, Luca stopped fighting his brother and rapidly perfected each component set of movements within the larger dance. The child appeared to pick up on the 'big picture' of the dance very quickly, making a respectable facsimile of how it looked, but he had a child's short attention span. He wished to move on and learn a new thing before he had perfected the last one. Gabriel, on the other hand, took much longer to learn the 'big picture' of the dance, but diligently perfected each series of moves until he was able to string them together into a fairly respectable facsimile of a gypsy dance. At last, Yanko declared that both his students had learned the dance to his satisfaction and gave them leave to return to the camp.

"Are you ready to fly?" Gabriel asked the little boy.

"Yeah!" Luca said enthusiastically. The boy was small and light, an easy burden even without the light of the heavenly Father coursing through his veins. The boy squealed with delight as Gabriel easily hoisted him into his arms and leaped into the air, circling around the Romani encampment twice before landing right in the midst of the boys' friends, giving him something to brag about.

"I can't wait to tell everyone I taught you how to dance!" Luca exclaimed.

"Shhhh…." Gabriel said, putting his finger over his mouth. "Don't tell anyone. I want to surprise my wife at your sisters' wedding three days from now."

"Okay!" the little boy said. He skipped off happily with his friends, bragging loudly about the fact he had flown while omitting _why_. If there was one thing a gypsy could be trusted to be, it was to be secretive.

Glancing over at the progress of the women, Gabriel saw that his little Prophet had mastered the intricate, whirling dance of the Romani women and was dancing joyously alongside Lyubitshke and the other Female disciples. At a pedimiento, the genders traditionally danced separately until the future bride and groom danced together, the men on one side of the campfire, the women on the other. He knew Audrey did not expect him to dance tonight. That was just as well. He had an idea.

"Besnick," Gabriel asked, calling over the Romani leader when he was taking a break from teaching the others. "I have a favor to ask."

"Anything for the son of Sare e Kali!" Besnick said. "Ask, and if it is within my power, I shall grant it!"

"It's about the dance," Gabriel said, somewhat hesitantly. "I wish to surprise my wife at your daughter's wedding in three days' time."

"Aha!" Besnick said. "I take it Yanko's teaching methods were satisfactory?"

"Yes," Gabriel said. "But … I have the problem of my wings. If I try the whirling dance you do now, I will knock her over with my wings when I go to whirl next to her. Perhaps you might be able to suggest something more suitable for my species?"

Besnick scrutinized him carefully, his dark eyes glittering as he placed his hand upon his chin and walked around Gabriel.

"Guaril," Besnick called, gesturing for an ancient Romani male to come over.

As the elderly man ambled over, Besnick explained. "Guaril is Romani from Spain. They call themselves Gitano." It took a moment for the ancient male to get there, his gait painful with arthritis and age, but he had a regal demeanor about him.

"Guaril," Besnick asked. "Would you be willing to spend some time with Yanko over the next three days teaching Gabriel that dance you did when you were still a torero?"

"Si," Guaril said. "He would like to impress his wife?"

"Da," Besnick said. "Gabriel would prefer to surprise her."

"It would be my honor," Guaril said, and then glanced across the clearing where Audrey was whirling, stomping, and beginning to vocalize the wild ululations of the gypsy females. "She is a spirited one. A torero dance would be perfect to woo her."

"What's a torero dance?" Gabriel asked.

"The paso doble," Guaril said. "The dance a torero, a bullfighter, does to stare down an enraged bull just before he slays it. Or in the case of a woman, conquers her."

"Oh," Gabriel said, a sudden unexpected feeling of perverse pleasure coursing through his body. "It sounds _exactly_ like my kind of dance."


	74. Chapter 73

Chapter 73

"You're looking like the cat that swallowed the canary lately," Audrey asked as soon as Gabriel landed in front of the abandoned farmhouse they had conscripted to be their nightly sleeping quarters.

"I don't understand," Gabriel said, holding her body against his and slowly sliding her down towards the ground. "Is this another one of your obscure human social references?"

"Obscure human social references?" Audrey asked, deliberately wriggling on her way down to brush against his manhood. "No worse than your equally obscure angel humor."

"You said I _have _no sense of humor," Gabriel rumbled softly, bending just enough so that his words reverberated pleasantly in her ears. The Word of God was very good at manipulating his voice to just … do … things to her. Very _pleasant_ things in very _private _parts of her body. "Besides, I have yet to encounter a feline large enough to swallow me whole."

It took a minute before she 'got it.'

"Gabriel," Audrey asked. "Did you just tell a … joke?"

"You did not laugh," Gabriel said, disappointment tingeing his voice. "It was not funny?"

Audrey started to laugh. "It was hilarious! You … a canary. I just … I've never heard you tell a joke before. You glower at us when we take something funny that you didn't mean to be funny, so I'm very careful about taking you seriously."

She squealed as Gabriel scooped her up and possessively carried her into the farmhouse, straight past the living room, and into the bedroom they'd been using the past several nights.

"I am trying to be more …" Gabriel said. He frowned. "I'm not sure _what _I'm trying to be. I'm just…" His words trailed off.

"Me 101," Audrey said, her nimble fingers deftly reaching up to slide off his coat and deftly begin unbuttoning his shirt. "It's a rite of passage for humans who take honors-level high school classes or go off to college. Up until then, your parents have always told you who you were supposed to be and what you wanted to do when you grow up. But all of a sudden, you realize it's YOU who's got to live your life, not them. So you start trying on different personalities, interests, hobbies, and even friends trying to figure out who the heck you are. You start learning about psychology, so you try every aspect of it on like a new pair of clothing until you find a few things that fit."

Gabriel's sharp intake of breath as his shirt dropped to the floor and she kissed his jugular vein on his neck warned her the conversation was going to be a very short one tonight. For some reason, the past few days he had been especially … vigorous. He was up to something. She could feel it.

"Perhaps that is so," Gabriel said between kisses, inhaling her scent and tasting her neck as he worked off her clothing. His manhood stood between them like a sharp spear, announcing 'here I am!' Audrey assisted by unbuttoning his cargo pants so he could kick them off.

Gabriel's words were getting fewer and further between. If she didn't wheedle information about what he was up to out of him soon, he'd be down to one-word answers to her questions until _after _he'd finished making love to her. After that, she'd be exhausted, drop off to sleep, have a horrible vision complete with crying over his death, fall asleep exhausted again, and then it would be time to start the day over again. Audrey decided to string him along a little.

"You keep disappearing and I can't find you," Audrey asked, deliberately making her voice sultry and innocent. "What have you been up to?" She attempted to pull away, but he resisted, gathering her up into his arms and pulling her even closer.

"Mm.. surprise," Gabriel said, nipping down to taste her breast. A one-word answer. It never ceased to amaze her how few words the carrier of the Word of God spoke if left to his own devices. Without her even being aware of it, Gabriel had gently picked her up and was in the process of laying her down upon the bed. Her pants were already down around her ankles, only her hiking boots in the way or he'd have had them off already.

"Maybe Little Gabriel will tell me what you're up to?" Audrey said, reaching down to caress his manhood which was aimed straight at her like a convenient love handle. Gabriel had quickly become adept at losing his clothing as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible once he had recognized a need to do so. "How about it, Little Gabriel? You're supposed to be the brains of this operation, you know? What's Big Gabriel been sneaking off to do all day long?"

"Mmmpfhhh…" Gabriel murmured as he finished tearing off her boots and pants and moved into position above her. Not even words. Her big, taciturn husband usually lost his ability to speak once he hit a certain level of arousal. It was as though his brain shut down and redirected all of his blood to his wings, which became downright destructive every time he neared orgasm. It was a good thing his feathers were no longer razor-sharp steel, although he never hit _her _with the extra set of limbs. Just destroyed anything within 20 feet. She loved watching her beautiful winged husband lose control … and _enjoy _it. But she knew from experience there was no point in talking to him any further until he was done.

She gasped as he impaled her upon his manhood, sliding into her feminine mysteries in one flawlessly smooth motion. Gabriel was not an unsure lover any longer. As he kissed her, he reached one hand under the small of her back, pulling her up closer with each thrust. Whatever question she had been about to ask him, it flitted out of her mind and was replaced with a much more pressing concern. Satiating the hunger that spread throughout her entire body as he made love to her, a hunger she felt for _him, _as if she wished to consume him and make him part of her own soul.

"Gabriel," she pleaded, the plea of his name the only word she had to communicate the growing … need … she had to become one with him as they made love.

He groaned something unintelligible that _might _have been her name, she wasn't sure, as he bit into her lower lip and then began to nip along her jaw towards the tender flesh just underneath her ear. She felt the need grow, surround her, surround them both, as she forgot all about her questions and thrust up to meet him.

Crash. Some stuff went flying off the bureau. Whump whump whump whump… Chunks of plaster came flying off the walls as Gabriel gave himself over to his desire with an abandon he had never done before. It excited her. It excited the hell out of her and she wanted more. His arms encircled her as he pulled her closer, the beating of his wings becoming faster, more frantic, as she felt herself reach the peak of her own wave of ecstasy along with him and teeter on the brink. Making love to him in this state was like riding a storm. She instinctively wrapped her legs around the outside of his thighs, her heels trailing down the back of his legs, like a serpent during possession so she could sway with the trunk of his torso along with the wind.

Gabriel pounded his wings against the floor as his body began to shudder, his manhood growing even larger and twitching inside of her as he finally reached his peak. Just for a moment, she felt him pull them both airborne as he cried out and orgasmed, his ecstasy pushing _her _over the edge as well. She cried out as well and arched her back as shudders wracked her body, the only thing beneath her being Gabriel's arms pinning her to his body. Just for a moment, when they made love, it always felt as though they were one mind, that they could overcome any obstacle together so long as they could maintain this state of being.

And just as quickly as it had started, they were done. Falling into each others arms with a contented sigh. Sweaty and spent.

"I love you," Gabriel murmured into her ear as soon as he had regained his ability to speak. He nuzzled his favorite spot behind her ear and tenderly kissed down from her ear, down her throat, licked he sweat and tasted the feel of her pulse with his lips, and then kissed his way back up to her mouth.

She now realized Gabriel had been 'tasting' the forbidden fruit of love using his enhanced angel senses long before it had begun to dawn on her that he possessed feelings for her. Humans considered things like their own natural scent, or how their sweat tasted, or subtle changes in body temperature, to be unworthy of interest or even disgusting. But Gabriel was able to sense even subtle changes in her physical demeanor, including pheromones signaling physical attraction and emotional love, and alter his behavior to please her. It _pleased _him to please her. Not necessarily in a sexual way, but it was as though tasting the pleasure he brought her was, in itself, a form of sacred union.

She always seemed to have these insights during lovemaking. As though the act of sacred union did something to enhance whatever peculiar gift it was she possessed and enabled her to use it without the agony of the vision. Ever since they had consummated their love, the visions were less traumatic. At least most nights. Now, they were more … reminders. The spurs urging the horse forward into a battle the horse would otherwise wish to avoid.

"We trashed the room," Audrey giggled once she had finally caught her breath. "And you wrecked the bed. The covers and pillows are all over the floor."

Gabriel reached down to grab the pillows and then the blankets, his nude body poetry in motion in the dim lantern light as his muscles ripped under the skin and his wings flared out gracefully behind him. A sculpture. He was a beautiful sculpture that belonged in a cathedral in Vatican City, and yet he was here with _her_. Usually she thought of him as simply Gabriel, her husband. But sometimes … like now … the realization of who and what he was just left her too awestruck for words. He was … perfection. Tears gathered in her eyes at the graceful arc of his wings as he used them to enhance his balance as he bent down to retrieve her pillow, bent up, his muscles rippling as he straightened, and then…

…he shook his wings out to ruffle the feathers and involuntarily flapped them as though he were a prize rooster crowing at the morning sun after bedding one of the laying hens. It was as if his wings, which seemed to have a mind of their own, wished to say 'that's right … we's bad … we's bad … we's the man … yeah!'

'_Cockadoodledoo…' _Audrey thought to herself, suppressing a snort of laughter at her sudden peculiar change of direction from the divine to the mundane.

"We can straighten it out in the morning," Gabriel murmured as he stretched back alongside of her, oblivious to the absurdity of her thoughts. "I have a hard time controlling my natural urges around you."

"I don't _want _you to control your natural urges," Audrey said, smiling as she tenderly caressed his cheek. She pushed back a stray lock of dark brown hair that was in his eye so she could look into his beautiful, inhumanly ice-blue eyes. His eyes that could not hide what he was feeling if you knew what to look for any more than his wings could. "I think your species was created to love, not act as heaven's policemen.

"Then I shall strive to be the best lover your world has ever seen," Gabriel said, nestling her into his arms and wings. She could tell by the way that he was fondling her breast and the slight twitch of his manhood against her thigh that he'd be hungry for round two, and probably a round three, within a few minutes. Like everything else Gabriel did, he had the stamina of a bull.

"They'll write epic poems and great songs about you," Audrey giggled, suddenly realizing the absurdity of it all. "About how the Archangel Gabriel descended to earth and personally knocked the pictures off the walls of every bedroom in America."

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured. "You are unusually silly tonight."

"And _you_ are unusually pleased with yourself," Audrey said. "So … you never told me … where _have_ you been sneaking off to for so many hours the past few days."

"It's a surprise," Gabriel said, shutting her up with a kiss.


	75. Chapter 74

Chapter 74

"Seal your promise with a kiss," Mambo De Vivre said, finalizing the voodoo priestess portion of the Reverend's hybrid Romani/Christian/Pagan wedding ceremony to his thirteen-year-old gypsy bride.

The Reverend bent forward to give his new wife a chaste kiss upon the mouth. Lyubitshke, on the other hand, had other ideas. She melded into his body, her arms snaking around her new husbands' torso and up the back of his neck to lace her fingers through his hair, until he began to respond more like a newlywed husband _should _respond.

Behind her, Gabriel pulled her in closer and squeezed her hand. It was barely a month since their _own _wedding. After herself, the Reverend had been Gabriel's first real human friend. She glanced up at his beautiful, intent features and thought she detected a hint of mist forming in his eyes. The angels had never developed social stigma against males displaying tears of sorrow or joy, so Gabriel wept freely whenever intense emotion moved him to do so. At nearly seven feet tall and four-hundred pounds of solid mace-wielding, deadly muscle, who was going to call him a sissy?

"Ay yay yay yay yay!" the Romani all around them shouted in ululating happiness, clapping and stomping their feet. Almost immediately, the various hodgepodge of musical instruments began to play an exotic song, both men and women clapping their hands and singing along. The women closed ranks around Lyubitshke, singing and clasping, and herded the young woman away from her husband.

"What's happening?" Cindy asked her. "Isn't she supposed to dance with her new husband?"

Audrey gave Gabriel's hand a quick squeeze before throwing herself into the writhing mass of females herding the bride. He gave her one of his rare, beautiful smiles, and then allowed himself to succumb to a similar mass of males who herded the Reverend in the opposite direction. This was part of the ceremony.

"Lyubitshke said something about before she'll be allowed to dance, that her aunts have to perform a ritual of panuelo," Audrey said. "Whatever that means. She wants me to come with her."

"What's a panuelo?" Cindy asked.

'_Y yeli yeli yeli y yeli yeli ya…'_ the Romani women sang joyously as they clapped, danced, and whisked the seventh disciple out of the main clearing of the caravan and into a special tent which had been set up for the couples' wedding night just out of the encampment. Audrey and the other female disciples had helped set up the wedding bed in the center of the tent, but had trouble communicating with the other Romani women, who heavily relied upon the common Romani creole to overcome different countries of origin for many non-native members of the tribe before moving to America. Audrey could now see why Lyubitshke's mother had never needed to learn English.

"Something about a ceremony of honor," Audrey shouted over the clamor. "She seemed pretty nervous about it. She asked me to hold her hand."

'_Y yeli yeli yeli y yeli yeli ya…'_ the Romani women continued to sing, pouring into the tent and herding Lyubitshke towards the bed. The older women formed a ring around Lyubitshke, pushing the younger women who had a lower rank amongst the Romani as well as the other female disciples towards the periphery. Lyubitshke had been nervous about asking her to hold her hand and bear witness, explaining it was a great honor which normally went to the highest ranking female from the family of the groom, but had been whisked away to attend to other duties before she had had an opportunity to fully explain what Audrey was expected to do.

"Audrey," Lyubitshke called out, her expression frightened as she danced on the bed where the older women had placed her. "As matriarch of my husband's clan, you must bear witness to my purity so you can attest to it to my new husband."

'_Y yeli yeli yeli y yeli yeli ya…' _the Romani women sang, clapping and dancing. Two of Lyubitskhe's sisters stepped up to the bed and began tossing the heads of whole grass-sheaths and a few dried flower petals, not much otherwise being in bloom in early December, upon the bed.

Um … okay?" Audrey said, stepping up next to the bed and taking Lyubitshke's hand as the young woman sat down on the edge of the bed. Around her, one of the aunts who had been designated to play the role of ajuntaora, a Romani word Audrey assumed translated into 'aunt.'

Tears streamed down Lyubitskhe's face. She looked terrified.

"Lyubiskhe?" Audrey asked. "What's wrong?"

Behind her, the ajuntaora, the aunt, held up an ornate, lace cloth for all to see and wrapped it around one hand.

"The ajuntaora will now test my purity and display it for the entire tribe to see," Lyubitskhe whispered, scooting her hips up to the edge of the bed and spreading her knees in a gesture which appeared to be remarkably similar to … to … to …

"They do _what?" _Audrey exclaimed, realizing in horror exactly what the ajuntaora was about to do as the older, high-ranking women closed ranks around the bride to screen her from view from the lower-ranking females as the ajuntaora lifted Lyubitskhe's skirt.

'_Y yeli yeli yeli y yeli yeli ya…' _the Romani women sang, clapping and dancing, their song taking on an almost feral tone.

"Ow!" Lyubitskhe cried out, grimacing in pain as the ajuntaora probed her once, twice, three times, breaking her hymen and smearing the blood three times on the white cloth as testament for the entire tribe to see that they were handing the Reverend a virgin. Lyubitskhe sobbed in pain while the women around her triumphantly waved the blood-stained white cloth and sang.

'_Barbaric,' _Audrey thought to herself, clamping her mouth shut to keep the words from escaping. Tact. Audrey was glad Cindy had been pushed out to the outer circle along with Lena and Mambo De Vivre where she couldn't see or she swore the feisty Texas feminist would have pulled out her pearl-handled revolver, John Wayne style, and started shooting.

Lyubitskhe clung to her hand until two men, Lyubitshke's father and her eldest brother Yanko, were summonsed into the bridal tent to lift the bride upon their shoulders and carry her back out into the larger crowd to rejoin her husband. Behind her, the ajuntaora followed, triumphantly holding the bloodstained white cloth high in the air and shouting _'el yeli' _to the crowd, that she had confirmed Lyubitshke was 'pure'. The ajuntaora carried the bloodstained cloth around for all to examine until she ended up in front of the Reverend, who had by now been lifted onto Gabriel's and Gunn's shoulders to meet his new wife.

By the solemn way the Reverend silently took the bloody cloth and carefully put it into his pocket, giving his new wife a sympathetic look and tenderly taking her hand to kiss it, but otherwise not appearing appalled, it appeared he had been briefed about this aspect of Romani culture. No _wonder _he hadn't wanted to talk about it. He knew the sacrifice Lyubitskhe was making to follow them in their quest to help the Savior. Whether or not the Reverend chose to _truly _make her his wife, Lyubitshke would never be able to marry into her own tribe if they later divorced. Audrey could understand now why the Mother had chosen the disciple most likely to honor his wedding vows to marry their newest disciple.

Audrey simply followed, schooling a facsimile of Gabriel's unreadable expression upon her face. The poor girl! No _wonder _Lyubitshke had been unwilling to commit to a marriage in name only. In Romani culture, there was no such thing. The family popped the bride's cherry for the groom and handed it to him as a souvenier. There was no going back.

"Something wrong?" Mambo De Vivre asked.

"Did you know?" Audrey asked.

"It's not our place to judge," Mambo De Vivre said quietly, her eyes filled with compassion. In other words, yes. Mambo had known about this aspect of Romani culture. It explained why she had cautioned the Reverend that, no matter what the age difference, he would be expected to _truly _make the young woman his wife. Not just a marriage in name only to appease her parents.

The sound of cloth ripping brought Audrey's attention back to the wedding ceremony. The Romani men were busily tearing the Reverend's shirt into long strips of cloth until he was bare-chested in the December cold. Now she understood why the bonfire had been built up so high. More than a year on the road sparring with Gabriel and Gunn had made the one-soft Reverend muscular and hard. The Romani women twittered appreciatively at the newest member of their clan.

The bride and groom were carried closer to the fire, where well-wishers threw dried flower petals and grass upon them. The Reverend now shirtless, the Romani men now turned to each other to perform the same ritual, laughing and singing a wild gypsy song as they tore each others' shirts into strips of cloth and then gathered the strips into bundles to present to the bride.

"What's the cloth for?" Audrey asked one of Lyubetshke's younger sisters as she ran by with a basket to throw them in.

"The bride will make quilts for the wedding bed from them," the little sister excitedly said. "The well wishes and strength every man in the tribe will protect their marital bed from evil spirits."

"Oh," Audrey said. She glanced up just in time to see Gabriel tolerate having the shirt shredded right off his body. Gunn and Jose', too. Even the non-Romani Moscow townsfolk, who had all been invited, submitted to this ritual. She had noticed Gabriel stuff his 'best' shirt into his backpack this morning and thought it odd he wore an older shirt for the ceremony. Now she knew why. Gabriel had been so secretive the past few days about what he'd been up to, she hadn't really had a chance to question him about anything.

The bride and groom were carried around the bonfire three times, the Romani singing and clapping, and were finally set down close to the spot where they had earlier said 'I do.' Gunn handed the Reverend a second shirt to wear, which Lyubitshke helped her new husband put on. The Reverend looked very … happy.

Besnik stepped up to the center of the fire, holding up his hands, until the crowd quieted down.

"And now my daughter will dance with her new husband," Besnik announced. "As you know, once a Romani woman marries, she becomes part of her husband's tribe. It is their wish that, to demonstrate her willingness to adopt her husband's customs and duties as a minister, that their first dance be one from our groom's tribe."

The random thought that the Reverend and Lyubitshke were about to perform a hip-gyrating duet singing 'Ain't Nuthin' but a Hound Dog' flitted through Audrey's mind, causing her to snort back a chuckle. Now _that _would truly be a dance from the Reverend's 'tribe!'

The Reverend and Lyubitskhe posed apart from each other in a classic waltz stance. It appeared the Reverend had spent some of the past three days teaching his bride _his _way of dancing. The band started playing again, the heavy Romani undertones lending an exotic air to the classic Rhumba the Reverend now danced with his bride.

"They are a well-matched couple," Mambo De Vivre said quietly, hobbling up behind her with her cane. "Even in spite of the age difference. Don't you agree?"

"There's more to a marriage than appearances," Audrey said, watching how flawlessly the Reverend and his bride danced together the beautiful Latin dance of love. "Although I do admit I envy Lyubitskhe her new husband's willingness to dance. If only Gabriel weren't so opposed to it."

She failed to notice the Cheshire-cat like grin the Mambo suppressed as she squeezed Audrey's shoulder reassuringly, and then hobbled off to socialize with the ajuntaora and other older Romani women. Their time amongst the Romani hadn't simply been one of _their _shattering _their _misperceptions about the gypsy folk. The time had been just as educational for the Romani. Seeing as how the encampment would break apart come spring and travel out into the countryside, bringing their experiences with them as they travelled, before coming back here to shelter next winter, some of the Moscow Romani's newfound tolerance for the Mambo's also-misunderstood religion would likely travel with them.


	76. Chapter 75

Note:_ this is some fluff to answer the requests I got to teach 'Mr. Stiff' how to dance. There is only one dance suitable for an archangel to seduce. The Tango wasn't appropriate … Gabriel has never been the type to play 'now I want you now I don't.' He also needs to visualize things in light of what he already knows, he's a soldier. Therefore, only one dance would do. I hope you all like it (and if anybody doesn't know the dance, I suggest you go to youtube and search for an example)._

Chapter 75

"You're certain Nadezhde taught her how to do it?" Gabriel asked nervously.

"Yes," Besnik said. "Nadezhde considered it to be a great honor. She said your wife was a quick learner."

"And she doesn't have a clue?" Gabriel asked.

"If there's one thing gypsies are good at," Besnik said, laughing, it's how to keep secrets and appear mysterious. Look! She is already trying to perform the movements now!"

Gabriel looked over to where his little prophet happily gyrated and whirled with the other Romani women, along with the female disciples, at one end of the bonfire. At his end, the men danced separately. Although custom permitted the genders to mix and dance together once the bride and groom had finished their dance together, the majority of couples had split off after a few dances into groups of males or females in order to talk.

"She is a beautiful woman," Gunn said, coming up behind him and slapping him on the back. "You'd better go woo her before some handsome, dark-eyed gypsy convinces her she'd be better off with a man who can dance."

Gabriel took a deep breath and forced himself to shove down the unfamiliar emotion of nervousness down into that place he shoved all unhelpful emotions. Guaril had tirelessly sat on the sidelines, gracefully demonstrating a move to Yanko, who seemed to have the knack for breaking things down into a series of steps Gabriel was capable of learning. They had practiced until Yanko had complained his feet were going to fall off and Guaril had announced he had mastered the dance, and then Gabriel had gone off far into the countryside and tirelessly practiced some more alone where prying eyes could not see. If he didn't have it down now, he would _never _have it down.

Besnik clapped his hands to get everybody's attention once more and announced they had a special treat without saying what that treat was. Many of the Romani were in on the surprise, diligently keeping it from his little Prophet. By the way Audrey had pestered him about what he was up to, Besnik had obviously kept his word that the Romani knew how to be secretive.

Audrey looked across the clearing at him and gave him a happy smile. She was enjoying herself, dancing amongst the Romani women, and already Gabriel had noticed she was spontaneously using many of the moves Besnik's younger daughter had taught her. By the expression on her face, she had no idea what was coming.

'_Ey lay lay lay lay lay lay lay, e ley ley ley lehehey lay…."_ the Romani musicians sang, singing the ululating vocalization of the Espana Cani, the 'Spanish Gypsy Dance,' along with the strum of a single guitar.

"Remember to keep eye contact as if you are staring down the bull," Guaril reminded him. "You are conquering the female to carry her off to your bed."

Gabriel assumed the stance of the torero, the matador, his hands straight up in the air as though about to pierce the hide of a charging bull with a spear, his eyes on his quarry. His wife. He was hunting his wife, who had been elusively buried in the crowd of females all night long. He was about to single mindedly hunt her down and cull her from the herd. This was no different from any other mission he had performed for the Father in his lifetime, he told himself.

Audrey froze. The quarry had spotted the hunter and frozen like a deer in the headlights. Time to stalk the prey.

'_Strum strum strum, dadadadalump strum strum…" _went the single guitar and the sound of Besnik clapping the percussion that signaled the steps along with the guitar. The Romani twittered expectantly. This was a famous 'wooing' dance that only the most accomplished dancers dared attempt.

It was also the only dance they had that could be easily altered to accommodate his 20 foot wingspan.

Prey. Stalk the prey. Step. Step. Step. Move the 'swords' and step. Step. Step. Spin around and step. Step. Step. He was up to the quarry, who was beginning to realize what was going on. Beside her, Nadezhde reminded Audrey of the flamenco-style hand movements they had taught her, mirroring the moves she was supposed to make to dance with him. The expression on his little Prophet's face at seeing him dance the paso doble was priceless.

"What are you doing?" Audrey asked, her words almost coming out a breathless hiss.

"Daring the bull to charge with my red cape," Gabriel said, grabbing her arms and flaring his arms and wings straight upward to mirror the overhead arm movement mimicking a torero waving a red cape in front of a bull. "You're the red cape." Audrey threw up her hands in the appropriate counterpart move.

The other Romani had joined in clapping the percussion to the song now. Step. Step. Step. Spin-and-wing-flare. Step. Step. Step. Up-to-sword-throw. Step. Step. Step. Closer-to-the-bull-now. Step. Step. Step. Stare-him-down-now.

Audrey stepped back into the position of the 'bull' and performed the graceful hand-swirls reminiscent of the bulls horns to accompany her stalking steps, for every step he took towards her, she backed up. If he whirled, she whirled, always keeping her 'horns' flared in his direction, always staring him down ready to make a charge. They had never practiced this dance together. It was not going to be perfect, or even really that good compared to the Romani who were taught to dance as soon as they could stand. But it was what the 'quarry' wanted, so Gabriel was going to give it to her. Around them, the Romani musicians began to add in other instruments to the Espana Cani.

The ground was dirt beneath his feet and made little sound, but he performed the flamenco-style taps in the appropriate places anyways, relying upon Besnik and his merry band of co-conspirators to provide the appropriate tapping sound by banging on buckets and other wooden implements. Tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap. Circle-quarry. Tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap. Stare-the-bull-down.

Audrey was a wonderful improviser, trying to remain intense in her stare as the huge smile she wished to give tugged at the corner of her mouth as they came back together for another round of Audrey playing the part of the red cape. Gabriel was expected to be the one to lead the dance. So long as he didn't deviate from the steps Guardil had taught him, he knew his performance would be acceptable.

"I shall conquer you and carry you off, el toro," Gabriel said softly as whirled her in preparation for his last 'sword stab.'

"Never!" Audrey declared, throwing her arms up in the 'horns' of defiance. "I shall never surrender!"

"Than I shall sweep you off your feet!" Gabriel said just as the tempo changed to signal the spot where he was supposed to whirl back-to-back. The tricky part. One wrong move on his part and his wings would send her flying. He pinned them tightly across his back as he whirled back-to-back against her and out again, then performed the move two more times before grabbing his 'bull' by the 'horns' and circling with her around the clearing, performing a tap-a-tap-a-tap-a-tap movement at the right spot.

"I think I _like _being swept off my feet like this!" Audrey declared as he swirled her under his arm several times.

"Okay," Gabriel said, improvising at last. He picked her up and swirled her right into the air in a move he had seen one of the younger couples perform earlier on a different dance, and then slid her down along his body to end the song. Improvisation. Not his strong point. But he had to admit the way she breathlessly stared into his eyes, panting from exertion, when he slid her back down and froze in the final pose of the song, was _most _pleasing.

"I have conquered the bull, my love," Gabriel murmured, feeling both strangely exuberant, and also extremely _aroused_ as they maintained their pose while the Romani cheered. He _got _it now. He finally understood _why _the Mother loved to dance.


	77. Chapter 76

Chapter 76

'_Picture the form you wish for it to take in your mind,' the Mother said. 'The clay is but a tool to help your mind shape primordial matter into solid form.'_

'_The Father gets very angry when the others create,' Gabriel said. 'He will be angry at me.'_

'_You are the synthesis of all our hopes and dreams when we first met,' the Mother said, gently touching his cheek. 'You, of all the cherubs, possess the best of both of us.' _

'_It will be –wrong- and disturb whatever ecosystem it is placed into,' Gabriel said. 'It will disrupt the work of the Father. He will be furious at me!'_

'_Why should only the Father get to create?' the Mother said, taking him into her arms and giving him a reassuring hug. 'I melded consciousness with your Father because I no longer wished to be alone. I wish for our children to create as many life-forms as possible to fill this huge, empty void of a universe.'_

'_But it will be flawed,' Gabriel said._

'_Life is flawed,' the Mother said. 'Diversity is what makes life so beautiful. You must cherish life, no matter what form it takes. Life begets life because it strives to be more.'_

_Gabriel took the mud into his hands. His fingers were too chubby and awkward to shape the mud into the intricate shapes the Father did, or even the less-perfect imitations shaped by his brothers and sisters. _

'_I can't do this!' Gabriel exclaimed in frustration. 'I'm no good at this!'_

'_I've never been very good at making the images in my mind take shape, either,' the Mother said. 'My gift is breathing the life spark into the matter your Father shapes. But you, Gabriel, possess the ability to do both. Please try…'_

_Gabriel rubbed the clay between his hands until finally he had a crude tube of clay. Intelligence. The Father was obsessed with intelligence. He slimmed the tube some more, leaving the head wide enough for a brain. The Father wanted things to be able to survive. He added two eye holes and a stripe for a mouth. And teeth. The creation needed to eat._

'_That's very nice, Gabriel,' the Mother said proudly. _

'_It's stupid and ugly,' Gabriel said. 'I can't do this!'_

'_It doesn't need to be perfect,' the Mother said. 'It just needs to be loved. If you create a creature and then you love it, it will evolve to meet your expectations. It will always strive to be what you see in your minds' eye, even if it doesn't come out perfect at first. What is it you hope this creation will do?'_

'_I made it for you, Mother,' Gabriel said softly. 'You always complain the Father doesn't like to touch you. You can wear this creation. Like a necklace or bracelet. He will shape himself around whatever part of your body you wish so you will always remember how much I love you.'_

'_Oh, Gabriel,' the Mother said, beginning to cry. 'How can you be so like the Father, and yet so different? I wish he were more like –you.-'_

'_Why do you cry, Mother?' Gabriel asked, not understanding the source of the Mother's deep unhappiness, but feeling her sorrow as though it existed within his own spirit. Something had been wrong in the garden for a long time, the Father snapping and snarling, the cherubs cringing in fear whenever he came out of his workshop. Gabriel patiently sat at his feet, listening to him mutter about disobedience. Disobedience made the Father angry. But for some reason, the Mother was unhappy too. Gabriel began to cry._

'_Don't cry,' the Mother said, rocking him in her embrace until they both stopped crying. 'I am touched by your gift. Will you complete it for me?'_

'_Only –you- can give matter the life spark,' Gabriel said. 'It frustrates the Father to no end.'_

'_ANYONE can harness the life spark if they so wish,' the Mother said. 'All it takes is a moment of pure love and joy. It's why the physical creatures the Father creates are able to bear offspring. Life begets life because life can harness the life spark whenever they come together and wish to join as one. Joy is the source of the life spark.'_

'_Then why can't the Father create the life spark on his own?' Gabriel asked._

'_Because he has forgotten what it feels like to feel joy,' the Mother whispered, great tears streaming down her beautiful dark cheeks. 'In his quest for perfection, he has forgotten what it means to love.'_

'_Please don't cry, Mother," Gabriel said. '-I- love you.'_

'_I know, Gabriel,' the Mother said. She took a deep breath and composed herself. 'Will you do something for me? Will YOU breathe the life spark into this one? I wish to always carry a reminder of your life spark with me so I can feel it whenever I am lonely.'_

'_I'll try, Mother,' Gabriel said. 'But none of the other cherubs have been able to do what you do. Not even the Father can do it. Why do you think that –I- can do it?'_

'_You must remember a time you felt perfect love,' the Mother said. 'Fix that memory in your mind, the feeling of joy within your heart. Then enlarge it. Make it so big it fills your entire chest. When the love grows so big you can't contain it any more, picture what it is you –really- wish to create in your mind. The clay doesn't matter. It's the image in your mind. Focus on the image and the love, and then exhale that feeling from your lungs onto the matter you just shaped in your hands. The clay is unimportant. What is important is the image you wish to will into existence and the emotion in your breath.'_

_Gabriel focused on what he wished for the Mother. A creature that would always seek her warmth and twine around her lithe form to remind her he was always thinking of her even though he sat off on the sidelines. A creature that would move –with- her as she danced. A creature that loved her as much as –he- loved her. He pictured the creature in his mind, pictured a memory from his earliest moments in existence when the Mother and the Father had looked upon the thousand newborn cherubs they had just created together and were overjoyed at what they had been able to create together, and then he exhaled. The creature came to life in his hands._

'_It's alive…' Gabriel said in wonder. 'I did it. I created life.'_

'_It's beautiful, Gabriel,' the Mother said, tears of joy now streaming down her face as the creation crept towards the warmth of the one he had been created to adorn and twined itself up her arm to her neck like a living bracelet. 'I shall call him Simbi, and I shall keep him with me always.'_

_The creation looked at Gabriel with its intelligent, all-knowing golden eyes and tasted the air, searching for pheromones as to its mistresses emotional state so it would know how the Mother needed to be held._

X X X

Gabriel awoke with a start, the Prophet curled peacefully in his arms. A presence. There was another presence in the room. He instinctively reached next to the bed for his mace.

"Pleasssse don't hurt my hossst," Simbi hissed, watching him intently with his too-perceptive, unblinking golden eyes. The form the loa inhabited at the moment was a small garter snake, but there was no mistaking the intelligence which shown from its eyes. "I promisssed him you would not hurt him."

"Simbi?" Gabriel said, remembering the dream. Had _he _been the one to create this … this … abomination? The Father loathed snakes. The Father exterminated them wherever he could. Simbi had been responsible for mankind's fall from grace, sent by the Mother to tempt Eve. "Impossible!"

"The Mother is pleassssed," Simbi hissed. "She was not sssshure you would win this wager for her or she would have wagered for much more."

"What wager?" Gabriel asked.

"The Mother and the Father always wager," Simbi said. "It is the only way they can interact with each other anymore without destroying the universssse they created together. They usually wager through intermediaries. But you have forced them to spend time together because you have done the unexpected. You _continue _to do the unexpected. The Mother is pleassssed."

"What wager?" Gabriel asked again.

"The Father was positive you would never dance," Simbi said with a pleased hiss. "The Mother hoped your love for the Prophet would move you to try even though you were apprehenssssive. You have jusssst done for your wife what the Father would never do for the Mother. Perhapsss if he had, they would sssstill be together."

Gabriel digested what the loa said. The Mother had warned him he needed to learn to dance so he could better understand his wife. Now that he had gone and done it, despite his initial apprehension, he understood her better. It had taken a lot of work, but now that he had learned the unfamiliar skill, he had to admit he even enjoyed it. Their lovemaking session tonight had been especially passionate, the instant when they had reached ecstasy together prolonged and joyous, as if they could exist in that state permanently. It had been like … it had been like that moment when the Mother had urged him to breathe Simbi into existence and he had.

"Why did you come?" Gabriel asked. The longer he spent separate from the Father, the more he realized the worth of creations which also existed separate from the Father.

"The Mother won the return of a single memory from the time before the Father stole the past from his children," Simbi hissed. "That is the memory she chose. The Father was not aware it was _you _who breathed life into the clay, not the Mother. You were the first cherub to master the skill, and also the most reluctant to show you possessed the ability because you knew it displeased the Father. She hid it from him to protect you. It was a good thing she did or he would have destroyed your physical form along with the others."

"What others?" Gabriel said.

"That knowledge goes past the scope of the wager," Simbi hissed. "You must remember the past on your own."

"Simbi?" Gabriel asked. The little garden snake lost the golden prescience from its eyes, cringing back from him in terror. As quickly as it could, it slithered out the way Simbi had caused it to enter the house. Gabriel let it go.

What others?


	78. Chapter 77

Chapter 77

"You should probably drop a hint to the others that you are waiting," Gabriel said. "That way they'll stop scowling at you every time you go near her."

They walked in silence, the Reverend on horseback, Gabriel on foot. The compass rose had pointed them east on State Road 57 until it had ended at a shattered dam, and then led them north on an even smaller road until they had been led to go east again on another winding state road, Route 64. It had taken them six days to cover territory that _used _to be accessible by automobile in a few hours, more time than they had covered on foot across the desert, but still significantly less than they would have liked. The ladies and Jose' took turns riding double on one of the horses, including the two full-sized horses Lyubitshke's parents had given her and the Reverend as wedding presents. This still left the group four riding horses and a slew of pack horses short.

At present, they were averaging 15 miles per day on the Tennessee flatlands, but off in the distance the Appalachians were beginning to rise. They had needed to go around the remnants of the Pickwick Dam yesterday because both the dam and the bridge through had been destroyed by the heavenly host, a reminder that the Father had gone out of his way to destroy all major human infrastructure that had once enabled progress. In this case, riverboat travel through the locks to the area, essentially cutting it off from the outside world. Once they started to gain altitude, they could anticipate frigid temperatures, scant forage, and snow. The wagon master had warned them they would slow down to 6 miles per day, a pace the Prophet found unacceptable.

Without enough riding horses or pack horses to carry the gear, the longest they could ride was eight hours with frequent rest stops to water the horses and allow them forage, or simply to walk to allow whichever horses had just been subjected to a double rider to cool down. The Reverend's, Senator's, Gunn's, and Lena's horses tired quickly from their extra weight. As much as they all thought of Lena as a woman, the fact remained that their cross dressing disciple had been born a male and possessed a males weight. This left Gabriel flying many hours per day to keep up and precious few hours to talk with his little Prophet, a luxury he had grown accustomed to the past two years.

The Reverend regarded Gabriel silently for a while in response for his inquiry about his relationship with his new wife, a comfortable silence the men of the group had learned to grant each other when they spoke. Gabriel wasn't the only male in the group who required time to think. Only the deepest thinker.

"How can you tell we haven't consummated our relationship yet?" the Reverend finally asked. "Are we that obvious?"

"No," Gabriel said. "Your level of physical interaction indicates genuine affection. My species possesses an enhanced sense of smell. Neither of you emit the scent of a consummated couple."

"You can _smell _that?" the Reverend asked. His face took on a slightly ruddy complexion. Embarrassment.

"It took more than a year for my brain to learn to interpret what I was smelling in the absence of the omniscience of the heavenly Father," Gabriel said, "and then another year to get good at listening to what my subconscious was trying to tell me. But … yes. I appear to be able to pick up on the emotions of others by how they smell. So do _you, _by the way. Humans just aren't as attuned to it because the ability isn't as pronounced. It was the Prophet who realized I possessed this gift."

"Lyubitshke said it dishonors her family that I have chosen to wait to consummate our relationship," the Reverend said unhappily. "She made me promise we would act in such a way that it is not obvious to the outside world. She was raised from birth to believe young women her age are supposed to get married and start a family. I was raised to believe a young woman should at least finish college before taking that step. We have a 10 year difference of opinion."

"You're not _really_ going to wait 10 years, are you?" Gabriel asked, his eyes twinkling with mirth. "She is a lovely temptress, your wife. Enticing enough to tempt another angel to fall from heaven to woo!" Gabriel didn't add that, if not for the prohibition the Father had tattooed across the Prophet's mound of Venus the day they had met the Reverend there in the wedding chapel in response to his heartfelt plea for guidance about his love for her, he would have made her his wife long ago.

"No," the Reverend said. "Lyubitshke was adamant that I not impose a westernized idea of age upon her, but I was equally adamant that I not exploit a child bride. We agreed upon a series of milestones that are entirely within her control to achieve."

"Reading?" Gabriel asked. One of the things the Senator's wife, Cindy, complained about was the fact that even for a 13-year-old Lyubitshke possessed an appalling ability to read and write. The young woman had gone to school as far as the third grade, just long enough to learn to read and compute simple addition and subtraction. Most Romani considered an education irrelevant to the duties a woman was expected to assume within the tribe except to learn enough to manage the household finances. With their mobile lifestyle, it was impossible for local school districts to impose their standards upon the tribe.

"More than just reading," the Reverend said. "We agreed she would pass certain educational milestones and that I was to teach her as quickly as she was capable of learning. Once she has reached the level of education of an average high school student, she is going to decide whether or not she really wishes to be married to me."

"I thought you said you weren't made of stone," Gabriel said wryly, shooting him a knowing grin. "Unlike the Prophet, your wife has made it clear from the first moment she lay eyes upon you that she wished to be your wife in every sense of the word. She is very beautiful. How can you resist?"

The Reverend laughed, Gabriel along with him. It wasn't often Gabriel laughed, but he found himself doing so more and more often these days. Ever since he had married the Prophet, it was as though some great reservoir of emotion he had kept under lock and key for billions of years had suddenly been unlocked.

"I'm not," the Reverend said. "I posited the challenge as being one of fitness for her to assume the duties of the wife of a minister. To minister the flock, she must at least possess the educational level of the lowest member of the flock. A high school diploma. We have agreed she would not entice me to consummate our marriage until she can pass the equivalent of a GED examination."

"The Prophet did not finish high school because of the apocalypse," Gabriel said. "It concerns her sometimes. Perhaps they can learn together?"

"I would appreciate it if you would speak to her about it," the Reverend said. "Lyubitshke looks up to her. She never realized just how far her people lag behind the average person until we began travelling on the road together."

"Lyubitshke is not stupid," Gabriel said. "She is an astute judge of human nature, and also surviving on the road. Audrey is impressed by her ability to handle each new group of survivors we have encountered and put them at ease."

"She has had to fit in with new groups of people her entire life," the Reverend said. "It is second nature to her. It is probably the skill the Savior needs to harness in our group. But she is also becoming aware that those we encounter do not approve of her having a middle aged husband. She is beginning to understand my apprehension about our marriage."

Gabriel pondered the problem for some time. He was not an expert on human customs, age making no difference amongst the immortals, but he also recalled things that had bothered the Prophet before she had finally chosen to return his love. Their age difference was not as obvious as that between that between their newest disciple and the Reverend due to the fact his physical appearance was that of a human male in his mid-thirties, but even they raised eyebrows amongst the humans. Audrey had never spoken of it, but he had noticed she had begun to shy away from youthful apparel and mannerisms which highlighted the difference in their ages around the time he had begun to realize his feelings were not entirely one-sided.

Although the Prophet was chronologically young, her experiences had matured her far beyond even the Mambo. Audrey had seen what her parents, the angels, or even the Father had been unable to see. What only the Mother, and Michael, and the Savior had seen. That human life was sacred. Although the Prophet was chronologically young, in many ways she was as old as the Mother herself.

"Lyubitshke does not act like a child," Gabriel finally said. "But physically she is obviously much younger than you. Her lack of knowledge is also apparent. Perhaps the others would be willing to help her assume a visage that makes the difference less obvious?"

"Lyubitshke does not wish for the others to know I have dishonored her by delaying consummation of our marriage," the Reverend said. "No matter how much I reassure her that is not the case, she sees our bargain as proof of her unfitness to be my wife and it pains her. When the Mother sent her visions of an angel bringing her future husband, she insinuated Lyubitshke would be my wife in every sense of the word. Not just tagging along as another disciple."

"What do _you _wish?" Gabriel said. "You have refused to speak of it until now."

"I wish for her to hurry up and grow up enough that I don't go to jail for making love to her," the Reverend said, giving him a wry grin. "We are very well matched in temperament and interests. I am glad I never met the right woman before now so that I was free to take her to be my wife. Now I just need to wait for her to finish growing up."

"I will ask Audrey to help her with her education," Gabriel said. "I'm sure the others will help her, as well. Even Jose' has a year of college under his belt. We have those books you had us retrieve from the LaGrange elementary school. If we all take turns teaching her while we are on the road, she will learn faster."

Gabriel _didn't _add how much the heavy textbooks were slowing them down. The books nearly added up to the weight of an eleventh rider and needed to be shifted between the horses along with the other supplies and trade goods they carried with them on the road. It was a burden the others chortled at. The sooner they could teach the Reverend's young wife the knowledge contained in each textbook, the sooner they could leave it on the side of the road.

"How were you educated in heaven?" the Reverend asked. "You speak and read every language that is thrown at you. Did the Mother teach you?"

"I don't remember," Gabriel said. He remembered the memory Simbi had brought. "It's possible. I remember…"

He decided he wouldn't divulge that memory. Simbi had warned him the Father had destroyed the physical forms of 'the others' for possessing the ability to both shape and breathe life into new life forms, and that the only reason _he_ had notbeen destroyed was because he had only done it once and the Mother had claimed _she _had breathed life into Simbi. Not him. No matter how much he wracked his brains to try to remember more, all he drew was a blank as to who these 'other ones' had been.

"The Father didn't like teaching us things," Gabriel finally continued. "He valued intelligence above all other survival traits, but he was not willing to do anything to nurture that intelligence beyond whatever it was the organism naturally possessed. It was either do what he said and he was pleased. Or you didn't understand and you were punished. Or destroyed. He never took the time to teach us anything. Only give orders. We learned to observe what he wanted very carefully so we could anticipate his needs."

"That's horrible!" the Reverend said. "No wonder he's so unhappy with humanity."

"I am like Lyubitshke in that respect," Gabriel said. "I never knew how abnormal that was until I realized _some _humans actually take the time to _teach _each other, and that it is _those _humans who the apocalypse seems to have spared. The Mother liked teaching us to do things, so I suspect it is an ability that flows from her."

"I'm sorry you can't remember her," the Reverend said. "Perhaps _you _could assist with Lyubitshke's education as well? In teaching her, perhaps you will learn to teach?"

"All I know is how to fight," Gabriel said. "I am but a soldier."

"Then you shall teach her to protect herself," the Reverend said. "And maybe help her perfect a few of the languages she speaks. Do you realize she can conduct trade negotiations in seventeen different languages?"

"Really?" Gabriel said, his interest piqued. "Is she fluent?"

"She's fluent in five languages," the Reverend said, a hint of pride tingeing his voice. "She's fluent in Romani, English, Spanish, Russian and Bosnian. She's been giving the the Senator and Jose' a run for their money. She's also been practicing Haitian Creole with Mambo."

They walked a bit further until they were close to the pre-agreed upon point time where Gabriel would take to the air once more and the others would speed up their horses to a faster pace. Just as they reached the rise where Gabriel was supposed to take to the air, the Prophet, who had ridden ahead to give him time to converse privately with the Reverend about her concerns regarding their newest disciple, whistled and gestured to him excitedly.

"Sweet…" Jose' whistled.

"I want one," Gunn said.

"Me too," said the Senator. "Two. I want two of them."

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted. "Come see!"

Gabriel half-ran, half-fluttered up to the top of the rise.

"Do you think the farmer would trade something for a few?" Lena asked.

"We shall only know if we ask," Mambo De Vivre said. "We still have trade goods the farmer might find valuable."

Gabriel just stood and stared at the enormous creature which stood in the middle of the fenced-in pasture adjacent to the farmhouse they were about to pass. Standing in the middle of the field amongst others of its kind, nostrils flared as it stared back at him, was the largest horse Gabriel had ever seen.

"The compass rose just swung around and pointed right at him," Audrey said, showing everyone her hand, which pointed directly at the horse. "Gabriel … I think we just found you a horse."

"I didn't know they could get that big," Lena said, whistling in appreciation. "Look at them. They're _all _that big, but that one is huge."

"Andalusian?" the Reverend asked, riding up behind them. "Look at the wavy mane and tail."

"Percheron," Lyubitshke suggested. It's too big to be an Andalusian. It must be a draft horse."

The horse seemed to have heard the seventh disciples' description of it and taken offense. It reared, pawing the air and screaming out defiantly at them, and then began to herd the mares in the field with it towards the farmhouse.

"That's no draft horse," Gunn said. "I'm no horse expert, but that's a destrier. One of the guys back in Alamosa used to dabble with horse breeding. He was obsessed with warmbloods, crosses between heavy breeds and sport horses, to create the perfect horse for dressage. His obsession was crossing his Belgian mares with non-Belgian sires to get a Belgian lookalike that could run fast and jump."

"I agree," Gabriel said, eying the way the horse moved. "That horse has been bred for war. I haven't seen many like that since the crusades ended."

"That's no Belgian," Lena said. "Lots of the Mormon farmers still kept draft horses. That thing is almost black. Belgians are gold."

"Andalusian," the Reverend said again.

"Percheron," Lyubitshke said, and then gave her not-quite-husband a knowing smirk. "Our first marital disagreement."

For a thirteen year old, Lyubitshke's grasp of marital affairs was frightening…

"Only one way to find out," Audrey said, slapping her Morgan in the haunches and bolting towards the farmhouse where the mysterious stallion had just headed. "Gyaaaahhh!"

Gabriel took to the air to quickly follow. Having never actually possessed a _desire _to enjoy the company of any human he had been charged with protecting, he had always disdained the modes of transportation the slow-moving humans used to get about. Why ride when you can fly? But as the others had foreseen, spending so much time apart from the others while _they _rode was proving to be an unsatisfactory experience. He _missed _the time he used to spend with his little Prophet, even though they often walked in silence. He _missed_ her scent and the reassuring feel of her body within close physical proximity. He missed hearing the sound of her voice, or the sound of her breathing if they walked in silence.

Now he understood why the Mother was rarely seen without her serpent coiled around her body. Like her, he _needed _to feel the close personal presence of those he loved…

He envied the others the time they spent with his wife since they had left the Romani encampment seven days ago. If he had been able to learn to dance, then he was now determined to _also _learn to ride one of the beasts the humans used to get around for no reason other than he wished to spend more time with them. All of them. He had never had friends before, but now that he had them, he missed them. Even opinionated Cindy and peculiar Jose' with his perpetual dot gov web camera forever sneaking embarrassing camera footage to broadcast their adventures to the world.

It was time to see a farmer about a horse…


	79. Chapter 78

Chapter 78

"Keep your heels down!" Audrey shouted.

"Don't let him have his head!" Gunn shouted

"Don't let him get the bit in his mouth!" Cindy shouted. "He'll…"

Thud.

"Pereant!" Gabriel exclaimed in frustration in the ancient language as he picked himself up off the ground and shook the dirt out of his feathers. "Equina excrementa!"

"Haizum's not used to having wings hit him in the haunches," Grace, the 92-year-old farmer said. "Gabriel needs to give him time to get used to his wings."

"It would help if Gabriel knew how to ride in the first place," Audrey said. "He's never ridden a horse before."

"How could God create two such magnificent creatures," Grace asked, her voice warbling with awe, "and then never create an excuse to put them together. Look at how magnificent my Haizum looks with your Gabriel upon his back. Their coloring even matches! It is as if they are meant to be together."

"Now if only he could stay seated on him," Gunn whispered under his breath, giving Audrey an elbow in the ribs. Gunn then turned to Jose'. "You getting this on film? I want something to blackmail him with later."

"You'd better not upload that, Jose'!" Audrey said. "You _know _what he'll do to you. He was upset enough that you broadcast him dancing the paso doble at the Reverend's wedding."

"We's gots over 500,000 hits per day on that video," Jose said. "Manuel said theys actually gots peoples comin into Santa Fe askin to be baptized 'cause of it. People loves that Gabriel has to try hard just like theys do. You's sure you want me to not use this?"

'_500,000 hits. Gabriel being mad. 500,000 hits. Gabriel being mad. That's a half a million people a day being exposed to our mission to help the Savior,'_ Audrey thought to herself. She turned back to Jose'.

"Wait until you get some footage of him mastering the horse at the end before you upload it," Audrey ordered, her Machiavellian nature taking over. "And for pity's sake … don't let him _see _you filming this! He'll throttle you."

"My Haizum," Grace said, her cataract-blinded cloudy blue eyes becoming dreamy. "My Haizum an international television star. If only my Jason was alive to see this."

Jason had been Graces son. Her son and his wife had both died during the apocalypse, as well as her other four children, their spouses, and as far as she knew, all of her grandchildren and single great-grandchild. All gone, leaving the 92 year old woman alone on her farm to tend to the prize Spanish-Norman's her son Jason had so diligently bred in an attempt to recreate the beautiful, fast war horses used by the knights to carry their weight and heavy armor during the crusades. For the last two years Grace had cared for the horses to keep what little was left of her family was alive, believing them all to be dead, but it was an enormous undertaking for a woman of her age despite her still being spry and healthy. The horses were healthy and well fed thanks to the abundance of forage available on the farm, but had not been ridden in two years.

Happily, Jose' had used the Dot Gov uplink to access the lists of survivors living in refugee camps outside the major cities and discovered Grace still had a great grand-niece, her husband, and three children still living in a refugee camp outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The grand-niece was similarly devoid of family. The Dot Gov people were arranging for the niece and her family to travel to their great grand-aunt's farm in the Tennessee countryside to live with Grace and help with the upkeep of the farm, a journey that would take at least a month. Grace had happily conversed with her niece, who loved horses and had taken a few riding lessons, but never owned one of her own.

"Are you really all right with letting Haizum go?" Audrey asked, not wishing to exploit the elderly woman.

"Jason _named _him for the mythological horse God supposedly gave the Archangel Gabriel in the Qur'an," Grace said. "It's ironic that Gabriel has never even ridden a horse, and yet he was led to a horse of that name."

"The Mother has a sense of humor," Audrey said. "It's all the more funny that your horse is dark colored, like the Mother, instead of white like the Father seems to prefer. As you may have noticed, Gabriel inherited the Mother's dark wings and hair, not the blonde hair and white wings often depicted in the bible."

"So I took a handful of dust from the footsteps of the messenger and kicked it into the casting of the golden calf," Grace recited, paraphrasing a verse from the Qur'an that she had explained referred to Gabriel's mythological steed Haizum kicking dust onto the golden calf. Gabriel had informed her that while, yes, he had been there, he had never had need for a horse. He suspected the writers had seen the brilliant flash of light that preceded his appearance from between the dimensions and assumed it must have been a white horse, horses then being the fastest means of travel.

"Vago tergum permaneat si occiderit ambo!" Gabriel exclaimed to the horse as he grabbed the reins and prepared to leap back onto its back. Ironically, although the horse didn't appear to want anybody to ride it, it never stepped more than a few feet away after it had thrown Gabriel, often adding insult to injury by nuzzling Gabriel's shirt pocket expectantly for a sugar cube, which Grace explained the stallion loved. Haizum had been treated as a pet for so long that he no longer knew how to be ridden.

"He's stubborn," the Reverend said. "He's giving it another try."

"Let's take bets on how long he'll stay on this time," Gunn joked. "Senator? Care for another wager?"

"I believe I do," the Senator drawled. "Money is useless. What shall we use as currency this time?"

"I want some of those dried apples the gypsy folks gave you," Gunn said. "What do I have that _you _want to wager."

"I'm sick of road food," the Senator said. "How about that red bandanna you got tied to your saddle horn?"

"Deal," Gunn said. Within moments, the others had placed wagers as well.

Gabriel got on the horse, keeping his wings held straight out behind him to keep them from brushing the horses' haunches. The horse bucked a few times and fought the bit, trying to get it in his teeth so Gabriel couldn't use it to guide his direction.

"Hang on!" Audrey shouted. "Keep your heels down!"

"Don't pull so much on the reins!" Cindy shouted. "Give him just enough so he doesn't have to bow his neck, but not so much he can stretch his neck to run!"

The horse reared up, pawing the air as it screamed defiance at the rider on its back. Even _before _Jason had died, Grace had explained, Haizum had been a handful to ride. Her son had been an accomplished equestrian. Haizum had rejected every rider since then, which is why he'd been put out to pasture with the mares to act as a stud. But now Grace had several younger, equally beautiful young stallions Haizum had sired to act as stud. She felt giving Haizum to the very archangel his namesake had supposedly belonged to would please her son in heaven.

_If _Gabriel could learn to keep his seat…

Haizum danced about on his hind legs, pawing the air and whirling on two legs. Gabriel pressed to his back, his wings beating to help him keep his seat. It looked as though Haizum was a winged horse, as the horse of legend had supposedly been.

"You got this on film, Jose'?" the Reverend asked.

"Yessir," Jose' said. "This is really good."

"He's keeping his seat," Lyubitshke said. "My bets been exceeded."

"I can't believe that horse is still reared in the air," Cindy said. "I've never seen a horse be able to rear up trying to unseat a rider that long. Not even in a rodeo."

"I've seen circus horses do it," the Reverend said. "But not with a rider."

"Maybe his wings are reducing his weight?" Mambo De Vivre said.

"Look at Haizum dance!" Grace said proudly. "Jason said there was Lippizaner in the bloodline!"

The horse hopped several times, looking remarkably like the famous white horses that danced, and then decided that rearing wasn't working to unseat his rider. Haizum began to whirl, kicking his rear hooves into the air every few times trying to buck Gabriel off.

"Look!" Lena said. "Haizum's doing a Romani dance!"

"Ahhh!" the Reverend said, pulling Lyubitshke in close and kissing the top of her head. "A dance of seduction."

Lyubitshke snaked her hands fondly around the Reverend's waist, but no place else. Were they? Or weren't they? It was the topic of much speculation behind the couples back amongst the disciples. They appeared affectionate, but not in the way she and Gabriel or the Senator and his Wife were. She had sent Gabriel back to ask questions, but Gabriel had returned Spinx-like, obviously satisfied with whatever the Reverend had divulged to him. He refused to betray the Reverends confidences.

"My bets been exceeded," Cindy said. "Look at him ride!"

"My bet, too," Jose' said. "Audrey bet he'd stay on."

"I thought we'd all agreed not to let Audrey make wagers," Lena groused. "She gets inside information from the Mother."

"Not about things like this," Audrey said. "The compass rose led us to the horse. It didn't say how many times he'd get thrown from its back before he'd figure out how to ride it."

"It's stomping now, trying to buck him off," Lena said. "It looks like the horse is doing a flamenco dance."

"Bamp, bamp, bamp, ba-ra-ra-ra, bamp bamp bamp…" the Reverend sang, doing the 'el toro' move from the paso doble Gabriel had only recently mastered.

Lyubitshke flared her arms back the corresponding flamenco move, circling her husband and giggling. Doing it. They must definitely be doing it, Audrey thought to herself. Those two were too in-tune to each other to _not _be lovers.

"My sweet Haizum," Grace said, a content smile wrinkling up her entire already-wrinkled face. "He's such a good horse. So spirited."

"Spirited, yes," the Senator said. "I'm not so sure about the good part."

"My bet's been exceeded," Mambo De Vivre said.

Haizum now began to do a front-to-back bucking move that could only be described as what the Tazmanian Devil did in the old Looney Tunes cartoon.

"Ooooo," the Senator said. "I've seen bronco's do this at the rodeo. _Nobody _stays on long when a bronco does this."

"C'mon Haizum!" Lena shouted. "Show that angel who's boss!"

"Hey?" Audrey said. "I thought you adored Gabriel?"

"I do, honeychild," Lena said, a great big grin on her face. "But Gabriel will heal. That bag of pre-apocalyptic M&M's I just wagered, on the other hand, won't!"

"You's out, Lena," Jose' said. The perpetual bet master. "You's too Reverend."

"C'mon Gabriel!" Audrey shouted, throwing her fist in the air in a victory 'V'. "You can do it!"

"C'mon Haizum!" the Senator shouted. "I've got a bag of dried apples riding on your performance!"

"I'm out," Gunn said.

"Oooo … now he's doing the figure-8 twist!" Cindy exclaimed.

"How do you know so much about rodeo horses?" Gunn asked.

"Rodeo brat," Cindy said. "Not much else to do in west Texas where I'm from."

Haizum was obviously tiring, sweat pouring form his flanks and froth from his mouth. So was Gabriel by the way there was a delay between Haizum's shenanigans and the corrections he made with his wings to stay seated. It was going to be a close call as to which burly chunk of pure muscle outlast the other.

"Damn!" the Senator said. "I'm out!"

"I won!" Audrey said.

"Nots yet," Jose' said. "You bet he'd stay on the horse. Period. Not for a set amount of time. The horse is still trying to get him off. He has to rides the horse for you to win."

"Oh, look," Grace said, pointing to the pair. "Haizum's doing the bunny hop."

It wasn't so much the 'bunny hop' as a half-hearted hurling of himself into the air with all four legs at once, his back arched, trying to unseat Gabriel from the curve of his back and the impact of all four legs slamming down on the earth at once. Audrey winced every time the horse hit the ground. Ouch! By the look of pure pain that crossed Gabriel's face, visible even from here, Big Gabriel wouldn't want anybody touching Little Gabriel for a week if the horse kept slamming his kahonas into the saddle like that.

"C'mon, honey!" Audrey shouted. "You're almost there! Show him who's boss or you'll have to start over!"

From the droop of Gabriel's wings, he wasn't doing so hot.

"Use your thighs!" Audrey shouted. "Use your thighs to hold on to lessen the impact! Just like I do in ... um … uh…"

Gabriel shot her a quick glance. Audrey decided she really didn't want that little tidbit of personal information broadcast on Dot Gov. Gabriel got the idea. The kahona-slam grew less … slammy … as Gabriel tightened his thighs around the saddle to hang on instead of simply getting slammed into it.

Haizum made a few more half-hearted hops and a buck, and then stopped, head down, sides heaving as froth poured from his mouth, clearly visible against his dark hide. Gabriel looked just as exhausted, his sides also heaving, wings drooping down the sides of the horse and back bowed, hanging onto the saddle horn for dear life. If Haizum had decided to give one last buck at that moment, he would have unseated Gabriel, but the horse had decided he'd had enough. Gabriel tightened the reins with one hand and reached out to pat Haizum on the neck.

"Tu enim equus conveniens Archangeli mea," Gabriel murmured to the horse in the ancient tongue. "Habebimus casus multae simul. Promitto."

Audrey gestured for Gabriel to come over.

"Veni," Gabriel told the horse. "Tua coeamus dolor." He nudge the horses flanks and urged him to amble over to the fence of the corral where they waited.

"He likes you," Audrey said, giving him her most winning smile.

"Piece of cake," Gabriel said, giving her an exhausted grin. His wings drooped down, brushing the flanks of the horse. Immediately, Haizum reared up, threw himself over backwards, and rolled so Gabriel couldn't stay on his back.

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted, jumping over the fence and running to his side. Haizum got up and just stood there, nuzzling the rider he had just thrown.

"Ow," Gabriel moaned. "I haven felt this beat up since I fell off a certain cliff."

"I warned you about those wings," Grace said, her voice warbling with concern. "You're going to have to desensitize him to them or he's going to panic every time."

"Mmmpf," Gabriel moaned, painfully rolling over and leaning on Audrey for support as he heaved his heavy frame off the ground. "You mean I have to do this again?"

"At least a few dozen more times thwacking him with those wings before you can trust him out on the road," Grace said. "But look. He likes you!"

Haizum nickered softly, nuzzling Gabriel in the chest. It appeared the horse _did _like him. He just wasn't enthusiastic about anybody _riding _him.

Audrey gave Gabriel a sniff.

"You landed in horse shit," she whispered. "Let's get you showered up." Grace had jammed them all into the old farmhouse and the barn, offering to put them up for a few nights until Gabriel could get Haizum 'gentled' as she called it.

"I'll cool him down for you," Gunn offered, taking the reins and leading Haizum towards the barn for some well-earned oats. Horses needed to be properly cooled down after exertion or they could become very sick.

"Ow," Gabriel moaned, his voice low as Audrey acted as a crutch to help him hobble into the farmhouse. "Might have to abstain for a few days. Haizum banged me up pretty good."

She sat him down on the bed and went in to run the shower. Grace had solar panels on the roof. This time of year, the water only got luke warm most days, but it was better than the icy streams they used on the road. She found a towel, wash cloth, soap and shampoo and went to retrieve him.

Gabriel lay face down, spread eagle on the bed, his wings spread and flopped out overhanging the bed onto the floor and taking up the entire room, sound asleep. So much for a shower. She tiptoed back into the bathroom, shut the water off, and found a spare blanket to cover him with. It wasn't often she saw Gabriel take a beating like that.

"Sleep, my love," Audrey said, scrunching up her nose slightly at the odeor de merde (scent of horseshit) as she wormed her way under one wing to curl up next to him. She caressed his feathers and back. Ouch. Already she could see bruises beginning to emerge from underneath his collar and where his sleeves were rolled up. They could deal with it in the morning.

Gabriel didn't even moan in answer. He was out cold.


	80. Chapter 79

Chapter 79

"I don't like it," Gabriel said. "We should find another way through."

"There _is _no other way," Audrey said. "Look. Do you see a road on this map?"

"I don't like it," Gabriel said. "It's like Amarillo. There's gangs of predators roving up and down that highway like the Thuggee that used to prey upon travelers in the Himalayan mountains. This road is bad enough, but they merge a few miles from here."

The compass rose had led them through a strange series of side roads and abandoned residential neighborhoods the past few days, often winding far out of the way to avoid trouble, but all roads merged into Interstate 40 to get through the single pass through the Great Smokey Mountains. The mere fact that the neighborhoods proximate to the main supply roads, which had houses with abundant land to eke out enough crops for an average family, had been completely abandoned, was itself a warning.

"I agree with Gabriel," Gunn said. "He's a pretty big deterrent, but he's not bulletproof." With that last comment, Gunn gave Audrey a pointed look. It had been Gunn who had stitched Gabriel back together after he had been shot through the lung in Santa Fe.

"This is the only pass through the Great Smokey Mountains for hundreds of miles!" Audrey said. "We're going to encounter the same problem no matter _where _we go through. The compass rose told us to avoid the old route 70 that's showing up on the map over here? Did you check that out?"

"The thugs have some sort of base camp set up just off the highway right about here," Gabriel said, pointing to a spot not too far off the less travelled alternate route. "They've torn up the railroad tracks to prevent supply trains from getting through and the bridges here, here, and here are missing. The heavenly host was ordered to possess people who could destroy major supply routes such as this. Without the bridges, it's a drop of several thousand feet into the gorge."

The horses could navigate the trail itself, but there's one spot we'd have to practically hoist them up a very steep incline, almost a cliff face. And there's no way to get them through the woods to get around that camp. It's sheer cliffs."

"We could go around the roadblocks on foot and climb," Gunn suggested, carefully examining the places Gabriel had pointed out on the map, "but not with the horses."

Gabriel glanced over at Haizum. After practically getting every bone in his body broken training the horse to tolerate the feel of his wings brushing against his haunches, he wasn't too keen on cutting him loose. The Father had taught him to disdain material possessions, but Haizum had become more than a 'thing.' Although the steed was still a handful to ride, it was also very loyal, coming when he whistled for it and often acting like a big, friendly dog. It also tolerated Gabriel leaping airborne straight from its back. Although the old farmer had given them three other horses, another Spanish-Norman mare for Gunn and two older non-destrier geldings, the fact remained that there weren't an abundance of horses in the world suitable for someone as large as himself to ride.

The horses served a practical purpose, enabling them to make nearly 30 miles per day on the flatlands and 15 on an incline. If they managed to purchase grain and reduce forage time, they could get more than that, but they were also running out of trade goods to negotiate for supplies, much less more horses. Cutting the horses loose to travel on foot from here on in would not be wise. He needed to find another way through the pass.

"There was a series of smaller roads here," Gabriel said, pointing on the map to what appeared to be a long winding road that ended at the foot of a mountain that abutted Interstate 40. "There was no obvious path through from the highway to that road. There is a mountain in the way. If I can find a way through, we will miss the worst gangs that have set up traps here, here, and here, but we will be unable to avoid this gang set up here."

"Why so many highwaymen?" Audrey asked. "We've largely managed to avoid them until now."

"The compass rose has been guiding us down less travelled roads that avoid settled areas," Gabriel said. "There's nobody out there to rob, much less supplies moving back and forth to them. Remember what happened in Chattanooga."

Audrey and Gunn both nodded knowingly. They had tried to skirt the former midsized city, but even in the suburbs gangs of roving predators preyed upon the weak. They had needed to fend off attacks several times. After the hospitality of the remote farming communities they had travelled through since leaving the Romani encampment, it was a rude reminder of the reality of post-apocalyptic life they would be walking into once they crossed the mountains and entered the more heavily populated territories on the other side. It was the same story as in the southwest.

The fertile soil and abundance of precipitation enabled small, remote farming communities to pull together and get on with their lives, albeit at a much lower level of technology than they had previously enjoyed, but the outflow of crops to the cities and inflow of modern supplies to the farmers had all but ceased. Without petroleum and safe supply routes, there was no way to get goods to the places they were needed. Eastern cities were still death zones, just like their southwestern counterparts, because there weren't enough resources to keep the survivors alive. Suburbs surrounding the death zones that otherwise might have found a way to pull together and supply routes were constantly getting pillaged by predators and desperate survivors from the cities, making _those _death zones as well. Only smaller communities set up far away from populated areas had a chance to make some kind of recovery.

"As you just pointed out," Gunn said, "this is the only pass for hundreds of miles in any direction. If I recall my US history correctly, that's why this area of the country was one of the last to come into the 20th century and still remains impoverished. No way to move people and goods through the Appalachian ridge."

"Fertile ground for predators to prey upon those foolish enough to traverse the highways alone," Gabriel pointed out, recalling some of the countless times he had seen this exact same scenario, starting with Adam and Eve's pre-human ancestors the Father had used as the genetic base for modern humans. "It's a story as old as mankind. Prey upon the supply routes."

An odd thought darted through Gabriel's mind. Humans. Why had the father _bred _Adam and Eve, tinkering with the DNA of a series of generations of apelike creatures to get the traits he wanted, and not simply _created _them as he had their ancestors? In fact, now that he thought about it, the Father had not _created _any living creature from scratch in all of the time he possessed memories for. The only _creations _he could remember were the ones the Father or the cherubs had shaped and the Mother had breathed life into. Except for Simbi. _He_ apparently had created Simbi.

"What about these low areas around these mountains," Gunn asked, interrupting his train of thought. "I assume these are cut out by mountain streams. Are they traversable by horse?"

"Only one way to find out," Gabriel said. "I'll go scout it out. But it will still leave us the problem of the first gang of thugs. I wish you weren't so damned heavy, Gunn. I could use your eyes to scope out the situation."

"I'm nearly three times her weight," Gunn said, glancing at Audrey. "No thanks. I don't feel like getting dropped. You still can't carry a pack that heavy. Much less a squirmy human."

At one time, Gabriel _could _have carried Gunn. The holy fire had made him incredibly strong, far stronger than he was now. But what he _used _to be able to do was irrelevant. Now … Gunn was right. He could get Audrey airborne, but nothing heavier. Gunn had bulked up to nearly 280 pounds of rock-solid, burly muscle. A throwback to his Viking forbears. Gabriel was going to have to scout some more, and then attempt to explain what he saw to Gunn, hoping he didn't miss anything Gunn might use to formulate a strategy.

Gabriel had learned to rely on his former Army Ranger biker friend to fill in gaps in his expertise on non-traditional warfare much the same way Michael had filled that role in heaven. Gunn didn't have Michael's millennia of experience acting as the Father's general in the countless wars against the Father's enemies, but he still managed to out-think every predator they saw coming and strategize how to use each disciple's natural abilities for maximum impact. Whereas Gabriel had always simply deferred to Michael in heaven, for that was his assigned role, act as the Father's enforcer, he was now beginning to actively question Gunn about his train of thought and _why _he thought one strategy would work better than another in addressing a problem. Not to second-guess him, but because Gabriel realized his former lack of independent thought is what had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

In heaven, he had a role to fill. The force behind the threat. The enforcer. He had filled that role without question. On Earth, other than the fact he would protect his little Prophet with his life now whether-or-not the Father or Mother had assigned him that task, the fact remained that he now had free will. He was _choosing _to learn to be more versatile in how he addressed a given threat, even if his natural inclinations did not flow in that direction.

Or as Gunn liked to say, Gabriel was the 'mace in your face.' Gunn was the knife you never saw coming in your back. Gabriel wanted to learn to be both.

"What am I looking for?" Gabriel asked. "Besides a way through? I saw no way to avoid that first group. We're going to have to take them on."

"How many men?" Gunn asked.

"I counted at least forty hiding in the bushes and debris lining the road," Gabriel said. "They've set up some burned out cars as a roadblock to prevent a petroleum-powered vehicle or horse-drawn wagon from going through. There were more here, off to the side, in some sort of encampment. Mostly females and a few children, but I would still deem them at least a partial threat. Their women looked about as genteel as a mountain lion and even the kids carried weapons."

"Any way you can carry Jose'?" Audrey asked. "He's light, and he's got that sneak-and-peak webcam of his. He could take pictures for Gunn to plan."

"Webcam has lousy resolution at any more than a few feet," Gunn said. "Already tried it. To get any good footage, he'd have to get close enough to be seen. I trust Gabriel's spider-senses more."

Gabriel nodded acknowledgment, gave the Prophet a quick kiss, and took to the air once more. He needed to scope out the first camp and also find a way through. It was unlikely they'd be able to take out every single man in the first roadblock. They would be pursued. Nor would the Prophet tolerate his killing them all simply to avoid pursuit.

He needed to find someplace unexpected for them to fade into the woods. He was certain the compass rose would most likely lead them to the exact same place he chose, but the compass rose wouldn't tell them how fast they needed to run, for how long, and how visible they'd be to pursuers and what diversions they needed to create beforehand to get off the road unseen. At some point, the pursuers would enter the territory of the second band of thieves who were just up the road from the first band. Perhaps he could use that somehow?

Flying just above the level of the treetops and hugging the lines of the mountains to avoid being spotted, Gabriel began to formulate a plan.


	81. Chapter 80

Chapter 80

"Wah-a-a-a-ah, wah wah wah," Audrey whistled softly to herself, whistling the theme song from the old Clint Eastwood western the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as they led the 'pack horses' towards the burned-out cars littering the road.

"Shut up!" Lena hissed. "You're going to get us killed."

"I g-g-got th-the-the c-c-c-camera rolling…" Jose' stammered nervously, adjusting the various backpacks and hidden cameras he had laced his saddle and clothing with. They'd learned the hard way that Jose' was useless in a fight. Nervousness caused his mental state to rapidly deteriorate in spite of his medication. But stick him behind a web camera and, for some reason, in his mind, the electronics acted as some sort of shield. With Jose', protecting his mental state so he didn't become a danger to the rest of them was paramount, so they always asked him to film dicey situations when they saw them coming.

"Just a bunch of pretty little girls and a skinny guy leading a supply train through the mountains," Lyubitshke said, patting the neck of the Quarterhorse-mix her parents had given her as a wedding present to calm him. The dun geldings nostrils flared and his hooves danced in a nervous prance. "Everything is perfectly normal."

"It is appropriate to be nervous," Mambo De Vivre said, calming her trusty Morgan. "The horses smell trouble.

Each rider led a second horse. Behind Audrey trailed Gabriel's Haizum, an incredibly fast and powerful war horse, but too much of a handful for anybody but Gabriel to ride. They had shuffled horses to ride the stronger, faster horses and strung their sparse belongings across the saddles of the weaker ones to hide them so each horse could move fast. Extra bags had been stuffed with leaves to make the 'supply train' appear to be a juicy target. They each had a pistol, but with ammunition running scarce in this part of the country, the rifles had been assigned to the snipers. Gabriel had dropped Cindy, who was light enough to carry, on the side of a cliff where she had a birds-eye view of the ambush. The Reverend, she knew, now crept through the underbrush on either side of the highway, carefully avoiding pockets of men hidden in the woods Gabriel had scoped out from the air. Even as they rode, Audrey knew the Reverend and Cindy were already into position and had their rifles aimed to take out any threat which stepped out to challenge them.

As for what Gabriel, Gunn and the Senator were doing … she didn't want to think about it. The Senator had only served in the Texas National Guard, not seen active combat, but since he had joined their ranks he had been forced to assume a more Special Forces role. Gabriel had scoped forty-six men hiding in the bushes and burned out cars. That was several hours ago. She suspected that by the time they got here there would be significantly fewer than that.

She didn't want to think about it. She had seen Gabriel in action. Gunn too. Splat-man and Jack-the-Ripper the Senator had shakily nicknamed the pair after he had helped in one of the offensives they had been forced to launch to get through Chattanooga alive. Splat-man smashed anything that came at him head-on with his mace, while Special Forces trained Jack-the-Ripper snuck up from behind and slit their throats before they even had a chance to scream. The deadly dynamic duo. The Senator had been shaken at truly seeing Gabriel's deadly side for the first time, but had intensified his training with the pair since then to be a useful member of the team. Whatever the politician Senator had been before, he recognized that to survive where they were heading he needed to transform himself into something else. More like his west-Texas born feminist wife, who had no qualms whatsoever about putting a bullet between the eyes of any 'varmint' that threatened them.

Cindy couldn't hand-fight yet worth shit, but stick a gun in her hands, and the ladylike sharpshooter who had grown up idealizing Annie Oakley was sometimes nearly as scary as Gabriel…

"Blood," Audrey whispered, deliberately avoiding staring at the dried brown stain on the road to draw attention to the fact they were aware this was an ambush.

"At least three days old," Mambo De Vivre said. "Somebody died there."

A man stepped out from behind the overturned, burned out tractor trailer that blocked the highway. Big and unkempt with a bushy beard and felt hat. Stereotypical Appalachian hillbilly. Nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol in his hands. Not a typical hillbilly firearm. A predator in hillbilly clothing. The feral glint in the man's eyes reminded Audrey of the glint the old woman at the diner had possessed as she had bitten into her bloody rare steak just before she had shrieked they were all going to die and ran up the walls. Not heavenly host. But familiar. One so depraved that the heavenly host had felt kinship with him and left him alone, or that was Gabriel's theory. This man was a killer.

"Good afternoon," Audrey said hesitantly, allowing some of her fear to be audible in her voice, but also forcing friendliness. _Her _way was to give people a chance to prove themselves. More often than not, her way turned out to be the _right _way, surprising Gabriel. Audrey instinctively knew this time was not going to be one of those times.

"If you want to pass," the man said, waving the gun in her direction, "you're going to have to pay the toll."

South Carolina accent, not a Tennessee twang. Words crisp and concise, not drawled out. City folk, not country. His movements bore a faint trace of the exaggerated posturing of the Santa Fe gangs. Not a hillbilly. Ex-convict.

"We don't have much to trade," Audrey said, forcing her voice to remain calm.

Six more men and a woman stepped out from behind the truck. From behind them, four more stepped out from behind burned out cars, what the horses had smelled as they had walked past. Eleven visible. Thirty-five in the bushes. Two of their number had knives, not guns. Gabriel had been right. He suspected a shortage of ammunition was an issue for the predators as well as for them. It didn't matter. It only took one bullet to kill. By the way the leader waved his 9 millimeter at them, _that _gun was loaded. And aimed straight at _her._ And she had no doubt he'd had plenty of practice using it.

"I said we didn't have much to trade," Audrey said coldly, forcing her voice to assume a tone an experienced traveller might have when dealing with riffraff too insignificant to give them any serious trouble. "Not that we aren't willing to pay a fair price for safe passage through these mountains."

"You look plenty flush with supplies," the leader said, giving her a feral grin. He took a step towards her. "Whats ya'all got to trade?"

"Back off," Audrey said, pulling aside her coat to show Gabriel's dual pearl-handled six-shooters given to him by the people of the Restored Republic of Texas sitting in their holsters on her hips. She'd been practicing. She was no gunslinger. Yet. The paucity of ammunition had prohibited her from practicing anything but 'dry' quickdraws. But she could get them out and fire them reasonably accurately.

The other thugs twittered behind them like raccoons circling a trash can.

"This little mountain rattler has fangs," one of the men sneered.

"We have laptop computers with a satellite uplink that still works," Jose' said, their standard first-line offer whenever they entered any new settlement. "We's can shows you how to make the uplink so you can communicate and recharge the batteries."

Jose' was along to get as many 'normal' people as possible hooked back into some semblance of society and, hopefully, in the process, pave the way so people's minds would be open when the time came to unite against the Grigori behind the Savior. The future battle Audrey foresaw was too much for people to digest after the initial calamity of the apocalypse. They didn't discuss it on the air. It was simply enough for most people to understand that they had somehow survived the apocalypse of the bible and that the Savior _had _come back a second time as he had promised. If people had nothing to trade and they were able to scrounge up equipment for an uplink, Jose _gave _it away. Most households had possessed computers. Less than 8% now survived. Like Johnny Appleseed wandering the countryside, Jose' gathered up laptops and antenna from those no longer alive to use them, and then distributed them as though he were gathering and planting apples that would become future trees to bear fruit.

These thugs … they didn't look like the type to eat apple pie…

"Do we look like we give a shit about the outside world?" the leader said. "What else you got of value?"

"Bags of dried fruit and beef jerky," Audrey said. "A couple of bars of chocolate from before the apocalypse. And books. We have several packs full of books suitable to outfit an elementary school." She didn't add that the books were for Lyubitshke.

"Let's see these trade goods of yours," the leader said, gesturing to the others. They took a step forward.

"Back off!" Audrey snapped. "_We _go through our _own _packs, not your men. I'm not going to allow you to steal more than is fair for safe passage." As she spoke, she sensed that now-familiar feeling touch the edge of her consciousness. The Mother. Glancing back, she realized Mambo De Vivre's eyes had turned pure gold. The Mother had sent her loa to communicate with the Mambo, who trusted the loa enough to not fight possession. She saw the Mambo clutch at the cane she kept tied to her saddle.

"How's we know you ain't holding back on us," the leader sneered, taking a step forward. "Pretty little girl like you, tattoos all over her body. You got drugs or something in those packs?" His finger twitched towards the trigger of his semi-automatic.

Gabriel's unearthly knife was out of her sheath and sunk into his chest before Audrey even had a chance to process the muscle spasm in her gut or the strange emotion which surged through her body and caused her to move. The Mother. Bloodlust surged through her veins like hunger. Gunshots crackled through the frigid December air. She slid her body to one side of her horse, using the stirrups to keep her seat and using it as a shield against the thugs. Today, she realized belatedly, was Christmas. Both Christmases. Two years ago today she had welcomed the Savior into this godforsaken world.

'_Merry Christmas,'_ she thought as she pulled the first revolver, carefully peeked above the saddle to take aim, and fired at the thug rushing her position. Behind him, a second thug dropped to the ground without her having fired a second shot. Sniper fire. Cindy and the Reverend opened fire, neatly picking off two more gunmen.

Jose's horse pranced nervously, rearing up and smashing one of the thugs right in the face. The horses' eyes had turned an intelligent, serpentine gold. Simbi looked at her, and then released his vessel to move to another one, Jose's horse just an animal once more. Audrey fired at the second thug who rushed Mambo De Vivre with a knife, the elderly voodoo priestess having cracked the first one who came at her and split his skull with her cane with inhuman strength loaned to her by the loa.

Nearly two dozen men came running at them from the woods. Less than the numbers they had expected, but still too many for them to take on. Gabriel had been busy. Audrey spotted the opening between the tractor trailer and a burned out car.

"Go!" Audrey screamed, pointing to the opening. This was part of the plan. She regained her seat on her saddle and thwacked her horse in the haunches with all her might, urging him to bolt. Haizum quickly bolted ahead of her, practically tugging her own horse with the reins. She glanced back as the last person worked through the obstacle course of burned out vehicles just in time to see Gabriel drop from the air, mace drawn, to block the thugs from following.

"Whoever dare molesteth the Prophet of the Savior shall deal with the wrath of the Left Hand of God," she heard Gabriel say, the low rumble of his voice clearly audible even above the shouting of the thugs, the pounding hooves of the horses, and her own racing heart as she raced away. Word of God. She had not heard such authority in Gabriel's voice since the day he had kicked in the door of the Paradise Diner and come to kill an innocent newborn. The Father, it appeared, was having a little fun dabbling in mortal affairs today alongside the Mother.

He had worn his armor today.

He needed it.

Audrey led the others towards the rendezvous point where the Senator was to creep ahead and set up a place to get off this highway without being seen and cover their tracks. The jump-off point was dangerously close to the second band of highwaymen blocking the road, waiting to prey upon any supply train strong enough to fend off the first group, but weakened enough to now be easy prey. Her horse began to foam at the mouth from the exertion of being tugged along by Gabriel's enormous war horse. She heard more gunshots behind her and the sound of numerous men shouting, though whether it was in victory or fear she had no idea. She prayed nobody aimed for Gabriel's head. The armor didn't protect him there.

Spying the Senator jumping out of the woods, Audrey led them down the gully into the spot where the icy river went under the road. The blacktop had thawed in the sun, but hoof prints in the snowpack in the grass betrayed where they had gone. Quickly the Senator dumped some snow he had pre-piled at the side of the road and used a couple of branches to smudge their tracks. A good tracker would easily find their trail, but they were hoping it wouldn't come to that.

As she tugged the last rider into the cover of the thick copse of pine, she heard shouts coming from the opposite direction. Gunn had obviously succeeded in his diversion, riling up the second band of thugs and causing them to rush towards the first one. Like ghosts, they faded into the woods, following the icy mountain river that sliced between the two mountains that stood between them and an isolated outpost of humanity free of modern Thuggeri.

Herself. The Senator. Lena. Mambo De Vivre. Jose'. Lyubitshke. Check. All heads in her group accounted for. Safe. Slowly the Mother's bloodlust which had enhanced her reflexes began to leave her bloodstream. Haizum anxiously nuzzled her belly and wickered.

"I'm worried about him, too," she whispered. "Hey … you're hurt, fellow!"

It wasn't until she realized the blood on Haizum's muzzle didn't belong to him that she looked down and registered the cause of the muscle spasm of fear which had been gripping her gut ever since the highwayman had taken aim at her.

The world turned to darkness and faded. Wordlessly she slid off her horse and hit the ground, her last impression being Haizum moving to stand guard over her in Gabriel's stead.


	82. Chapter 81

Chapter 81

"Whoever dare molesteth the Prophet of the Savior shall deal with the wrath of the Left Hand of God," Gabriel growled, blocking the highwaymen from pursuing his love as she rode to safety.

The predators paused, rightfully fearful at the visage of him dropping, wings flared, full armor, mace drawn, into their midst, and then charged. So much for the authority of the Father, which Gabriel had felt tinge his voice as he had addressed them. For some reason, the Father wished him to know that killing these jackels would please him.

Thwack! Gabriel caved in the skull of the first idiot who rushed at him.

Ping! A bullet bounced off the chest plate of his armor. He was glad the Prophet had insisted he wear it today. He hadn't protested. He wasn't going to make the mistaking of assuming his scouting efforts had been 100% accurate as he'd done in Santa Fe and earned a bullet hole through the lung for his arrogance. The Father didn't see fit to grant him the inhuman strength of holy fire. Just speak with His voice. Still … it was reassuring the Father still gave a shit about him, even if only to keep an eye on him so he could incarcerate him in Sheol later.

Thwack! He turned the face of the gunman who had just fired at him into hamburger.

Thunk! On the backswing, he caved in the ribcage of the thug running at him from directly behind him.

One of the highwaymen ran at him with a knife.

'You've got to be kidding me,' Gabriel said. "You're too young to be part of this crowd of hardened criminals."

Gabriel grabbed the kids knife-hand by the wrist, pried the knife out of his hand, bending back the kids wrist until it snapped. The kid yowled like a cat who'd had his tail stepped on.

"It pleases the Prophet when I am merciful," Gabriel said to the kid, his voice menacing and low. "Don't move. Or I will turn you into meat like I did to the others."

Had he had any idea the highwaymen would be this quick to fire upon them, he would have ditched the horses and their gear and led the others through the woods. Thankfully, the leader had missed, enabling his love to get away. It wasn't until he'd actually jumped a few of these thugs in the woods to incapacitate them that he'd realized these were more than the usual scum who preyed upon the weak. These were hardened criminals, many sporting prison gang insignia for the Aryan Brotherhood. A couple of them still wore the bright orange jump suit of a convict underneath their outerwear for extra warmth. He'd had to kill them.

At his feet lay the leader of the group, Gabriel's knife through his heart. "Nice throw, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured appreciatively as he reached down to retrieve his knife, wiping the blood on the dead leaders clothing before slipping it into his boot. More thugs ran at him.

Thwap! Splat! Gabriel used one wing as a club to take out one highway man while he whacked a second one upside the head, turning it into mincemeat. The thugs were being disadvantaged now by their own roadblock, unable to get past the narrow passage between the wrecked vehicles he guarded without climbing down the substantial gully on both shoulders of the highway. But holding this position indefinitely wasn't the plan. Only holding it long enough for the Prophet to give him the signal that they were off the road to the rendezvous point.

For the umpteenth time, it occurred to him to wonder why the heavenly host had spared such scum, while possessing normal people who were not perfect, but not great sinners either. The heavenly host, he realized now, were flawed. They avoided those too pure to be possessed, but they also avoided those who shared their feral desire to kill without discretion, mistaking scum such as these as one of them. Or that was his theory…

Whack! Another one dead. It occurred to him that he'd been holding this position for a very long time. Battle always seemed to last far longer when in the thick of it than to an outside observer, but this was unusual. Why hadn't Audrey given the signal?

Gunshots behind him warned him that Gunn had sprung his trap. The second roadblock of thugs, enemies of the first group, were rushing towards his position. In the heat of battle, had he missed her signal? It was time to get safely away.

"Since it pleases you, Father," Gabriel said aloud, "this one is in your honor." He caved in the skull of one last thug before taking to the air, flying up into the mountainside to retrieve the Senator's sharp-shooting wife who he had dropped into a birds-eye sniper position.

"There was no signal," Cindy shouted breathlessly as soon as she finished screeching as he unceremoniously plucked her from the cliff face and pulled her into the air without so much as a howdy-doo. "I saw them get off the road. But there was no signal." Cindy clung to him for dear life, which was good because the extra twenty pounds or so she weighed over his little Prophet was just enough that she was a bit of a strain to carry.

"Your husband?" Gabriel asked.

"I saw him signal them to get off the road," Cindy said. "I also heard diversionary fire from up the highway where Gunn was. I assume he made it."

As they watched, a second wave of human filth moved up the highway towards the position where he had weakened the first wave of human excrement. His old disdain of humanity momentarily reared its ugly head, and was suppressed. Who was _he _to judge? Let the Father decide which scumbag lived and which scumbag died.

He fluttered down into the rendezvous point and was dismayed to see only Mambo De Vivre and Jose' were there with all of the extra horses. Except _his _horse. Haizum was missing along with Audrey and the others.

"She's been shot," Mambo De Vivre whispered. "You'd better go to her." Mambo pointed back down the trail where the disturbed snowpack indicated a group of horses had made it this far, and then turned back.

Unceremoniously plopping Cindy next to the Mambo, Gabriel took to the air once more, the sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach making him panic. Audrey? Shot? It only took moments to work his way down the mountain where the others clustered around his little Prophet where she had fallen, dangerously close to the road where the highwaymen were beginning to clash with one another with a ferocity which was unusual.

Neither Gunn nor the Reverend, who also had some first aid training, were back yet. Haizum stood, legs planted on either side of her, teeth bared, dark eyes white against his ebony hide, kicking and biting at anybody who dared approach. The snow was speckled with her blood.

"He won't let us get near her," the Senator said. "It looks like she took a bullet to the gut."

"She won't wake up!" Lena cried out softly, shaking her hands with panic. "We didn't know she'd been hit. We got to the rendezvous point and realized we'd left her behind!"

"Whoa, boy," Gabriel whispered, trying to calm his horse. The horse stared at him, wild eyed. Haizum was descended from a line of horses that had been bred to stand over their fallen knight and fight to the death. He had no sugar cubes with him. Instead, Gabriel held out his hand, palm up, to show he was no threat. "I know you think you're protecting her, noble steed. But if we don't see to that gunshot wound, she's going to bleed out in the snow."

Finally Haizum recognized him and wickered a greeting, allowing Gabriel to approach. Gabriel suppressed the urge to just bend to her side, pausing to pat Haizum on the muzzle. "Thank you, friend, for watching out for her in my stead."

Quickly he urged his steed to step back and bent down at her side.

"Audrey," Gabriel said, panicked as he felt for her pulse. She lived, her pulse erratic beneath his fingertips. She was losing a lot of blood. They needed to get the others away from the road before one group of thugs prevailed over the other and thought to look in this direction. Picking her up in his arms, he ordered the others to get back to the rendezvous point.

"I don't know what to do," the Senator said. "I only took standard first aid. The only thing I know to do is apply pressure to the wound and call an ambulance."

"And until two years ago," Gabriel said, "I was immortal. Wounds were little more than an inconvenience which slowed us down. We've got to find Gunn. He's got experience treating gunshot wounds."

Pale. She was so pale. As pale as the snowpack they trudged through now. He realized his arm was warm, sticky with her blood, the scent of her life as it ebbed out of her body filling his nostrils as he carried her to the rendezvous point. It was going to take them days to trudge along the riverbed to get to the road on the other side of the mountains. She'd be dead by then. He was having trouble seeing where he walked. He realized it was because he was crying.

"Gabriel," Mambo De Vivre said as soon as they reached her and checked her belly where she'd been shot. "Her life energy is very low. She can't wait. You've got to fly her to someone who can help her."

With a nod, Gabriel took to the air, his little Prophet in his arms. Doctor. He needed to find a real doctor to save his wife.

"Father," he pleaded. "It's supposed to be _me _who goes first. Please don't let her die. I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just please don't let her die."


	83. Chapter 82

Chapter 82

The security guard and nurse standing outside the front doorway of the tiny medical clinic stared, their mouths open, as Gabriel dropped into their midst.

"She's hurt!" Gabriel shouted. "Please. She needs a doctor!"

Neither person moved. They just stood there, staring, like deer in the headlights of a tractor trailer.

"Please!" he shouted, cradling his little Prophet in his arms. "She's been shot!"

It was the nurse who moved first, obviously accustomed to dealing with trauma.

"Follow me," she said, gesturing for him to follow. The nurse led him inside and started shouting orders at the receptionist at the front desk.

This wasn't even a full-fledged hospital. The parking lot was empty and there were no ambulances, although these days that didn't necessarily indicate whether or not a hospital building was in use. Only a half dozen or so people waited in the waiting area, their mouths open as he walked by carrying his wife. The tiny clinic was not a hospital, but it was more than they had trudging through the snow of the mountains.

"What happened," a second woman clad in white asked. Still not a doctor. Another nurse. But obviously in charge.

"She got shot on the pass through the mountains," Gabriel said, the nurse blurry before his eyes. He had no idea how he had found this place. It had been all he could do to see to fly. "Thugs. I … I failed to protect her."

"There are no doctors left alive in this town," the head nurse said crisply, urging him to put her down upon the gurney. "But I have military trauma experience from the Gulf War. We'll do what we can for her."

Gabriel nodded, gently placing her down. The other nurse, and a third person not in any type of uniform, moved to wheel her into a room at the end of the hall. Not even a _real _operating room. But it had many pieces of equipment that belonged in an ER. It would have to do. It was the best he had been able to find on short notice.

"You need to wait outside," the security guard who had been standing outside said, fearfully, but firmly, stepping between Gabriel and the room where they had just wheeled Audrey. It was obvious that dealing with frantic family members of wounded patients was something these people were accustomed to, even family members as unusual as himself.

"I won't leave her," Gabriel said, flaring his wings angrily.

"You're too big, Sir," the first nurse said, standing out of reach, but pointing to his wings. "The trauma nurse won't be able to work with you in there."

"Oh," Gabriel said. He promptly tucked his wings tightly against his back. "I must stay with her. Please."

Something in his demeanor, probably the fact he was crying and the pleading nature of his voice, caused the nurse to reconsider.

"You're covered in blood, Sir," the nurse said. "You'll need to scrub down so you don't cause infection. Come with me."

Some part of his subconscious, the part that clamored for him to kick in the door right this instant, told him the nurse was stalling for time, giving him a chance to calm down by giving him something constructive to do. The other part agreed with the first part on the stalling tactic, but reminded him the trauma nurse who was trying to save Audrey's life right now couldn't work if she had a bezerk, frantic angel in the tiny room with her. Control. This was not a good time to be defiant. Gabriel took a deep breath and obediently followed the nurse to another room where she instructed him to slip off his blood-smeared armor, wash, and put on a horrible green shirt and pants that had to be sliced down the back to accommodate his wings.

"You'll need to wear these, Sir," the nurse said, less fearful as she handed him an elasticized hair-covering and surgical mask. "You must be careful to stay out of the nurses' way. The best place to stand is probably at the top of her head, where she can see you if she regains consciousness. We don't dare give them anesthesia unless they regain consciousness and need it. All we have these days is ether."

"Please … I need to be with her," Gabriel said, his gut wrenching in fear. "I was supposed to protect her."

"What's your name, Sir?" the nurse asked gently.

"Gabriel," he said.

"As in … _the … _Gabriel?" the nurse asked.

Gabriel nodded, afraid that if he spoke any further either he'd scream in rage, or break down in tears. Probably the latter.

"Come with me," the nurse said. "She's lost a lot of blood. You're very lucky Ann is on duty today. She spent four years in Iraq as a front-line trauma nurse. She retired from the service to Old Fort hoping for a little peace. Didn't work out that way. All four of our doctors were killed in the … incident. Ann's all we have, but she's done a good job. She knows things the doctors didn't know."

The nurses' words were a blur. He knew the nurse was making small talk, trying to reassure him, trying to keep him calm. Nothing could make him feel calm. Nothing but the knowledge his little Prophet was going to be okay. He obediently followed her into the makeshift operating room and stood at Audrey's head as directed. Blood. There was so much blood. How could such a tiny human bleed so much and still be alive?

"She's O-positive," a third woman said. She was not dressed in a white uniform, but obviously had medical training. Like Gunn. A medic?

"Go out to the lobby and see if anybody has that blood type," the trauma nurse, Ann said. "She's lost a lot of blood. We're going to need at least two separate donors."

The medic turned to Gabriel. "Sir … do you know what blood type you are?"

"Um…" Gabriel hemmed. Blood type? Humans had different types of blood? "I … don't know."

"Test him," Ann ordered the out-of-uniform woman.

"I'm going to need to test a little sample of your blood," the medic said. "Just a pinprick. It won't hurt much." Before he could even protest, the woman efficiently had taken his finger, jabbed it with a little white thingy, and squeezed out a drop onto some sort of electronic tester. Within seconds it displayed a number.

"O-negative," the medic called out. "He's a universal donor."

"It will work," Ann, the trauma nurse said. "Bag him. It just won't work the other way around. He can donate to her. She can never donate to him or it will kill him."

"Take as much as you need," Gabriel said. "Just save her. Please."

The medic already had an EKG hooked up to monitor Audrey's heart. The machine beeped somewhat erratically. The trauma nurse had cut off Audrey's shirt, exposing the bullet wound into her stomach.

"Lisa," Ann called out to the other nurse. "I need you to manage the gauze for me while I go fishing for that bullet. Marie … get that blood for me. Her heart rate is dropping with every drop she loses."

Without further ado, Ann deftly grabbed some medical instruments in each hand and began to fish in Audrey's abdomen for the bullet.

'_Father,' _Gabriel prayed. _'I know I am unworthy of your mercy, but I have loved you my entire existence. Please don't let my wife die. Not yet. Not until I've had a chance to earn her redemption. It was supposed to be –me- who died and suffered, not her.'_

"Intestine's pierced," Ann the trauma nurse stated grimly. "As soon as I get this thing out, I need you to see if there's any antibiotics of any kind left in the area. She's going to develop sepsis pretty quick."

"What does that mean?" Gabriel asked.

"It means, Sir," Ann stated bluntly, "that the bullet pierced her intestine and excrement has leaked out into her bloodstream. It's nearly always fatal unless you can pump them so full of antibiotics that nothing can survive in there. So if you have any connection whatsoever to the asshole who tried to exterminate this planet, you'd better call in all your favors and figure out where to get your hands on some or she's going to die!"

The hatred in the trauma nurses eyes as she glowered at him almost physically knocked him backwards. He didn't need the omniscience of the Father to see that her hatred went back further than the apocalypse to some event even further in the past. Perhaps the Iraq war?

"I have fallen from grace," Gabriel told her softly. "Audrey is my wife. The heavenly Father no longer listens to my prayers."

The silence stretched out between them. The other two medical personnel worked in silence, letting them work it out. The other nurse, Lisa, had said Ann had retired here hoping for some peace. He realized it wasn't quiet summer nights and chirping crickets that Ann had been seeking, and also that the medical personnel in this clinic were used to her outbursts. Psychologically damaged or not, Ann was the closest thing this town had to a doctor.

Ann blinked, her expression softening. "Figures. Asshole can't even take care of his own kind, much less ours." She deftly finished digging out the bullet and held out the silver tweezers towards Gabriel. "Souvenier?"

Gabriel silently took the bloody slug. Marie, the medic, asked him to hold out his arm so she could jab a large, hollow needle into his vein.

"Bag?" Marie asked. "Or direct fusion."

"She's fading fast," Ann said. "Direct fusion. Make sure he stands with his arm higher than her so there's no backflow from her into him. A couple of drops of her blood will only make him sick, but any more than that will kill him."

Marie took the other end of the tube and connected it to a tube they had already jabbed into Audrey's arm for that purpose.

"Where's that second donor?" Ann snapped. Tell Lev to hurry up and find me one.

Marie went outside the door and could be seen talking to the security guard. Lev, he assumed. The security guard hurried off. Meanwhile, Ann moved on to begin expertly stitching up the hole in Audrey's intestine.

"There haven't been any antibiotics in this town for more than a month," Ann said, not looking up as she stitched up Audrey's intestine. "If we can locate some further afield, can you go get them for us? I imagine you're still able to fly?"

"Yes," Gabriel said.

"All we have is the shortwave radio," Ann said, still focusing on her stitching. "It may take a while to locate some. Those who have it aren't sharing it. The highway robbers you encountered have been blocking the supply routes in all directions."

"One of our party has a satellite uplink to remnants of the federal government," Gabriel told her. "He may succeed where others would fail."

"Can he get it here by tomorrow," Ann asked, finally making eye contact. "Because if she doesn't have her medicine by this time tomorrow, it won't matter _what _we pump her full of. The infection will kill her."

Blunt. Now he understood the other nurse taking the time to explain that Ann was the best trauma nurse in the area and how lucky they were to have her. She had the bedside manner of a wolverine.

Something about her demeanor reminded him of his little Prophet when he had first met her. Angry. Angry at the world because she had witnessed a hideous side of humanity that she wished she had not been forced to see. Audrey's life was in this angry woman's hands. He would treat her the same way he had treated his little Prophet.

"As soon as you stabilize my wife's condition," Gabriel said softly, "I will go retrieve him. Jose' is light enough for me to carry, although it will be a strain. If he can locate this medicine, I will go get it, along with whatever else they have that you need."

Ann grunted approval and finished up her stitching. Packing the wound with gauze, she checked the various gauges and announced it was up to Audrey now whether or not she lived and promptly left the room.

"I don't want to leave you alone, little Prophet," Gabriel said, pulling up a chair and taking her hand. "But without medicine, you will die. The doctor thinks you will remain stable for the next twenty-four hours. It will only take me an hour or so to retrieve Jose'. The quicker I do, the faster we can find you some medicine."

Pale. She was so pale. But the heart monitor had stopped dropping and had stabilized ever since he had given her as much blood as the nurse dared take. If he gave too much, he would be too weak to retrieve the medicine she needed to survive.

"I will be right back, my love," Gabriel whispered, kissing her tenderly on the lips. "If only I were _me _laying there in that bed. I would give my life over a thousand times for you."

As quickly as he could, he retrieved Jose' and let the others know where to rendezvous. It was only on his way back that he realized he had no memory of how he had ever found this clinic in the first place. It was an ordinary building amongst dozens of ordinary buildings in an ordinary town that normally wouldn't have any medical facility of its own. He had just … found it. The only clinic with medical personnel experienced in treating gunshot wounds in a five hundred mile radius.


	84. Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Gabriel felt his brother's presence.

"I won't let you take her," Gabriel said into the air. "Show yourself, Azrael."

Ann looked up quizzically from where she was examining Audrey's gunshot wound as he spoke to the empty air. She gasped and sprang back as Azrael made himself visible. The usual reaction of humans to spying the Angel of Death. What she did next, however, was _not _usual.

"You!" Ann snapped. "Get the fuck out of my clinic! I told you you're not welcome here!" She grabbed a few of the medical implements she had just been using and lobbed them at the Angel of Death's head. Boldly the trauma nurse stepped between her patient and Azrael. It was obvious she knew _exactly _who he was.

A most curious reaction to his brother's presence. Even the Father feared Azrael, whatever power it was the two warring deities had ceded to him fearsome even to the architects of the universe. Azrael looked … bemused. In fact, he looked … pleased.

"I merely wish to speak to my brother," Azrael said gently, his beautiful black features softening to almost a soft plea. "You have stabilized your patient. If she expires, it will be after the sepsis causes her mortal shell to fail."

"I'm _done _losing innocent victims like this to your kind," Ann snarled, shaking the ridiculous little curved medical scissors at him as though she were wielding Excalibur. "Get out!"

"Gabriel?" Azrael said. "A word please?"

Gabriel looked at Ann, snarling like a tiger over his little Prophet, and Azrael. And he'd thought he'd seen everything there was to see in the universe.

"Azrael will not break his word," Gabriel said to Ann to reassure her. "He is here to speak to _me._ Would you please give us a moment? He may be able to help."

Ann glowered at the both of them as the medic, Marie, stepped into the room and recoiled at the sight of _two _of them now in the hospital.

"Get out!" Ann ordered, this time directed at Marie. She pointed at Azrael. "Don't let him touch you. His touch is death." Marie fearfully skittered out the door. Within moments, Ann finished putting fresh gauze on Audrey's gunshot wound and followed, glowering at Azrael the entire time.

"I won't let you take her," Gabriel growled at his brother the moment the trauma nurse had left the room. "Who gave the order?"

"No one," Azrael said. "Both deities ceded control over this world when they negotiated the terms of the armistice which has been in place since the Mother gave birth to the Savior. They manipulate circumstances via the game, but usually things happen because they just … happen. Her getting shot was a random event neither deity foresaw."

"The Father is omniscient," Gabriel said. "How could he not see this coming?"

Azrael crossed his arms, his face taking on the patient expression a parent might take when leading a toddler through a train of thought, and tapped his foot, waiting for Gabriel to work through the stupidity of whatever he had just said wrong on his own.

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"They wager because…?" Azrael said. He waited some more.

"Oh!" Gabriel said, pulling at his hair in frustration. "I'm so stupid!" Why was it that every angel in the universe except for _him _had figured these things out? First Michael, and now Azrael. Blind. Stupid, blind, obedient … dog. No wonder the Prophet's first impression of him had been a mutt. Loyal … but stupid.

"If they could foresee everything that creatures possessing free will would do," Azrael said, "then we wouldn't be having all these problems now, would we?"

"Why can't they just heal her, then?" Gabriel asked. "Which one is refusing?"

"Neither," Azrael said. "I'm being allowed to inform you that although this is neither deities doing, the rules of the wager prohibit them from interfering in your life paths while you both still exist here on the material plain. It is the first time since they separated that I have seen them work together to give what aid the rules of the armistice allow. They agreed to send me to give their apology. The Mother fortified the Prophet with enough bloodlust to escape, while the Father sent the heavenly host to whisper to the rival gang to destroy the ones who did this. I have just personally escorted their souls to Sheol, sparing only the young man you chose to grant mercy to bear witness. Destruction … and punishment. They are not permitted to help you further."

Gabriel sat down in one of the chairs and put his head in his hands, defeated. Was _this _what it had always been like for humans? Abandoned to their own fate because of the rules of some stupid game? Never knowing whether their fate was to be heaven, or hell, or even if it even existed? No wonder they despaired and took what pleasure they could.

"I can't even remember what she is like," Gabriel said, referring to the Mother. "And yet she holds great power over our lives."

"She bid me remind you of this," Azrael said, his beautiful dark eyes taking on a somewhat conspiratorial air. He paused, waiting for it to sink in that he wished Gabriel to take heed. "She bid me to remind you of the one memory of her you are able to recall. The time you felt pure joy. You are more than you know."

Cryptic. Why did messages from the Mother always have to be so damned cryptic? He knew better than to question Azrael further. By the look on his face, he knew his brother was already stretching the rules of the game to their breaking point by telling him whatever message was hidden beneath the cryptic words he had just spoken.

"The Father spoke through me," Gabriel said. "Has he forgiven me my sins?"

Azrael's face became distressed. "I have been their intermediary since the Mother left the Father and chose to stay away rather than destroy all-that-is. I have watched them use their wagers as pinpricks to hurt each other over and over and over again. I have watched them cut off their noses to spite their faces and then be forced to eat it more times than I care to recall. The rules of the game are inflexible. Once a wager has been made, many sub-wagers can be made, but neither deity can back down from their original position without anything less than full reconciliation. The Father is … boxed in. And so is the Mother. The only path around it is by continuing to act outside the scope of their wager so that your free will usurps the game."

"You're as cryptic as _she _is," Gabriel complained. He knew his brother was telling him as much as he was permitted to tell, and also probably a hell of a lot more than he was supposed to. It was up to _him _to figure out what the hidden meaning was beneath the surface words.

"Isn't there anything you can do to help her?" Gabriel pleaded. "Perhaps find the medicine she needs?"

"It is forbidden," Azrael said softly. "My gift is to tend the souls of those near death and end their suffering, not heal them. It is the loophole which allows me to speak to you now. I can allow your beloved to cling to her mortal shell until it fails so completely that it is a choice between harvest and the void, but I cannot heal it. I have already rendered more assistance than is permitted."

Gabriel nodded. The void was a place even angels feared to tread, that place the Mother had purportedly come from before the Father had coaxed her to take form and allow him to shape some of the primordial ooze she ruled into the universe. The void was death, even for the gods. The nothing. Only the Mother had ever navigated the void.

"If she dies," Gabriel asked, "will you come for her personally?"

"Will it bring you comfort?" Azrael said gently. "The wager seals her fate if she dies before you. I shall transport her as gently as I can so she is not afraid and settle her in to the least appalling corner of Sheol. Some parts of it aren't so bad. The apocalypse wielded far more souls than the heavenly host can torment. Even fallen, they fear you too much to single her out without a direct order."

Gabriel nodded, tears springing to his eyes once more. Sheol was like a filthy, polluted, too-crowded city filled with the souls of people who only knew despair. It was the toxic fumes oozing from the Keep and the occasional waves of heavenly host sent to torment the inhabitants by reminding them of why they had been sent there in the first place which made it a place of torment.

"She's from Los Angeles," Azrael added, reading his thoughts. "It may even feel like home."

Sheol had originally been conceived as a place to send souls too tainted to enter heaven, but not so evil as to warrant the Keep. A halfway house. But the Father himself did not understand why humans were so contrary. So defiant. So unable and unwilling to simply do as they were told so they could be freed. So billions of souls entered Sheol, but only a few souls had ever exited. Sheol suffered from the same problem as earthly prison systems. The Father was clueless about how to rehabilitate them and reintegrate them back into the larger fabric of the universe.

Gabriel absent-mindedly ran his fingers up his wife's arm, automatically avoiding the IV's Nurse Lisa had put in to get some fluids into her. Sheol. He was destined for the Keep. Perhaps he could still earn a concession from the Father to free her to access heaven if they were unable to save her mortal shell?

"Please convey to the tigress guarding your wife that I am not her enemy," Azrael said, his face taking on a wistful appearance. "We have crossed paths many times. Many times her will to defeat me has snatched a quarry from my grasp. I find her ability to expand her own free will to motivate another to defy me to be … intriguing."

"Defiance," Gabriel said, nodding with understanding. "I had noticed she possesses the same defiance as my little Prophet. Perhaps Ann is a prophet as well?"

"The identity of the other prophets is known only to the Father," Azrael said. "Just as the identity of the disciples is known only to the Mother. Ann does not fear me because I have chosen to harvest all of her patients personally. She can sense my presence as you do. Perhaps if I were to ever do as you have done, fall to earth and indulge in the physical pleasures of this realm, it would be one such as her who would tempt me?"

Gabriel raised one eyebrow at his brother. So he wasn't the _only _one since Lucifer who had fallen in love with a human. Michael had once fallen in love, as well. Although fear of incurring Lucifer's punishment meant neither brother had ever acted on their affections.

"I think it would honor her if you were to speak to her yourself," Gabriel said. "She is scarred. Perhaps if she understood the ones you took went to a better place, understood how you honor her by harvesting their lives personally, it would enable her to heal?"

"My touch is death, brother," Azrael said softly. "Unless the Mother and the Father ever find a way to reconcile their differences and exist once more in love and peace, I must never touch a living creature. Not even my own brother who I so wish to give comfort to right now."

"I will warn her she must not touch you," Gabriel said. "The other nurse said she came to this town to find peace. I think if you answer her questions, it will bring her some."

"Let it be so," Azrael said, hope shining in his stern, black eyes. Azrael was the most misunderstood of all the angels, the mantle of responsibility he had been saddled with giving him both awesome power, but also enormous loneliness. Only those who existed in terrible pain they could no longer bear ever welcomed his touch, and then they were gone before they had a chance to get to know the one who eased their suffering. Even the other angels shied from their brother's presence. Gabriel could see why a beautiful human female who could sense his presence and grasp he was someone who could be fought, not just feared, would have captivated his interest. She _saw _him.

Gabriel stuck his head outside the door and asked the security guard, Lev, to inform Ann the Angel of Death wished to answer her questions. How, in all of creation, had he ended up in the emergency room of the one human who might have tempted his brother to fall had his very touch not meant death?

And who repeatedly snatched patients from his grasp?

Divine intervention? Or happenstance? A third possibility crossed his mind and was discarded. He couldn't remember how he had gotten here. The compass rose had pointed them through this pass for a reason. Perhaps they were _supposed _to meet Ann, only not like this? Or maybe some part of him had intuitively sensed one existed close by capable of defeating his brother if he came for her. Or maybe…

Was it possible there was a third player in the game?


	85. Chapter 84

Chapter 84

"We's founds some," Jose' said, bursting into the room with his usual lack of tact. "B-b-but you're not going to l-l-like it."

"Where?" Gabriel asked, looking up from where he had been sitting, his head resting upon the Prophet's arm, kicking himself for no longer possessing the light of the heavenly Father so that he could heal her wounds and eliminate the putrefaction which was already beginning to make itself known by a slight increase in temperature. It had only been nine hours since she'd been shot, but already her breathing was becoming labored.

"Fort Bragg," Jose' said. "200 miles from here. That's a long way to fly."

"I can make it," Gabriel said. He didn't add that, until he had fallen from grace, he wouldn't have _had _to do a marathon trek such as that unless he was following a human he had been charged with protecting. Since the light of the heavenly Father had left him, Gabriel had been unable to leap between the dimensions and use the space 'between' as a shortcut.

"How long?" Ann asked. "How long will it take you to fly there and fly back?"

"Eight and a half hours flight time, plus rest stops," Gabriel said, calculating the distance in his head. "Barring weather conditions. I usually stop for a minimum half hour every two hours, but I've pushed myself before to only stop long enough to consume more calories to power the next sprint. I could probably do it in ten hours."

"You're exhausted, Gabriel," Jose' said. "You haven't slept in twenty-two hours. You need to rest first."

"She's already showing symptoms of sepsis," Ann said grimly. "Every hour we delay the start of antibiotics decreases her chances of survival by 7%. Soon … it won't matter _what _we do for her. Even if she survives, she'll suffer from multiple organ failure."

"Tell me where to go," Gabriel said to Jose. "Tell them to have the medication ready to go and at least 17,000 calories of mortal food and 4.5 gallons of water ready for me when they get there. I'm going to need to visit the cafeteria before I go."

"17,000 calories?" Ann asked. "Each way?"

"We burn a lot of calories when we fly that fast," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly, and then turned to Jose'. "Jose'! Show me on that satellite map of yours landmarks I need to follow to get there."

Over the next twenty minutes, Jose' showed him a series of landmarks to follow while Gabriel stuffed his face with as much mortal food as he could consume and stuffed the rest into a travel pack. It had taken him quite some time to understand once he had fallen that not only did his body now require food, but that it required far more nutrition than an average human did. Especially if he was doing either a lot of fighting, or flying. He'd flown half the distance carrying the Prophet to catch up to the riverboat after their honeymoon, but it had taken him all day to do it, with frequent rest stops. This would be the first almost non-stop marathon flight he would be making since he had become mortal.

"They's says they'll have everything standing by when you gets there," Jose' said, reaching out hesitantly to touch Gabriel's shoulder.

"Thanks, Jose'," Gabriel said, nodding and deliberately not touching him back. Jose' cringed from human touch, some strange mechanism of his illness making touch overwhelming for him. For him to reach out and touch another human physically,

Gabriel knew the young man wished to express he felt empathy, an emotion the young man had trouble feeling. In many ways, Jose' reminded Gabriel of the Father. So brilliant, but unable to fully empathize or feel except under the most dire of circumstances. Anything that exceeded the narrow parameters their minds were capable of processing caused them to become overwhelmed and agitated. Both were brilliant, but that brilliance came at a terrible price.

Nodding to Ann, Gabriel stepped outside the clinic and took to the air. The clock was ticking…


	86. Chapter 85

Chapter 85

"_Audrey," Sandra Anderson called. _

"_Audrey," Howard Anderson called._

"_Mom? Dad?" Audrey called. She was … floating. Where was Gabriel._

"_Honey," Sandra said. "You've been shot. You're very sick."_

"_Where's Gabriel?" Audrey asked. "Gabriel! Is he okay?"_

"_Your husband is alive," Howard said. "He carried you to a hospital. But you are very sick."_

"_Why can't I see you?" Audrey asked. "I can hear you. But I can't see you."_

"_You're still alive, honey," Sandra reassured her. "The Father has allowed us to speak to you."_

"_The Father!" Audrey snorted. "Tell him to stay the fuck away from me! He murdered you guys. He murdered all those innocent people."_

"_The Father has granted us clemency for our sins," Howard said. "He made a mistake that he doesn't know how to fix. He's made a –lot- of mistakes that he doesn't know how to fix, but prematurely ordering the apocalypse and trying to remove the Savior from the equation has caused … problems."_

"_We're scared, honey," Sandra said. "We're in heaven. But it's not … it's not what we thought it would be. It's … wrong."_

"_What do you mean, wrong?" Audrey asked._

"_Do you remember how everything was right before we decided to sell the house and make a fresh start?" Howard asked. "How … tense … it was all the time?"_

"_Yes," Audrey said, shame lacing her voice. Or consciousness. Whatever it was that was communicating with her dead parents. –She- had been the cause of much of that tension._

"_No you weren't," Sandra said, as though reading her mind. "At least not all of it. Your father and I were at fault. We'd been having marital problems for a long time. Problems with money. Status. Expectations about work and careers and stuff. We blamed a lot of it on you because you were the one most obviously acting out, but it wasn't just you. It was a –family- problem. You were just the … the … scapegoat."_

_Audrey was silent, or her consciousness was silent, whatever this was. She couldn't feel her body, but for some reason she wasn't afraid. This sensation was familiar even though she couldn't remember it. She'd been dead once before._

"_I thought the Father was forbidden to interfere in whatever game he's playing with the Mother?" Audrey asked. "They expect us to do something for them, but then they hamstring each other with their silly rules."_

"_There are loopholes in the rules," Howard said. "One of them is that when you are at the brink of death, those who love you most can meet your soul at the gates of heaven."_

"_I'm destined for Hell," Audrey said. "The Father has made that very clear, and I accept that fate."_

"_Gabriel has offered to sacrifice his own life against the Grigori to buy you clemency," Sandra said. "The Father has accepted that offer. Even if you predecease him, so long as Gabriel performs as promised, the Father will free you to enter the garden with us."_

"_I don't –want- to enter the garden!" Audrey cried out. "He's my husband. I love him. I don't want to lose him!"_

"_But we are waiting for you here," Sandra cried. "Things are different here. There are no lies. The money. The status. The worries about your career or how others perceive you. They don't matter anymore. You see your life clearly and you realize the only thing that matters is the people you love."_

"_Then you'll understand why I'd rather spend all eternity in Sheol at Gabriel's side," Audrey said quietly, "than a single moment in heaven."_

_Her parents were silent for several minutes._

"_We understand," Howard said. "Believe it or not, I think the Father does, too. This place is falling apart. The angels are sniping at one another, taking sides, and there are whispers about an ancient evil escaped from Hell just waiting for the chance to drag down those who oppressed them and destroy them. The angels are … afraid."_

"_The Grigori," Audrey said. "Apparently a problem of the Father's own making."_

"_We have forgiven the Father for what he did to us," Sandra said gently. "He is not well. He reminds me of…" Her mother didn't finish the sentence._

"_Reminds me of what?" Audrey asked._

"_It's better to let the past lay in the past," Howard said._

"_It was –my- cowardice!" Sandra snapped at her husband. "It's about time I accepted responsibility for it. The Father reminds me of that damned dog you dragged home half-dead from the junkyard one day. Big, nasty, and pathetic as hell once you realize he's lost his teeth."_

"_I've forgiven you for that," Audrey said. "I was finally able to forgive –myself- for that."_

"_As angry as you are at the Father," Howard said. "And you have a right to be. We –all- have a right to be. But as angry as you are at the Father, you have to remember that without him, this universe would not exist. He's … flawed."_

"_He's a broken man, god, whatever he is," Sandra said. "I'm not sure exactly what caused it or why, but something about him reminds me of that junkyard dog you nursed back from the dead when you first brought him home."_

"_Gabriel," Audrey said. "The Mother said that of all the angels, Gabriel is most like the Father."_

"_The Father is not well," Howard said. "He is forbidden to communicate directly to Gabriel, or even indirectly except in certain strict criteria, but I get the feeling the Father has done something he doesn't know how to fix."_

"_What do we need to do?" Audrey asked._

"_I don't know if you're going to make it, honey," Sandra said. "If you choose to remain in Hell even when offered clemency … I don't even know if you're permitted to do that. But if we don't see you again, just know that no matter what happens, we love you."_

"_What do we need to do?" Audrey asked again._

"_We don't know," Howard said. "That's the problem. I don't think –he- even knows. I'm not even sure why the Father allowed us to speak to you when technically you're not even dead yet."_

"_Maybe that's the message," Sandra said. "The Father doesn't know. He's as lost and floundering right now as your husband was when he was first cast down to earth as the Father's apology to the Mother for screwing up."_

"_You don't sacrifice your own children," Audrey snapped._

"_We did," Howard said quietly. "We put our jobs, our careers, our status in the community, money, we put it all before you. You acted out because you had absentee parents who only saw you as extensions of their own egos, a means to an end, not the precious person you really are."_

_Audrey started to cry._

"_You're not close enough to the gates for us to reach out and touch you," Sandra said. "But know that your father and I are hugging you in our minds."_

"_We love you honey," Howard said. "We're very proud of you. You've exceeded our wildest expectations."_

_Their voices faded as she fell back into the darkness. At first she was afraid. But then she realized she was hearing the faint beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor. Hand. Somebody was holding her hand. She couldn't understand the language, but Gabriel's voice sang a prayer, the tune vaguely familiar. Mozart. He was singing a hymn adapted by Mozart from the bible._

_Laudate Dominum omnes gentes_

_Laudate eum, omnes populi_

_Quoniam confirmata est_

_Super nos misericordia eius,_

_Et veritas Domini manet in aeternum._

_Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto._

_Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper._

_Et in saecula saeculorum._

_As he sang, she could feel him willing his strength into her body, willing her to fight the fever that wracked her body and left her too weak to fight it on her own. Although the light of the heavenly Father had left him, Gabriel, she sensed, had his own light. He was trying to teach himself to access it so he could heal her._

_Pain. It hurt. She slid back into the darkness._


	87. Chapter 86

Chapter 86

"How's she doing?" the Reverend asked.

"Not good," Gabriel said, not looking up from where the Prophet still lingered between life and death. "The fever has subsided, but she's not waking up."

"Was there any organ damage?" the Reverend asked.

"They don't know yet," Gabriel said. "They don't have test facilities for anything except the simplest medical tests. This place was meant to be a doctor's office, not the county hospital."

"She's pretty amazing," the Reverend said. "Ann. Did you see that kid who got kicked by a horse they brought in? Kids skull was smashed in. I gave him the last rites. Ann pieced it back together like it was nothing and now the kid's awake and answering questions."

"My brother agrees with you," Gabriel said. "Azrael." Azrael had been a regular visitor here at this hospital even _before _Gabriel had found his way here with the Prophet. It made him wonder how many of his _other _brothers had been keeping secrets from the Father that he had been too clueless to notice.

"I'm here if you need me for anything," the Reverend said, placing a hand upon his shoulder and giving it a squeeze before leaving him to his thoughts.

The others had caught up with them last night. Nurse Lisa had helped them get settled into a vacant house in town, memoirs of the former inhabitants who had not survived the apocalypse still adorning the walls. The house had been cleaned out for use as a stopover for the families of survivors coming from miles around to bring loved ones to the closest thing this area had to a hospital. Gabriel only knew because Mambo De Vivre had told him so. Except for his exhausting flight to what was left of a government military hospital, he had refused to leave the Prophet's side.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, caressing her cheek. Pale. She was still so pale. But at least the sickly pallor of alternating fever and cold sweats had subsided. Ann had announced she should be dead already with her usual blunt diagnosis, so perhaps they could take that as a sign of hope?

The Mother had asked Azrael to remind him of the time she'd coached him to shape and breathe life into Simbi. When he had still possessed the light of the heavenly father, many times the Father had bid him to help a mortals' shell to heal, but holy fire had been the source of that ability. With the Father's power, he could strengthen a soul to entice it to stay, he could escort a soul to either the garden or Sheol, or he could even help repair a broken shell provided it wasn't too far gone and escort a soul back again. But the source of power had never been _his._ It had always belonged to the Father. The Father shaped all matter. He controlled which spirit resided in which material form.

But the Father had, never once to his knowledge, been able to create a life spark on his own without the Mother's help. Life begat life all the time through the act of procreation, but the Father could not create a progenitor of a species without the Mother. Even in heaven, it took two to tango. But Gabriel _had _done both. Alone. Once. How could _his _ability help his little Prophet survive? She wasn't an empty shell awaiting the life spark. She already _had _her own life spark. It was her shell that was failing, not her spirit.

"Gabriel," Ann greeted, coming in to make her multiple-time-per-day rounds. Since her conversation with Azrael, Ann had been significantly less hostile. She still had the bedside manner of a sledgehammer, but she no longer seemed so … angry.

"Ann," Gabriel acknowledged. He watched silently as the trauma nurse pulled off the bandages covering the gunshot wound and examined it.

"The infection appears to be subsiding," Ann said, pointing to where the flesh around the wound had lost much of the angry red coloring. "That's a hopeful sign."

"I need you to tell me what is wrong with her so I can attempt to heal her," Gabriel said softly.

"I thought you said the Father stripped you of the ability to heal?" Ann said.

"He did," Gabriel said. "But … I can … it's been a long time, but … I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing." His words trailed off. He _didn't _know what he was doing. The best he'd been able to do was remember times he had felt great joy with his little Prophet and visualize pushing that joy into her body. He had no idea if it made any difference or not. He just did it because … he had hope.

Hope. He remembered the defiant young man at the top of the cliff that fateful night. Hope. Now he understood.

"Your brother said he believed you might still possess the ability to heal her wounds," Ann said. "She's still alive and she really shouldn't be. Perhaps you do?"

"It was always the Father's will when I healed before," Gabriel said. "He would bid me to put this soul back into that body and fix the broken parts, so I did. It was never any different than any other message he charged me to carry. I never thought about it, and I never asked questions. I can't even remember, really, how I did it. I just … did."

"You said it's been a long time," Ann said. "Been a long time since what?" She waited, expectantly, giving him time to process the question and decide whether or not he wished to answer it. She knew he was desperate enough to wish for a sounding board, a role his wife usually fulfilled.

"It didn't turn out so good for humanity the last time I did it on my own," Gabriel said. "It was an … abomination."

"What was an abomination?" Ann asked.

"I created a living creature that would seek out the warmth of the Mother and adorn her body like a bracelet," Gabriel said. "I was very young. It was a mistake."

"What was this creature?" Ann asked.

"Simbi," Gabriel said. "The Mother's loa. Simbi is the serpent the Mother sent to tempt Eve to take a bite of the apple."

Ann silently finished checking Audrey's wound, made some notes on the chart, and checked her vital signs. Gabriel assumed the doctor was disgusted by the revelation that _he, _not the Father, had created the serpent that had caused mankind's downfall.

"I spent four years in Iraq," Ann finally said, pulling up a chair and sitting down in front of him for the first time, ever. For once, her demeanor was not hostile. "Before that, I did a one-year stint with Doctors Without Borders in Sudan. Before that, I spent six years as an emergency room nurse in an inner city hospital in Detroit. Do you know what kills most people in the world?"

"War," Gabriel said. "Mankind's ability to visit down inhumanity upon man is mind-boggling."

"Wrong," Ann said, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze before looking him straight in the eye. "Ignorance. Over eighty percent of the people we treated for serious illness or who died got sick because they were too ignorant to understand that drinking unpurified water with parasites would make you sick, or that not sleeping under a mosquito net at night would increase your chances of getting malaria, or that having sex with multiple partners without a condom could give you AIDS, or that not cleaning a wound after you got cut would lead to infection, or that letting your kids eat the paint chips peeling off the ceiling of your apartment would give them lead poisoning, or that cigarettes give you cancer."

"You served in Iraq," Gabriel said simply. "That was war."

"That was ignorance," Ann said. "Ignorance started that war. Some megalomaniac harnessed people's ignorance and hopelessness by reciting a bunch of meaningless words out of some holy book and told them to wire up their children with an IED to go blow up somebody they didn't even know in the hopes that heaven would be better than life here on Earth. Ignorance. Ignorance is the root of all evil."

"But before the fall," Gabriel said, "your species didn't know suffering."

"That's right," Ann said. "We didn't _know _we suffered. That didn't mean we didn't suffer. It just meant we weren't self-aware enough to understand that _not _suffering was an option."

"But…" Gabriel started to say, and was silent. Adam and Eve had been the first of their species the Father had bred without fur as their predecessor species had possessed. They had been naked in the garden before Eve ate the apple. The first thing they had done after becoming self-aware was cover up, as the angels were covered up. It wasn't simply a prohibition against nakedness that caused the angels to cover up in the garden. It got cool there at night. Never cold. Never frigid. But cool enough that most angels instinctively wrapped themselves in their wings once the sun went down even though the light of the Father made such a gesture unnecessary.

"Your brother said he believes you possess the ability to heal your wife all on your own," Ann said. "She is still alive. She shouldn't be. And yet when I ask you how you harnessed the gift to heal before you fell from grace, you say you don't know."

"I don't know how I healed others before," Gabriel said, his voice exasperated as he rubbed one temple. "I did it, but I never once stopped to think of what I was doing. It was a reflex. Like…" Gabriel paused. Like what? If not for his body instinctively remembering to inhale when the Father had cast him down, he wouldn't still possess a mortal shell. Breath. The first breath of life for every species came from the Mother, not the Father. Breathing had been his first act of free will. Of defiance.

"Like what?" Ann asked.

"When the Father first cast me down from heaven," Gabriel said, "I didn't even understand that I needed to breathe. It took the Prophet three days to teach me how to swallow water. She had to force it down my throat."

"If your wife dies," Ann said, a hint of her old anger flashing in her eyes, "it will be because god chose to keep your kind as ignorant as he once kept _our _kind, not because you lack the ability to heal her. Ignorance! If your wife dies, it will be ignorance that kills her! Not knowledge!"

Gabriel turned back to his little Prophet, his wife, laying there on the bed, drifting between the worlds, neither here nor there, caressing her cheek as the wheels turned in his head. Ann seemed to sense he was working something through before he spoke, because she waited, silently, for him to gather his thoughts.

"I wasn't supposed to marry her," Gabriel said, still awestruck after all this time that the Prophet _had _married him. "The apocalypse. I did some bad things because the Father ordered me to. Without question. The Father realized he had made a mistake. He stripped me of my powers and cast me at her feet so she could watch me die. It was his way of saying he was sorry."

"You're alive," Ann said.

"She forgave me," Gabriel said. "She taught me how to exist down here separate from the Father and socialized me to your kind. She taught me what it means to love. _Really _love. Not just bask in the light of the Father."

"Knowledge," Ann said. "You created the serpent that gave _us _knowledge, and then _we _turned around and gave it to _you._"

Gabriel paused some more, the gears turning in his head. When he looked back up, he saw them, hidden beneath her skin so only _he _could see them. They were not yet visible because it wasn't time for the Father to unveil her, but for some reason he could see. Not just the caduceus, but other symbols. Cho-ku-ray. The symbol of power. Dai-kyo-mo. A master healer. African symbols. Native American. Aztec. Ann had symbols of healing tattooed all over her body. They just weren't visible yet because it wasn't time for her to wield her power.

No wonder Azrael found her irresistible! Ann could, quite literally, defeat death. No … not defeat. Transcend. Azrael's sigel, the sun, four encircled triangles each representing one of the watchtowers of heaven, and two crescent moons, one black symbolizing death, one white symbolizing rebirth, was tattooed right on Ann's forehead in the exact same place where Audrey had _his _symbol tattooed on her forehead. Ann just hadn't fully come into her power yet, so only those who knew to look could see the signs. Now he understood why the Prophet's compass rose had insisted they come through the pass. They were _supposed_ to be here.

And obviously neither the Mother, _nor _the Father, was calling all the shots. Free will... Azrael wished to be a lot more than simply Ann's protector…

"You are as Audrey," Gabriel said, suddenly smiling. "A prophet. At some point the Savior shall seek your guidance."

"What gives you that idea?" Ann asked.

Gabriel smiled and reached out to trace the symbols written on Ann's face. "I can see it written all over your face. The key. Here." Gabriel pointed to one of the symbols still hidden beneath the skin. "God and man coming together. _You _are supposed to teach me how to use my gift."

This time it was Ann's turn to be silent. Gabriel waited for _her _to digest that information.

"I've seen a lot of strange folk medicine in my travels," Ann finally said. "Witch doctors. Shamans. Faith healers. Desperate measures taken by desperate people in countries without access to modern medical care. Most of it was bullshit, but some of it …"

Her voice trailed off. Gabriel waited for her to finish her train of thought.

"I've seen things work that shouldn't have," Ann said thoughtfully, her eyes focused on some event that had happened in the past. "People that should have died would live because some medicine man came in to shake a rattle and do a rain dance. I was always … curious. Tell me what you remember and we'll see if we can't figure it out."

For the next several hours, they compared notes about people Gabriel had healed in the past, what little he remembered, and the one clear memory he had of the Mother teaching him how to shape clay into new life. Twice Ann had to leave to attend to other patients and came back. Finally, she had an idea.

"I would like to hypnotize you," Ann said. "I want to see if I can help you remember more about how you used your gift in the past. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes … it's useless."

"I consent," Gabriel said, uncertain of what was about to happen but willing, at this point, to try _anything _if it would save his little Prophet's life.


	88. Chapter 87

Chapter 87

"Lev?" Ann asked. "Please stand outside the door and ensure nobody barges in until I'm finished unless it's truly important."

"Yes, Ma'am," Lev said politely, tipping his uniform hat. For some reason, Lev always wore his uniform, his symbol of authority. It was as though, in a world which had nearly ended, the uniform of a security guard granted him power. Lev's armor. Gabriel glanced over at the armor he had piled into one corner of the room. It was a sentiment he could understand.

"How does this work?" Gabriel asked apprehensively.

Ann explained the concept to him and then dimmed the lights in the room, only the beep-beep-beep of the Prophet's heart monitor disturbing the quiet. She instructed him to visualize different parts of his body to tense up, and then relax, until she had covered every major muscle group, and then had him visualize walking down a staircase. Since Gabriel had traversed precious few staircases in his lifetime, wings making it more convenient to hop-glide down, she finally changed images to his floating in an updraft and slowly circling down. That worked better. By the time she counted down the number of swirls from ten to zero, although he was still aware of what she said, he was incredibly relaxed.

"I want you to go back in time to a period of your life when the Father asked you to heal somebody whose body was broken," Ann said, her voice soothing. "Can you remember such a time?"

"Yes," Gabriel said. "My job was to act as his messenger, not a healer. But sometimes Raphael would be busy and he would send another of us. We could all do it if he bid us to."

"Who was the last person you remember healing," Ann asked.

"George Washington," Gabriel said. "He contracted anthrax in a cut in his thigh while riding and it developed into a carbuncle. The Father considered him to be important. He sent me to fortify his spirit and speed his healing."

"George Washington?" Ann asked, curiosity sparkling in her eyes, and then she suppressed it, putting on a business-like expression on her face. "I want you to picture yourself as actually being there, approaching the president. What did you do?"

"The Father said heal him, so I healed him," Gabriel stated.

"No," Ann said. "I want you to picture yourself as you were then, but picture having your awareness of yourself as you have it now stepping into your body as it was then, when the light of the Father still flowed through you. What do you see?"

Gabriel did as she asked, and then recoiled. He couldn't breathe! He was choking. The collar was choking his awareness of himself right out of his mind! Instinctively he reached for his throat and began to tear at the collar that was no longer there.

"Gabriel!" Ann asked. "What's wrong?"

"I can't … I can't … I can't … _think_!" Gabriel said, frantically grabbing at his neck to tear off the collar that he no longer wore. He couldn't breathe! It felt as though his mind were being sucked out of his brain, strangled, drowned, and then squashed like a bug while a much more powerful consciousness assumed control of his body. It was … overwhelming! He was losing himself! This wasn't love for the Father! It was … horrific! He writhed in his seat, his wings frantically beating behind him and knocking things over.

"Gabriel," Ann ordered, a hint of panic in her voice. "You've got to stop thrashing around. You're going to hit your wife. I'm going to count to three and snap my fingers. When I do, I want you to wake up."

"I can't…" Gabriel thrashed, tearing at the collar. Panic surged through his body. His memories! The collar was trying to steal his self-awareness! He thrashed until he fell out of his chair, away from his wife so he wouldn't hurt her, his wings frantically beating as he fought to tear off a collar that wasn't there.

"One … two … three," Ann said, snapping her fingers. "Wake up Gabriel. It's only a memory."

Gabriel gasped for breath, his heart racing as he clutched his throat and realized the sensation was now gone. The collar. When he had tried to step into his body then with his awareness now, he could feel what the collar had been doing to his mind, his body. Despite the cessation of the sensation, Gabriel still hyperventilated in terror. He had felt what it had been like when the Father had owned his free will. Ann knelt at his side.

"What happened?" Ann asked. Concern laced her voice and the lines in her face.

"The Father used to make us wear these collars symbolizing our obedience," Gabriel whispered, his voice hoarse and his throat sore from the phantom choking. His heart still raced, his lungs hurt from gasping for, not oxygen, but freedom. "When you told me to put my awareness from now into my body then, I could feel what the collar was doing to me. It was …"

"A collar?" Ann asked.

"A collar," Gabriel said. "To ensure our obedience and make us strong. A … _dog _collar. The Father calls us the Dogs of Heaven. Audrey has it. She refused to give it back to me after I fell."

"That's enough for now," Ann said, helping him up off the floor. "We'll resume this in a few hours. _After _you send one of your friends to rummage through your wife's belongings and bring me this collar. I want to _see _this thing for myself before we try another session."

Gabriel nodded, still rubbing his neck and trying to slow his heart rate. What the hell had the Father been doing to them all this time? After reassuring himself Audrey was sleeping peacefully, he went in search of the Reverend doing his rounds in the hospital and, instead, ran into Mambo De Vivre.

"You have the look of one who has seen a ghost," Mambo De Vivre said, her concern causing her chocolate-colored skin to wrinkle like a raisin. "Is everything all right?"

Gabriel explained to her what had happened during the hypnosis session, the sensation of having his mind sucked out of his body and being choked when stepping back into his old self.

"I have heard of this sensation before," said the Mambo. "When a bokor, an evil magician attempts to seize control of somebody's _ti bon ange, _that part of their spirit which comprises their personality, to do their bidding, I have heard the sensation described such."

"You're saying the Father is an evil magician?" Gabriel asked skeptically, crossing his arms in front of him.

"No," Mambo said. "I'm saying a bokor attempts to recreate whatever mechanism the Father uses to suppress the free will of his angels."

"Suppress," Gabriel said, raising one eyebrow, ire rising in his voice at the very blasphemy of what Mambo De Vivre was suggesting. "Before I was cast down from heaven and made mortal, I _had _no free will. Only humans were ever given free will."

"It is not my place to second-guess or judge the decisions of the Father," Mambo De Vivre said, her voice soothing. "I did not exist in heaven to experience what you experienced before you were cast down. You did. I have only suggested that there is a correlation between the sensation which has you so upset right now and the sensation some of my followers have described when a bokor has attempted to seize control of their will."

"I'm not upset!" Gabriel snapped, his voice upset.

Mambo De Vivre raised one eyebrow at him, and then gave him that enigmatic, wrinkled smile she always gave whenever she was leading somebody through their own train of thought to look at something they didn't want to see. Gabriel had trotted circles around the Mambo enough times, the rope tightening with each pass of his denial until his head was against the post of truth, to know when she was doing her 'thing.'

"We weren't even self-aware before … before…" Gabriel trailed off. In his one memory of the Mother, he was _very _self-aware. He was also self-aware in his few memory fragments of time spent with the Father and young Lucifer. Lucifer had seemed self-aware as well. In fact, when the other cherubs had frolicked and danced around the mother, _they _had laughed the way that self-aware children do, one of his little sisters even crying when she fell and skinned her knee. Had he been born with free will, and then it been taken from him?

Mambo raised one eyebrow, her expression gentle and tolerant as she let him work it through on his own.

"He didn't make us take the collar until…" Gabriel said and stopped.

They hadn't taken the collar until the attempts of the Nephilim to spring their sires from Shoel had divided the remaining two-thirds of angels who had _not _fallen along with Lucifer. Before that, although they had no memory of the time before the Mother had left, Gabriel could recall being curious. Not free will as he knew it now. But … questions. He used to ask questions about why the Father chose one course of action over another. Not because he thought the Father was wrong, but because he simply wished to understand what went on in the Father's mind so he could better please him. After he had taken the collar, however, all questions had stopped. In fact, now that he thought about it, every hymn he had ever sung to please the Father had been written _before _the Father had made the angels take the collar as a symbol of obedience.

'_I don't remember ever having bulletproof feathers until I took the collar,'_ Gabriel had told the Prophet when she had accused the Father of using a combination of steroids, drugs, and mind control to turn his children into monsters.

Mambo De Vivre touched his arm, a sympathetic expression on her face, and left without saying a word. Gotcha! No wonder people feared the voodoo queen. With only a few well-placed words, she had a way of stripping away all your prejudices and preconceived notions and exposing the truth, no matter how hideous or painful.

It was time to have Ann, and maybe Jose, take a closer look at that collar…


	89. Chapter 88

Note:_ Just a little note of thanks for all the wonderful readers who keep reading and dropping me reviews, private messages, and suggestions. Using machines to crudely test for after-effects of 'spiritual healing' or teach people how to do it is the holy grail of alternative medicine. The ones I list are just some of the ones they've tried (with inconclusive results). I've had the privilege of working with 'psychic surgeons' who had a few bona-fide miracles … cancer on X-ray one day … cancer shrunk to almost nothing a week later (not me … I'm healthy as a horse). The ability exists. Nobody's just figured out how to do it consistently yet._

_Sepsis is a nasty illness. One of my children developed pediatric sepsis at 5 months old and spent several weeks in the hospital after going into seizures. If you ever get a cut and it looks infected, get thee to the hospital and get some antibiotics to kill the pathogen. There's a good reason all the old westerns would have one of the guys say "I'm gut-shot" and the other guy would leave the first guy who was gut-shot a revolver, and then the guy would shoot himself. Renal failure is a nasty, horrible way to go._

Chapter 88

"Lux aeterna luceat eis," Gabriel sang softly, remembering a time when his little Prophet had smiled at him shortly after he had woken up from his coma at the bottom of the cliff and his heart had done a flip-flop. The first time he had felt joy since being cut off from the light of the Father. As he sang, he caressed her arm and pictured all the love he bore for her streaming out in his voice and wrapping her in his protective energy.

"See that?" Ann said excitedly, pointing out some anomaly in the EKG they had hooked up to the Prophet's heart and comparing it to the colorful computer display Jose' had rigged up to enhance the clinics run-of-the-mill ultrasound machine to create a more sensitive 3D ultrasound. "It's uneven. But when he hits it just right, the EKG lights up like a Christmas tree. What he's doing is affecting the reading."

"Do you think it's the song?" Nurse Lisa asked. "Or something else?"

"Combination of the two, perhaps?" Ann said. "Gabriel … tell me what you're doing."

Gabriel hesitated. These were some of the most intimate, private moments of his life. Times when he had loved the Prophet from a distance, too frightened to even put a name to what it was he was feeling. Times when he had felt despair, and then his little Prophet did something to make him feel hope. Times when she had helped him feel joy so profound it made the light of the Father pale in comparison.

"I'm remembering times my wife inspired me to feel great joy," Gabriel said. "I'm picturing it streaming out my voice as I sing and wrapping it around her like a protective blanket. Like I did when I told Mary she was going to bear the Savior his first time down and she was frightened. It was the Father's voice I spoke with then, not my own, but for some reason, I remember what I did to put her at ease. Probably because she was so young. Comforting her was not supposed to be part of the message. It was … unusual."

"Can you imagine what it would look like if you were ever able to hook the Savior up to this machine?" Nurse Lisa asked, moving the ultrasound to get a better view of Audrey's heart. "Her pulse rate evens out almost immediately."

"I don't see any mitral valve damage," Ann said, "but its renal failure I'm worried about. Move down to the liver."

Nurse Lisa moved the machine to study the liver and kidneys. "I see some significant inflammation. Infection? Or permanent damage?"

"Gabriel," Ann said. "See where Lisa has the wand aimed? Could you try doing whatever you're doing, but aiming it there? Use the picture on the computer to help if it helps."

"Crea in me cor mundum…" Gabriel sang, switching to a different psalm and picturing the song wrap around the damaged organ.

"Just a slight reading," Ann said. "Gabriel … what are you visualizing?"

"I'm picturing the song wrap around where Lisa is pointing," Gabriel said.

"Try picturing a joyful memory again," Ann said. "See if that gets us a better reading. Picture the happiest memory you can remember."

'_Don't leave,' _she had whispered. _'I haven't had a chance yet to tell you how much I love you…'_ The words that had caused him to reject heaven and the Father's offer of forgiveness because they paled in comparison to the joy he felt, despite having a bullet hole in his lung, at hearing the Prophet whisper those three little words he had not dared hope he would ever hear. Just remembering made him feel that joy all over again. The Prophet loved him.

"Whoa!" Nurse Lisa exclaimed. "Look at that! I can _see _the inflammation going down even as I watch."

"This thing is off the charts," Ann said. "That's it. Gabriel … whatever you're remembering, that's the level of emotion you need to feel to harness your gift."

Gabriel concentrated, moving to another hymn. The words of the hymn really didn't seem to matter to whatever it was the crude equipment was picking up. They were hymns he had sung in heaven to please the Father. Soothing and automatic. Almost a lullaby. The Father had chosen him to be his messenger because Gabriel had a powerful voice. That was the mode of transmission that was most familiar, but they had already determined he didn't have to sing, or even speak, for him to get the crude machines to register activity. The key seemed to be experiencing the proper blend of emotion and focusing it towards his wife.

Ann's method of teaching was very different from the way the Mother had taught him, but it was effective. The machines were much more primitive than the Mother's innate ability to sense how he was using his energy, Ann's instructions more guesswork than true knowledge, but it was helping him isolate which things worked versus which things didn't. The machines lit up whenever he remembered a moment of joy so vividly that he was almost transported back into that moment, seeing everything he had seen then, feeling everything he had felt, experiencing the senses he had felt at that moment.

"Lisa … aim at where the bullet pierced the large intestine," Ann directed. "Where the sepsis originated from. Let's see if we can see a before and after difference there."

Nurse Lisa moved down to the bullet hole itself. The stitches were still clearly visible and had not yet dissolved, the tissue still distended around the places Ann had pulled the pieces back together after removing the bullet and stitched. A seam. Audrey had a seam in her intestine.

"She has lesions all over the place," Nurse Lisa said. "The sepsis did a lot of damage. We got it before it ate all the way through, but it looks like a Swiss cheese."

Gabriel looked at the image on the computer screen and winced. He had no experience seeing inside a human body except when he had mutilated an enemy enough that their insides became their outsides. Raphael had been the one they sent for serious damage, not him. It was obvious, however, that this was probably the source of the problem. Dark blotches dotted the whitish-greyish blobs that showed up on the monitor Jose' had jury-rigged to enhance the black-and-white image generated by the ultrasound. Ann had lamented the clinics lack of an MRI machine, so Jose' had downloaded some software from Dot Gov to analyze and crunch data from the old-technology ultrasound machine and reconfigure it to give some of the information a new-technology MRI could give. It was a sledgehammer, not a fine jewelers hammer, but it could give them an idea.

"Gabriel … whatever you felt before," Ann directed, "try to recreate that feeling. Expand it. Make it as big as you possibly can and then try to wrap it around those … blobs."

"Make the unhappy blobs happy," Gabriel said. "Got it." He needed a higher level of emotion. Perhaps a better song would help him elicit more?

"Osculetur me osculo oris sui quia meloria sunt ubera tua vino," he sang. Song of Songs. The song he had sung for her in the Mormon cathedral to proclaim his love for her to heaven in the ancient language that he knew she couldn't understand, but would _feel_. Only now he knew she loved him in return.

He remembered the first time they had made love, their wedding night, that first moment they had reached ecstasy together and merged, just for an instant, into one soul. He could almost _feel _as though he were reaching for her soul, now. Tears streamed down his cheeks as his heart began to sing with joy, just as it had sung that night, and he gasped for breath as all of a sudden it felt as though he were taking her pain into his body and making it his own. Just for a moment the room disappeared and it felt as though he had been relieved of his mortal shell as he reached out, seeking to touch her soul.

"My love," he whispered, feeling her soul reach back to intertwine with his as he pleaded for her to return to him. "I miss you. It is time for you to wake up and return to us once more."

"Look at that!" Nurse Lisa said excitedly. "The lesions! They're … disappearing!"

"Shhh…." Ann hushed. "Don't distract him. Gabriel … whatever you're doing … keep doing it."

He only heard their voices as though they were far away. He could feel her here, his little Prophet. Her soul had drifted 'between' because the pain in her body was too great for her to bear. They had no pain medication to give her to coax her back before her body had healed. But her will to live was strong. She was just … waiting. Waiting for her body to heal enough to return to it.

"Take whatever you need to heal, my love," he whispered, bending in to nuzzle her neck as he whispered in her ear. He could feel her pain and he wished to make it go away. "I will give you all that I can." He closed his eyes and focused on maintaining that feeling of oneness, the feeling he often felt when they made love, but also caught glimpses of just because some small thing caused them to connect.

Excited voices whispered back and forth in the background. The lesions were healing, and then they were gone. The places where she had been stitched back together disappeared. Her vital signs evened out. Now all he had to do was coax her mind back into her body so she would wake up.

"Awaken, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered, pouring his heart into his plea. "Awaken from this hateful sleep and open your eyes."

"Heart rate is increasing," Nurse Lisa said. "Nice and even."

"Check the other organs," Ann said. "See if the inflammation had disappeared from those as well."

Gabriel caressed her cheek, ignoring Ann and the nurse. He could feel her consciousness cling to his as he willed her to return to the here and now. The echo of pain he was feeling subsided, but didn't go away completely. He wished for it to be gone. All of it. He focused on the echoes of pain and pictured his love for her smoothing out the rough edges. Now that he knew what to do, it was only a matter of perfecting the gift so he could do it at will. Like training a group of muscles to work together to master a new skill. Like … dancing.

"Ann," he heard Lisa whisper. "You've got to look at this."

"Oh," Ann said. "Not now. Later. Don't distract him."

"But…"

"Not now," Ann said, her voice sharp. "Look at her coloring. She's coming around."

Audrey's hand twitched, and then tightened, her small hand curving around his larger one. Her mouth grimaced, and then twitched in one corner. A sigh. Tiny and faint, but more than she had done in five days.

"Should we…" Lisa asked.

"Later," Ann said. "Wipe her down and bundle her up. It's time we got out of here and let him finish doing his thing."

Within moments, Nurse Lisa had wiped down the ultrasound gel she had smeared all over the Prophet's abdomen, tucked back her hospital gown, and pulled the blanket up without disturbing him. Ann practically shoved the curious Lisa out of the room, leaving him alone with his wife at last.

"Little Prophet," Gabriel whispered. "It's time to awaken and let me see the light of your eyes."

"Gabriel…" Audrey murmured, her hand tightening on his. She was back.

"Take your time, my love," Gabriel said, focusing on maintaining the feeling that was enabling him to heal her. As she rose towards consciousness, he could feel her strength grow, her need to intertwine her life energy with his decrease. She touched him now because it pleased her, not because she needed it to heal.

She opened her eyes. Her beautiful, velvet blue eyes which he had feared would never open again to gaze into his.

"Hello, little Prophet," Gabriel said, his heart leaping with joy at her finally being awake. "I feared I'd never see you again."

"My parents," Audrey said. "I spoke to my parents. The Father granted them clemency."

"They exist now in the garden?" Gabriel asked.

"Yes," Audrey said. "They said it's not … it's not what they expected. Something is wrong. They said they think the Father is not well."

Gabriel silently digested this piece of information. It fit. Concern for the Father overwhelmed him, but he suppressed it. She had just woken up. He did not wish to upset her by voicing his concerns about the Father's well-being. He loved the Father with all of his heart, but he loved his little Prophet more. The Father had wronged her badly enough that she had not forgiven him. He would ask her more questions later. When she was stronger.

"Just worry about _you _for now," Gabriel said, tenderly kissing her on the forehead, the eyelids, the bridge of her nose and then her mouth. "We can discuss the rest later."

"The others?" Audrey asked. "Did they make it through?"

"They're fine," Gabriel said. "Gunn got banged up a little when he tackled someone who tackled him back, but otherwise everyone was fine."

"I'm so tired," Audrey sighed. "Gabriel. Could you…?"

Gabriel dimmed the lights, then squeezed his large frame as best he could into the narrow hospital bed, nestling her into his arms and wings so she was completely protected by his love. His little Prophet. Back … at last.


	90. Chapter 89

Chapter 89

"Were you aware you were pregnant?" Ann asked her.

"I'd … hoped," Audrey said. "There was no way to be sure. It's not like there's been an abundance of OB/GYN's on the road. I've only missed one period."

"He doesn't know yet," Ann said. It was a statement, not a question.

"I didn't want to … it's complicated," Audrey said. She shifted on the bed, adjusting the IV which was beginning to really irritate her.

"Azrael said the Father didn't treat the _last _brother very well who fell to Earth and sired half-human children," Ann said. "He didn't tell me _why _he was giving me this information, but I thought it odd he just mentioned it out of the blue. It's not like he's a very talkative angel."

"Azrael?" Audrey said. "You've met Azrael?"

Ann blushed and looked down at the ground. "It seems he's taken an interest in my work. Gabriel thinks I'm supposed to be some kind of prophet, like you, and that Azrael is supposed to … I don't know … protect me?"

"Azrael must have realized there were two souls to take," Audrey said. "Not just one. My parents didn't mention it when I was in between. Perhaps the Father hasn't noticed yet."

"You were very sick," Ann said. "Sometimes … there are complications. Especially when it happens this early in the pregnancy."

"You're afraid the baby won't be healthy?" Audrey asked.

Ann didn't answer. The look of sympathy in her eyes said it all.

"What should I do?" Audrey asked.

"I've never seen anybody love someone the way Gabriel worships the ground you walk on," Ann said, her voice wistful. "How do you think he'll take the news you're pregnant?"

"He'll be apprehensive," Audrey said. "Because of what the Father did to his brothers. Not just Lucifer. Over 200 angels took human wives and had children by them before the Father realized they weren't just going to abandon their families every time the Father said 'jump.' If it wasn't for his fear for the future, he'd be happy. I'm sure of it."

"Have you discussed the matter?" Ann asked. "Children?"

"It's something I think we both deliberately avoided thinking about," Audrey said. "I mean … I knew it was going to happen. We haven't … um … we never used … um … Gabriel's got the stamina of a bull. He … I'm not so sure _he _realized it was going to happen so fast. Before he fell, he didn't even … um … he'd never … um … he was really sheltered before I corrupted him."

"You're awake now," Ann said. "You're my patient, not Gabriel. It's up to _you_ what you decide to do. I'll defer to your wishes."

"What do you mean, decide?" Audrey asked. "I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby."

"Your body has been through a very bad trauma," Ann said. "I'm not even a doctor. I'm just an ex-military nurse who's seen enough trauma wounds to have a clue what to do. We have no way to run tests to see if the baby is okay other than the ultrasound. There's a very high likelihood you may miscarry within the next couple of weeks."

"Oh," Audrey said, her voice small. "You think I shouldn't tell him?"

"He's your husband," Ann said. "It's his baby too. _Definitely _his baby. We can already see the beginnings of wings. If you miscarry, you're going to need his love and support. I'm talking about … the risk. The risk of miscarriage. How much do you wish for me to openly discuss with you in front of him?"

"Gabriel helped me heal," Audrey said. "Do you think he could help heal the baby, too?"

"I don't know _how _his gift works," Ann said. "Or mine, either, for that matter. Azrael said I have the ability to motivate others to resist death and fight to stay in this realm. I don't think it's the same gift as Gabriel has. Not exactly. If someone isn't doing too hot and I start to lose them, I give them a pep talk. Order them around even though they're unconscious like I was a drill sergeant giving orders. Order them to fight death like it's someone they can fight. Turns out … it is."

"Gunn met Azrael once," Audrey said. "Cambodia. Took out a unit of Khmer Rouge, and then fortified Gunn's soul in his wounded body to bear witness to the genocide. Unless they're evil, Azrael won't take them until they're ready to go."

"It's a habit I picked up in the military…" Ann said. "A lot of soldiers will keep fighting if you order them to right until the very end. It's not love I picture giving them to live. It's … will. I will them to find the strength to fight death. Gabriel, on the other hand. He was able to heal you because he loves you. He used his memories of his time with you to create the right emotional state to heal you."

"We can see if he can do it again," Audrey said hopefully.

"You're barely eight weeks pregnant," Ann said, pointing to the color-enhanced blur on Jose's souped-up ultrasound monitor. "I'm not sure he'll be able to recreate that emotion with what appears to be nothing but a blob of cells, especially if he's apprehensive about having children in the first place."

"I wasn't even going to mention it to him until I'd missed a second period," Audrey said. "Probably not even until the third unless the morning sickness got so bad it was blatant. He's kind of … overly protective. Could you see how he's going to treat me once he finds out I'm pregnant?"

Ann smiled. She was pretty when she smiled. "If Gabriel has his way, he'll fly you to some remote Tibetan monastery that's also an impenetrable fortress and not let you out until the kid is forty. Am I right?"

"Something like that," Audrey said, rolling her eyes. "I have a mission to complete."

"Well, like it or not," Ann said, "something more important has come along. You're going to have to take it easy. If you experience any spotting, you're going to have to stop where you are and rest. If you push yourself…"

Ann didn't finish the sentence. Audrey got the idea.

"You're just trying to scare me into staying so you can hook him up to whatever machine Jose' can cook up and test what he can do," Audrey joked.

"Maybe," Ann said, her expression serious. "Do you have any idea how much good we could do for humanity if we can figure out how to harness that gift and come up with a training program to teach others how to do it?"

Audrey considered carefully what Ann said, weighing the competing missions. Gather the remaining disciples and risk losing the baby. Stay here so Ann could test Gabriel and rest, increasing the baby's chances of survival. She knew which decision Gabriel would make.

Gabriel didn't have to watch himself die every night… Already the dream had returned and she'd only awoken last night. Not frantic and urgent yet. But it would be. Baby or no baby, the Mother was reminding her she had a mission to fulfill. They'd lost too much time here.

"This is a decision we need to make together," Audrey said. "Let me break the news to him and see how he reacts before we go talking about potential complications, okay? I feel too crappy to get on a horse right now. It'll give you a few days to hook him up to every machine you can think of and run whatever tests you can devise."


	91. Chapter 90

Chapter 90

"Really?" Gabriel asked, not even bothering to suppress the decidedly undignified shit-eating grin which lit up his face.

"Really," Audrey said, her demeanor hesitant. As though she had doubted what his response would be.

Gabriel gently put his hand on his little Prophet's abdomen, awestruck. His child, a son or daughter, was growing inside there. He'd hoped to someday iron out his differences with the Father so he could dare sire offspring, but it appeared his offspring had no intention of waiting around while warring factions in heaven decided whether or not to allow his or her existence.

"How did this happen?" Gabriel asked, a feeling of wonder making his entire body feel almost ethereally light. A baby! _His _baby. Somehow, without even trying, he had created new life. It was … amazing.

Audrey gave him a bemused expression, one brunette eyebrow raised over her velvet-blue eyes as she suppressed a laugh. "It happened the same way it _always _happens down here on Earth," she said. "At the rate we've been going at each other, the only way it _wasn't _going to happen is if one of us was sterile."

"Oh," Gabriel stammered. "I never … um … I never thought … um … I mean I didn't mean to … um … if you weren't ready … um... This is all very new for me." He'd never considered the fact that consummating his love for his little Prophet would create a new life. The Father had always spoken of Lucifer and his men's siring of offspring as … disobedience. A willful, hateful thing they'd deliberately done to defy the Father's will. That it happened so … easily…

So beautifully…

Now he understood why the Father forbade marital relations for his angels. Not only had he committed the sin of loving his little Prophet more than the Father, but now he had a baby on the way to love more than the Father as well. Lucifer had sired 11 children with his human wife and had a 12th on the way before the Father had ordered him to come home. Thirteen reasons to tell the Father 'no' when the Father had ordered him to cast off the mortal shell Lucifer had assumed when he'd descended to Earth and return to heaven to battle the Grigori.

What would the father do to _his _offspring if he someday refused to return? Azrael had hinted that it was more the fact their reduced numbers had caused the Father to lose a major battle against the Grigori which had caused the Father's rage, not because Lucifer and his men had intermarried with the humans they had been sent to protect.

"I _want _to have this baby," Audrey said, reaching out to caress his face. "I suspected a few weeks ago when I missed my monthly cycle and began to feel a little queasy, but without modern medical tests it was too early to be sure. Ann has confirmed it."

"I would have never allowed you to travel if I'd known," Gabriel said, crossing his arms in front of his chest in a gesture the Prophet would hopefully read as … final. "Much less put you at risk in the mountain pass. You need bed rest."

"I'm pregnant," Audrey said, her voice teasing. "Not sick. Not from the baby, anyways. As soon as I finish recovering from the gunshot wound, we need to get back on the road again."

"We're not going anywhere," Gabriel said adamantly. "Not until the baby is born."

"We can't bring a newborn on the road with us," Audrey said. "Not if we end up having to travel into unsettled territory again. If we don't complete the mission before the baby comes, it's going to be difficult to complete it afterwards."

"Then we'll wait until the child is old enough to travel," Gabriel said. "The Savior waited 2,000 years to come back. He can wait a few more years to build a power base."

"The Grigori aren't going to give us that long to get our act together," Audrey said. "In my latest vision, the Savior is no more than three or four years old. We're running out of time."

Gabriel looked at her still-flat abdomen where his child now grew. Three or four years old. The Savior was now two. He wasn't even going to have a chance to see his own child grow up before he would need to sacrifice his mortal shell to save Audrey and the baby from his brother's fate. Sadness permeated his heart. He accepted the inevitability of his fate, but it didn't mean he didn't feel regret that he was being given so little time.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he kept her, and now their child, safe…

"Gabriel," Audrey said, reaching up to tenderly wipe the tears which were falling from his eyes. "We're going to be okay. I'm really happy about the baby. We just can't lose sight of the big picture because of it, okay?"

"We don't need to put the baby at risk," Gabriel said. "I've already made an agreement with the Father to spare you and any offspring we might have Lucifer's fate. As long as I hold up my end of the bargain, he will grant you clemency."

"It won't be enough," Audrey said, forcing him to look her in the eye. "That's what the Mother keeps trying to tell us. Simply sacrificing your life is not going to be enough. The Father beat both the Grigori _and _the Nephilim at the same time before by sending the flood and drowning out all but a few representatives of our species. When the Father is losing, he fights dirty. He'll destroy our whole planet, won't he?"

Gabriel was silent, trying to navigate the turmoil of unfamiliar emotions churning in his body and making him feel sick to his stomach. Emotions. Until he'd fallen from grace, his emotions had been so blunted that he'd barely been aware he even possessed any emotion other than contempt. It was hard to think with a tornado of emotions tearing apart his gut and making his thoughts race.

"Is Earth the only world the Father has ever created?" Audrey asked.

"No," Gabriel said.

"What happened to those other worlds?" Audrey asked.

"This is the only world he's ever been able to create sentient life close enough to his idea of perfection that he didn't just destroy it right away," Gabriel said. "He's wiped the slate clean on Earth five times before. Before the dinosaurs, there were four previous evolutions of life on Earth. Some of them got pretty far before he destroyed them. He dabbles with whatever trait it is he's trying to shape, and then when he gets sick of it, he causes a natural disaster to cleanse the planet of anything larger than a mouse so he can start over.

"Noah's flood," Audrey asked.

"Noah's flood was just an adjustment," Gabriel said. "It solved a problem. Flood the land so the escaped Grigori and the Nephilim who allied with them to free their sires from Sheol were forced to take to the air. We picked them off like flies. Only humans and species he'd set aside survived, but death by drowning happens quickly. The ecosystem recovered quickly. There have been many thousands of such minor events he's caused."

"Minor?" Audrey asked.

"Minor compared to the dinosaur killer," Gabriel said. "The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was aimed at eradicating the Grigori, who'd decided to seize control of this planet for themselves. Before that … I know the Father has wiped out other sentient species he caused to evolve, but it was from before he made us aware."

The thought crossed through his mind that he _had _been aware before. The Father had somehow suppressed those memories. Even _before _he had forced his species to take the collar which stole their free will.

"If humanity sides with the Grigori and the Nephilim," Audrey said, "it's going to be us or him. He beat the Grigori by destroying the entire planet. He beat the Nephilim by destroying much of the planet. From what you just said, every time things aren't going his way, he throws a tantrum and destroys everything. He'll probably try to do the same thing again. Sacrificing your life will be meaningless if there's no world left for our child to exist in."

Gabriel pondered her words. How could something so joyful, a new life, be so overshadowed by doom? She was right. Her gift was the gift of truth. No matter _what _he did, unless the Savior was somehow able to step up to the plate and assume control from the Father of this world under whatever armistice the Mother and the Father had negotiated, there would be no hope. Lucifer would protect the descendants of his human offspring as best he could, but the Grigori were insane. At least the Father could sometimes be reasoned with. The Grigori? As soon as they had rid the heavens of the Father, they would rid this world of humans as well.

"How will travel affect the baby?" Gabriel reluctantly asked. "I know very little about … about having a child. It didn't pertain to me, so I never really paid attention."

Audrey paused, an unknown parade of expressions crossing her face. She was as torn up about what to do as he was.

"A certain percentage of babies never make it past the third month of gestation whether you travel or not." Audrey said, not making contact. "Especially if the mother gets sick like I did. Ann said she thought maybe you could use your ability to heal to make sure our baby is born healthy"

"Then we'll stay here," Gabriel said. "At least until the worst risk has passed. If we stay another month, will that be enough to reduce the risk?

"There's no time," Audrey said. "Already the Mother is sending the vision, urging me to move forward. Either way, this baby has no hope of existence if we don't finish the mission."

"The more _immediate_ risk is now," Gabriel said. "We stay here."

"The more _serious_ risk is later," Audrey said. She pointed to her hand. "See … the compass rose is already urging us further east. If we _do _stay here, we may never be able to catch up. We haven't solved the problem. The vision indicates we're making progress, but it isn't enough. We need to gather more disciples so they can bring their skills into the fold."

"I'll talk to Ann," Gabriel finally said. "If we're going to make an educated decision, I want to know what we're facing."

"I've already _made _my decision," Audrey said, pulling away from him. "We're going to stay just long enough for me to rest and you to figure out how to use your gift, and then we're out of here."

"I refuse," Gabriel said, anger boiling up into his belly. "It's my baby, too!"

"Then I shall go ahead without you," Audrey said, fire flashing in her eyes. "_You _don't have to watch yourself get ripped to shreds by the Grigori every single night and then see that your sacrifice was for nothing. I do! If you want to sacrifice yourself for nothing, fine! But I'm not going to do that to our child! Long after you're dead and rotting in the Keep, I'm going to have to find a way to keep our child alive."

Audrey's voice was underlay with the authority of the Mother as she spoke. Just as the Father still sometimes spoke through _him, _the Mother spoke through _her. _But Gabriel was done being obedient for _either _deity. If he was going to decide, it would be _his _decision. Not somebody else's!

"Get some rest," Gabriel ordered, bending down to give her a perfunctory kiss and surprising her by neither arguing nor agreeing with her. "Before I decide anything, I need more information about what we're _really _looking at."

He bent down and kissed her abdomen, too. "Don't be scared, little one. Daddy's going to make everything all right." Despite her anger, Audrey giggled. He was out the door before she had a chance to say anything else. Gabriel knew from experience that when Audrey was in this kind of mood, she would choose the _opposite _of whatever he thought they should do. He wasn't going to push her into a corner without accurate information. He suspected he knew who had it.

After a quick trip to gather supplies, he retrieved Ann, who had reluctantly filled him in on the risks to his baby, and Mambo De Vivre, who had knowledge he needed, out onto the flat roof of the hospital clinic. The Mambo helped him draw some sigels and veve in the center of a circle, instructed him what to do, and left them there sitting in the middle of the roof.

"Azrael!" he shouted out into the heavens as soon as he retrieved the supplies from the canteen and spread them in the appropriate places on the roof of the hospital clinic. "Michael! Simbi! Get your tail feathers and scaly tails down here!"

The Vodun occasionally cornered an evasive spirit and forced them to answer questions truthfully. Why not? He was already condemned to spend all eternity confined to the Keep. It was worth a try. Gabriel sat down in the center of the veve-and-sigel-laced circle he had drawn using cornmeal on the flat roof of the building and waited for those he had just summonsed to arrive. It was time for Michael to face the Serpent he had supposedly once subdued and Azrael to fill in a few blanks in his knowledge.


	92. Chapter 91

Chapter 91

"You called me … hey!" Azrael exclaimed as he materialized in their midst and suddenly realized he was standing in the middle of a blend of symbols from both the Father as well as the Mother. "These won't … do anything."

"They're not for you," Gabriel said. "Ann?"

"Can we talk?" Ann asked, gesturing him away from the sigels.

Azrael's annoyance instantly dissipated when he realized Ann was there. Gabriel's intuition was right. Ann wasn't an 'if-ever-I-were-tempted-to-fall' influence in Azrael's life. Azreal had already fallen for her. Hard. Probably years ago. The only thing keeping him from taking the next step was his fear that touching her would kill her. Not any sense of fear, loyalty, or misplaced obedience. Gabriel, by demanding he make himself visible to Ann, had forced him to take another step. Ann led him off to one side of the roof, behind the little door that led to a stairway downstairs.

Next to materialize was Michael, wearing his dog collar. "What do you need brother … hey! Is this really necessary?"

"That depends," Gabriel said, his voice mimicking the slight Texas drawl he had picked up from the Senator, the master-negotiator. Gabriel held up his own defunct collar, the one he no longer wore. "Would you like me to remove it so you can answer me truthfully of your own free will? Or would you rather I use these to compel you in the name of the Father to answer me truthfully? Your choice."

"The Father forbids my answering certain questions," Michael said. "You know that."

"But this symbol here…" Gabriel said. "Forbids you to leave or communicate with him to ask him until I erase this circle. Now I'm sure you, of all the angels, are capable of breaking that command if I were to compel you to answer a question that was truly damaging to the Father, but you know I won't do that."

"How do you know I won't just lie?" Michael asked, his eyes lighting up with fury.

"Angels can't lie," Gabriel said. "Only answer truthfully or evade the question. A skilled interrogator who knows the rules could glean an awful lot of information by phrasing the questions a certain way and paying attention to what is answered or not answered. The Father cannot fault you for following the commands he himself issued."

Michael crossed his arms in front of his chest and glowered, his jaw clenched in defiance. Although Gabriel had always been known for his single-minded fury when completing a mission, this … willfulness … was a side of Gabriel that Michael wasn't accustomed to seeing.

"This thing," Gabriel held up his own collar with contempt, "is really just an extremely complicated computer. That's why these crude human symbols work. They're commands written in the same language as the control collars. Jose' cracked the code."

Michael stared at the collar Gabriel held in his hand. Slowly, his anger melted away.

"Mary Magdaline taught me a few symbols the Savior had taught _her_ to help me cordon off part of my consciousness from the Father," Michael said. "She didn't describe it the way you just did … they didn't have computers back then … but she believed the symbols acted like gates to open and shut certain parts of the mind."

"Free will?" Gabriel asked. "Or would you rather be compelled so you have an excuse to give the Father for answering my questions?"

"The only way I know to get it off is to cut off my wings," Michael said, his expression grim. "I'd really rather _not _do that to myself again."

"Ann?" Gabriel called. Ann came back around the corner, Azrael at her back, his wings instinctively flared to protect her in case the need arose. Now that he understood what he was seeing, the signs were all there. How long had his brother silently been watching out for her without her even knowing it?

"He'll do it," Ann said.

"Azrael?" Michael asked, realizing his brother was present. He looked curiously between Azrael and Ann, no doubt wondering why a mortal was present.

"Michael," Azrael said. "I don't know if it will work, but I'll give it a try."

"Give what a try?" Michael asked, his brow wrinkled slightly in what was, for an angel, an expression of true bafflement.

"Answer the question first," Gabriel said. "Free will? Or compulsion. I need answers."

"If I _could _answer your questions without harming either the Father or the Savior," Michael said, "that would be my preference. The Father has placed me in the rather unenviable position of serving two masters."

"Now you know how I've felt all these years," Azrael said, his expression unreadable as his dark eyes glittered against his ebony skin. Gabriel had always wondered why Azrael looked so different from his other brothers. Now he knew. Azrael had inherited the Mother's color of the void.

Gabriel handed Ann the sigel the Mambo had sketched out earlier onto a piece of paper. Sigel's were the Father's 'computer code.' Veve's were the Mothers. The technology they were attempting to circumvent belonged to the Father, so that was the code they used.

"I want you to look at this sigel so it fills your entire field of vision," Ann said. She placed the paper around six inches from Michael's face. "Focus your mind on something soothing and calm, as though you're having a very pleasant day doing whatever it is the Father asked you to do today. Divide your attention between the primary thought, the task you're imagining doing, and that part of your mind you've trained to keep things from the Father. When you're ready, I want you to signal with your hand, away from your field of vision. Azrael is going to touch both sides of your collar. Disconnection from the hive mind will be traumatic, but you've done it before. Whatever you do, don't move. His touch is death … even for angels bearing holy fire."

Michael nodded. He breathed several moments, composing his features into calm. This wasn't the first time he had used a sigel to cordon off an area of his mind. Just the boldest … to actually deactivate the collar itself without the trauma of cutting off his own wings.

Michael's hand gave the signal. Azrael carefully reached out from the side to touch the front and back of the collar. The collar suddenly clicked and loosened. Immediately, Michael fell forward towards Ann, who struggled under his weight. Gabriel leaped forward to catch him as Azrael jumped back to ensure he didn't actually touch him. How terrible, to never be able to touch the ones you loved!

"I've got you, brother," Gabriel said, carefully lowering Michael to the ground and holding him while he gasped for breath. "Breathe. The first act of defiance is always to breathe."

How had Michael cut off his own wings and survived? Gabriel had discussed it with Ann and she had a theory. Michael had spent the last 2,000 years cordoning off enough of his subconscious that part of his mind had relearned how to function without needing the hive mind to give it purpose. The agony of slicing off his own wings had overloaded his pain receptors and shorted out the collar just as Azrael had just done now, while his own screams had brought oxygen into his lungs and adrenaline into his mortal shell to force it to function. Like Ann ordering her patients to survive so their sense of duty would compel them to try, Michael's single-minded desire to save the Savior had compelled him forward.

Michael gasped for breath, gradually calming as his now-mortal shell grew accustomed to carrying his own weight. The last time he had been mortal was recent enough that his body remembered what to do. Within 20 minutes, Michael had recovered enough to shakily get off the ground. Gabriel helped him up.

"Don't try to fly, brother," Gabriel said wryly. "Steel feathers are not aerodynamic. You'll crash. When we're done, Jose' thinks all we need to do is put back the collar and show you a different sigel to reactivate it. If not, I'm sure the Father will notice you don't answer his calls after a while and send someone to come looking for you. Azrael will invent some excuse as to why he bumped into you."

"You figured it out," Michael said. "Mary Magdaline always said she thought there was a way to remove the collars without physical trauma, but she was a woman of her time."

"She also didn't have Azrael standing by willing to short the thing out," Gabriel said, turning to his other brother. "Thank you, brother. I take it Ann has told you why we're here?"

"Yes," Azrael said. "Congratulations. I did not wish to add to your sorrow the last time I was here if your wife didn't pull through."

"Congratulations?" Michael asked. "Am I missing something?"

"Audrey is with child," Gabriel said. "_My _child. A melding of our species."

"Oh," Michael said, his expression troubled. "That complicates things considerably. You know what he did to the last half-human offspring sired by our kind."

"So long as Gabriel's child does not threaten heaven," Azrael said, "I do not think the Father will destroy him. The Mother suspects the Father sent Lucifer and his men down in the first place in the hopes they would improve the breeding stock. He never thought they'd become _attached _to their human families. It was more the fact the Nephilim allied with the Grigori and stormed heaven to free their fathers, not because they existed, which caused him to send the flood."

"I need answers, brother," Gabriel said. "The Mother has the Prophet running around on a wild goose chase which the Father _seems _to be tolerating, but not really. Meanwhile, I'm in the same boat as the humans have always been. Clueless as to what the Father really wants. Given what happened the night the Savior was born, I want to be damned sure that not only am I giving the Father what he _wants,_ but that I also have an idea of what it is he really _needs _so I can be sure to deliver the goods_. _Before I put my unborn child at risk, I need to know what the hell is really going on."

"I don't have all the answers," Michael said unhappily. "All I know is that the Father changed his mind and has given the Savior time to prove he can lead these people before the Father hands of the reins of leadership to him. When … _if_ … the Savior inherits the Earth, this will become a _new _heaven. The Father feels this species is unworthy to form the basis of a new universe for the Savior to create life around. The Savior feels that humans will evolve to become what he desires … all they need is a little guidance. As for the Mother … I can't tell you what she thinks. All I have are memory fragments."

"The Mother believes creations don't need to be perfect at the outset," Gabriel said, understanding why the Mother had sent him that particular memory. It was _loaded _with clues. "She believes that if you simply love them as they are, they will stretch to become what you need them to be."

"I agree with Gabriel's assessment of the Mother's viewpoint," Azrael said. "She has paraphrased it thus many times before. But I am not authorized to speak on her behalf. I am supposed to remain neutral."

"Why are the Father and the Mother suddenly working together?" Gabriel asked. "How bad is the security situation in heaven for them to do that?"

"There have been Grigori incursions in ancient Mesopotamia, Europe, Asia, South America and Africa," Michael said. "All their old haunts. It's been millions of years since they last held power in this world, and thousands of years since the Nephilim walked the Earth. Right now, they're still getting their bearings. But the Father screwed the pooch by attacking humans. Instead of fighting the Grigori, the humans are allying with them."

"Exactly as the Prophet's visions have foretold," Gabriel said grimly. "Do we have an estimate on their numbers?"

"There were only ever 400 Grigori assigned to the Keep," Michael said. "They are insane. Pure madness. The only thing they wish to do is destroy the Father. The rest … I don't know what the Father did with their souls when he destroyed the planet. They are not in Sheol."

"I remember that some Grigori were more difficult to smite than others," Gabriel said thoughtfully. "Not that it made a huge difference. They kept handing us our heads on a platter. But not all of them appeared to be insane. Just the leaders."

"Are they reproducing?" Azrael asked. "I remember that was an issue the last time. There were millions of them living in cities when the Father first made us self-aware."

"No," Michael said. "I never understood how they reproduced. The leaders in the Keep are all male, although I recall there being female Grigori who did not do battle. The Father had not yet developed sentience to the level he desired, so it wasn't cross-breeding with a compatible planetary species as was done with humans.

"Let me get this straight," Gabriel asked, turning to Azrael. "The Father never made you take the collar, but you share the same gaps in memory as the rest of us?"

"The Father made me self-aware and told me he needed me to go battle the Grigori at the same time as everyone else," Azrael said. "It wasn't until he realized I inherited our Mother's ability to withstand the void that I was made intermediary between the two. At one time, I was able to play with my brothers without fearing my touch would kill them."

Gabriel couldn't help but notice Ann's interest pique at that comment. At one time, Azrael had been capable of touch. So had the Mother. But neither one was now.

Gabriel turned to Michael. "How many Nephilim escaped?"

"So far … none," Michael said. "Lucifer and his 200 men escaped from the Keep along with the Grigori. They have been working together to test the defenses of heaven and Sheol. We've fortified the watchtowers, but the fact remains that their combined numbers are greater than ours. The last time the angels that follow the Father _now _battled the Grigori that just escaped, we lost. Badly. And that was only because Lucifer and his men didn't return when called, not allied with them. If they manage to break out the Nephilim, we're in big trouble."

"How are the humans allying with the Grigori?" Gabriel asked.

"Our intel is sketchy or the Father would have caused a natural disaster by now to eradicate them," Michael said. "Rumors of small groups here and there have allied themselves and have been feeding them information. It's like the last time. You can't tell an enemy from a friend."

"What about the heavenly host?" Gabriel asked. "Can the Father use them to even the numbers?"

"Most of the humans left alive are here because they're immune to them," Michael said. "The Grigori are immune. Lucifer's men are immune. The first and second-generation Nephilim are immune, although a few of the third and fourth generation succumbed in the past. The heavenly host isn't going to be a lot of help."

"The Father really screwed up," Azrael said, shaking his head. "If he hadn't decimated the humans, there would have been plenty of vulnerable hosts to whisper to and rile up to defeat any potential human allies. Now … he's stuck. The humans who _would _have allied with him just because he asked them to are either dead or hate him for trying to kill them. There are not enough angels for the job. Angels are fighting other angels. Angels are fighting creatures they were not physically created to battle."

Gabriel compared what Michael had just told him to what the Prophets visions had been telling her all along. Audrey was right. If given the choice between heaven or Earth, the Father would destroy the Earth. Completely if necessary, leaving little more than a dust cloud in space. He had done so to other worlds before. He looked to Ann, his expression troubled. Ann nodded.

"Before you go, brother," Gabriel said, handing Michael back the collar Ann had removed from him earlier. "I could use your assistance with one whose ways I am much less familiar with, but who may have answers. Will you stay a bit longer?"

"Of course," Michael said. "Anything I can do to help."

"Were you aware the humans now have a machine that can show you what your child looks like even before it's born?" Gabriel asked, making small talk while they waited. "Ann can't tell if it will be a daughter or a son yet, but you can clearly see the baby has wings."

"Yes," Michael said. "You should have gotten out of heaven more often instead of following the Father around like a loyal dog. The humans have a_ lot_ of things the Father overlooked. Why do you think I defied him in the first place?"


	93. Chapter 92

Chapter 92

"Simbi!" Gabriel shouted. "Get your scaly tail down here! If you think I'm going to dance and blow cigar smoke, you can forget it!"

A dark distortion coalesced and solidified into a gigantic golden python, coiled so it stood at the height of a man, his intelligent golden eyes warily watching Michael.

"You called, Father?" Simbi hissed, tasting the air with his forked tongue.

"Evil thing!" Michael spat, instinctively reaching for his sword.

The Father had sent Michael to kill the loa shortly after the serpent had tempted Eve to eat the apple. Michael had crushed the unarmed serpent beneath his boot and had been about to give a decapitating downstroke of the sword when the Father had inexplicably made him stop. For thousands of years, that was the image humanity had of Michael. Michael subduing Simbi. And for thousands of years, not only humanity, but Michael himself, had always wondered why the Father had stopped him.

Gabriel now knew why…

"Don't," Gabriel said, stepping between them. "We're all on the same side. We need to start acting like it."

"Why don't you take your other form, nephew?" Azrael asked. "The one preferred by the Mother when she does not require physical contact. Perhaps your uncle will find that form less offensive."

Simbi shimmered again, and then assumed the form of a tall, thin, olive-skinned man wearing a snakeskin hat and boots, a dark purple and black suit, and a cane. Only the intelligent, golden serpentine eyes gave away that Simbi was not human.

"But … I made you," Gabriel said. "You weren't like this before."

"Creaturesss will ssshape themselves into whatever you desssire them to be if you love them enough, Father," Simbi said, his words still carrying a slight hiss despite his otherwise humanoid form. "The Mother urged me to assume thisss form hoping the heavenly Father would accept me. He did not. But it is useful when conversing with mortalsss."

"Father?" Michael asked, looking behind him and then up to see if the heavenly Father had just appeared. "The serpent is a creature of … the void. Pure evil."

"Simbi was my gift to the Mother," Gabriel said. "She felt lonely after the Father began to refuse her physical affection. He likes to connect intellectually, through the mind, and recoils from physical interaction as though it were filth. Simbi was meant to be … jewelry. Someone who would always seek her warmth and coil around whatever body part the Mother wished to adorn."

"You have no idea what it's like to crave touch," Azrael said softly, his expression sorrowful, "and yet dare never give nor receive it unless that touch is to bring death. The mere memory of it is like a drug."

Gabriel noticed the longing expression Azrael gave Ann, nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent, his eyes and nose taking in what he dared not touch. The hypervigilent way his brother moved as one with the lady trauma nurse who could defeat him, her patterns of movement long ago memorized, forever at her back, wings flared and curled as if about to touch her, but always two steps back lest she move unexpectedly and he inadvertently kill her.

It occurred to Gabriel that Azrael's fate was even more tragic than his or Lucifer's. Gabriel only had to spend the rest of eternity in the Keep for tasting the apple of physical union. No matter what the Father did to punish him, he could never take that knowledge away from him. Azrael … Azrael would taste what it was like to kiss the woman he loved exactly once. Just before he escorted her to the gates of heaven where the Father would make her forget him. It was his desire to alleviate this same loneliness he had sensed within the Mother which had caused Gabriel to shape the serpent which stood before them now…

"I have vague … memory fragments… of her," Michael said. "The Mother breathing a life spark into a little insect I created. I think I may have been the one to shape the first dragonfly."

"The Mother issss not my Mother," Simbi said. "She isss my grandmother. Gabriel is my creator, both Father and Mother."

"I didn't know that," Azrael said, suddenly taking a step forward to look more closely at the loa he obviously knew very well. "The Mother never said anything. We always assumed _she _had breathed the life spark into you. What else haven't you told me?"

"But …" Michael said, his hand still on the hilt of his sword in its scabbard in case he had to use it. "Gabriel … the Serpent is … evil?"

"Simbi serves the Mother," Gabriel said. "_Our _Mother. The Holy Spirit. She is not evil. The Father did not create us alone. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

"Mary Magdaline said the Savior told her such," Michael said. "I don't remember the Mother, not really. Only fragments."

"I remember," Gabriel said. "A little. But what few memories I possess are clear. My earliest memory is of the Mother and the Father after they had just created us being very, very pleased. There were over a thousand of us. We had sisters. Female angels. Now there are only six hundred. All male. And two hundred of _those _are confined to Sheol."

Michael looked like somebody had just punched him in the stomach. "Sisters? I thought I had memories … but even Mary didn't know for sure. It was before the Savior's time."

"Unfortunately," Azrael said unhappily. "I suffer from the same lack of memory the rest of you do. My memory only goes back so far before it becomes a blank. The Mother says I do not remember because the event which caused her separation from the Father was traumatic. She refuses to discuss it."

"But you have never been forced to wear one of these," Gabriel said, holding up the control collar.

"Not because the Father didn't try to coerce me to wear one," Azrael said. "The Father is paranoid. He and the Mother fought over it, but in the end, there was no point. As you just saw, my gift shorts the life spark out of everything the Father creates, including mechanical devices. Nobody else can assume my job. The Father finally had to admit he was stuck with me the way I am."

"Why did you create this … abomination?" Michael asked Gabriel, pointing to Simbi. "He caused mankind's downfall."

"It wasss the Mother who sssent me to offer Eve knowledge," Simbi said. "The Father promisssed her he had created a world for the Ssssavior to inherit where he would not interfere. He promised he had given them free will, but then he withheld it from them. She only came back because he had promisssed her he had changed his wayssss."

"He hurt her?" Gabriel asked.

"Sssshe hurt him back," Simbi hissed. "The Mother can give, and the Mother can take away, but her power is too vassst to fine-tune matter the way the Father does. She can navigate and harness the void."

"Why has the Mother stayed away?" Michael asked, intrigued. Curiosity. A trait his brother had somehow secretly kept alive while pretending all the while to be under complete control of the collar.

"When she is happy," Simbi said, "she can harnessss the life spark. But if she becomesss angry, she cannot help but destroy. Not just a single life as Azrael doesss, or even civilizations, species or worlds as the Father does, but entire galaxies. If she becomesss upset enough, she could destroy the entire universe she co-created with the Father and return it to the void, including every living creature that inhabits it. Including usss. She knows her anger is harmful, so she ssstays away."

"The Father constantly needles her," Azrael said unhappily. "Like a petulant child demanding attention. The Mother has learned to ignore it so she doesn't inadvertently destroy a few dozen galaxies, so he keeps upping the ante. The latest stunt … he pushed her too far."

"So it wasn't just me?" Michael asked. "It surprised me when he summonsed my soul and asked me _why _I thought humans deserved more time after I had defied him. It wasn't like him."

"The Mother ordered me not to escort any souls," Azrael said. "If the Mother and Father are in disagreement, I am not supposed to act until the disagreement is resolved. And then she physically left the void for the first time in as long as I can remember and did … that…"

Azrael pointed to the rearranged constellations of Orion and Taurus in the night sky.

"The Father listened?" Gabriel asked.

"Not right away," Azrael said. "When the Father gets angry, he gets … irrational. Let's just say the universe is a lot smaller than it used to be. While Michael was conversing with the Father about _why _humans deserved a second chance and Gabriel was ripping the roof off the police cruiser carrying the Savior, the Mother was systematically consuming uninhabited galaxies to make her displeasure known. And then … Gabriel's wife sacrificed herself to stop him. It made the Father realize the Mother was right."

"I have only seen the Mother sssso furious once before," Simbi said. "The day the Father cassst Adam and Eve out of the garden for tasting the apple. The Father wished to kill them, but he had made a deal to gain access to the Savior. The Mother reminded him of which deity wields the more terrifying power by dissolving the gates of the Keep and freeing the Grigori. For some reason she has never disclosed, the Mother possesses enormous fondness for the Grigori leaders and has threatened the Father with uncreation if he ever dares wield any punishment other than containment."

"They have put me in the middle of their eternal marital spat by making me the go-between for negotiations," Azrael said miserably. "It is a position I would gladly give up if there were another option."

"Why don't they just suck it up and work things out?" Michael asked angrily. "Humans do it all the time."

"Because they are too powerful," Gabriel said. "Think about it. Humans can be hurt. They die. They have _promises _of heaven or hell, but no certainty. Their lives are short. They have almost no connection to either deity unless we need one of them to do something for us. Until I was stripped of my immortality and forced to live amongst them, I had no idea just how precious connection to another life-spark besides the Father was. Even lesser life sparks such as a horse."

"Mary Magdaline made me understand," Michael said softly. "I spent a long time protecting her and the Savior's mortal descendants after her mortal shell expired. You can only be around a human one-on-one for so long before you begin to see the elusive spark of divinity the Father was able to capture when he created them."

"The Father did not create humans alone," Simbi said. "I was with the Mother when she breathed the life-spark into Adam and Eve. They were the first totally new creation the Father had created from scratch, not bred, in millions of years. She was so … hopeful … that the Father had changed and they could be reconciled."

"I saw that hope in the Father's eyes as well when he told us to bow down to them," Michael said. "It was the first time I had seen him happy for as long as I could remember. I didn't remember the Mother, didn't understand _why_, but I knew if they pleased the Father that much, then they must be worth protecting. I have been doing so ever since."

"The Mother understands humansss possess knowledge she lacks," Simbi said. "She misses her children and does not like having to stay away out of fear of destroying them. It was she who insisssted the Savior come in mortal form to learn what it was like to be one of the sssubjects he would someday choose a mate amongst and rule. She doesss not wish for him to repeat she and the Father's mistakes."

"That much is true," Azrael said. "Whenever I reunite a pure soul with their lifelong mate in heaven, the Mother always bids me to ask them what made them succeed where she failed. It makes her cry, but she asks anyways. When I reunited Mary Magdaline with the Savior, the Mother finally got to see for herself. It … changed her."

"Every moment she was forced to endure without him was a tragedy for her," Michael said softly, his eyes far away and full of regret. "She only stayed long enough to hold together the frail religion her husband had started and raise her children to adulthood. She knew they were hunting her. She slipped away from me one night and walked right into their hands. She knew they would kill her."

The three angels, and the undisclosed Prophet who watched, silently digested the information. It was finally Ann who got Gabriel's attention back to the immediate problem.

"Gabriel," Ann reminded him gently. "You have a terrible decision to make regarding your unborn child. Travel puts your baby at risk. Before you put Audrey on a horse and ride off into the wilderness on nothing but a vision, you need to find out what the two deities have in mind."

"What do you know of the Mother's intentions?" Gabriel asked.

"The Savior has sssselected twelve disciples from amongst the humans," Simbi hissed. "The same as the lassst time. He had not intended to gather them until he became a young man, but the actionsss of the Father have forced the Mother to send forth an emissary to do the gathering for him while his physical form matures. Your wife."

"Why can't she just send somebody else?" Gabriel asked.

"Your wife is zombie," Simbi said. "The Mother can only possess her because she is living dead. Gabriel was with her when she died, not Azrael. No subordinate of Azrael dares approach the Left Hand of God unless ordered. There was no one there to catch her soul when she died. The Mother was moved by your wife's willingness to sacrifice her life to save a child that was not even hers. She personally retrieved Audrey's soul from the void."

"The void?" Michael said. "Nothing survives the void. Not even souls."

"The Mother originates from the void," Azrael reminded him. "Every creation she has birthed bears a spark of it, some more than others. Including us. Obviously your wife inherited enough of the Mother's essence for her consciousness to remain intact. Usually all that remains are fragments. Echoes of tormented self-consciousness, fragmented into a billion pieces."

"I hear the Mother speak through her sometimes," Gabriel said thoughtfully. "All of the disciples gathered so far possess a strong spark of the Mother. In fact, most of the survivors of the apocalypse bear it to some degree or another.

"Simbi," Azrael asked. "Why did the Mother separate from the Father in the first place?"

"My Father made me intelligent," Simbi said, looking at Gabriel. "He made me intelligent enough that I might learn and evolve. It was his primary intent when he shaped my form, crude as it wasss, that I possess the intelligence the Father sought to imbue humans with. But he was very young. My awarenesss could be no greater than hisss was at the time he blew the life spark into me. Although I have grown more aware, I sssuffer from the same memory gapsss. All I remember is that the Father angered the Mother enough to nearly destroy the entire universe, and that her anger coincided with the approximate time the Father sent the asteroid to cleanse the Earth of the Grigori."

"The legend," Gabriel said. "The dark mother destroyed ten thousand demons that her consort was unable to defeat, but her bloodlust was so great that no amount of death could appease her."

"All I remember is her rage and feeling terrified," Simbi said. "But I remember the Savior crying out to her. She calmed down to suckle him, so perhaps he had just been born?"

"Gran Maitre is also Sekhmet is also Kalika, the Destroyer," Gabriel said. "At some point, the Father ticked her off so badly that she went ballistic. Then she took the Savior and left so he'd never be able to provoke her into doing that ever again."

"I'm ssssorry I can't remember more," Simbi said. "What you sssay does not contradict what I remember."

"Why is it that I remember the Mother touching me?" Michael asked. "Why can't Azrael touch anyone without killing them?"

"When the Mother is happy," Simbi said. "She can harness the life spark. She can use that to counteract her power so all she touches is not destroyed. But if she becomesss angry, she cannot help but destroy. Not just interrupt a single life spark as Azrael doesss, but entire galaxies. If she becomesss upset enough, she could destroy the entire universsse and return it to the void.

"The Father is not the only one who has trouble controlling his anger," Azrael said, his expression troubled. "Wielding the void is like creating a tsunami to squash a fly. A lot more than the fly gets squashed."

"Why do the Grigori hate the Father so much," Gabriel asked. "Forgetting the whole dinosaur-killing asteroid. I remember them ranting about how eager they were to dismember all he had created even _before _the Father sent the asteroid."

"I'm sssorry," Simbi said. "I sssuffer from the same memory gaps you do. I sssuspect we don't remember because the Mother and the Father both wish it to be thusss."

Azrael looked up suddenly. "Michael. We have to go. The Father has noticed you do not answer his hails and has asked the others to look for you."

"I have enough information to make a decision," Gabriel said. "Ann? Are you ready to try reactivating the collar?"

Ann rifled through the pile of symbols until she found the appropriate one. "Michael … I'd like you to hold this sigel out in front of your face so that it fills your entire field of vision and divide your consciousness as you did before. Store this entire conversation in that part of your mind you've trained to keep things private, while focus the larger portion of your consciousness on picturing happily completing whatever mission you _would _have been doing if you were not here. Signal me as you did before when you're ready and I'll snap the collar back around your neck. The moment you feel your strength return, you need to immediately go to wherever it is you were supposed to be."

Michael focused, and then gave the signal.

"Many of the soldiers who passed through my trauma ward swore you had stepped in to protect them from being killed by IED's," Ann said softly just before she snapped the collar around his neck. "It's an honor to finally meet you."

"I hate IED's," Michael said, not taking his eyes off the sigel. "I abhor people who resort to cowardice to win a fight."

Audey clicked the collar back around his neck. In a heartbeat, Michael was gone.

"Father?" Simbi asked. "May I go now?"

"Thank you, Simbi," Gabriel said. "Please give the Mother our love."

Simbi shifted form into that of a serpent once more, and then shimmered and disappeared. Azrael, however, stayed, as though torn whether he should stay or go.

"Ann is trying to help me learn how to use my gift to heal without the command of the Father," Gabriel suggested conspiratorially to Azrael, donning his best deadpan expression so Ann could not read his thoughts. "She has come up with a machine to test what works. Perhaps if you look at it, you may be able to give her ideas? If I have to bring my pregnant wife on the road, I need every advantage I can get."

"Yes," Azrael said, a grateful expression crossing his face. "Perhaps I possess knowledge that may be helpful."

Gabriel watched his brother shadow Ann off the roof, shimmering from mortal view as they descended the steps so he wouldn't startle the inhabitants. Ann knew he was there, whether she could see him or not, her deadly shadow. A tragic couple who would only ever be able to come together in death.


	94. Chapter 93

Chapter 93

'_Why do you wish to destroy us?' Audrey asked the Grigori leader. 'This Earth is big enough to share.'_

'_We were here first!' the Grigori leader snarled, circling her in the battlefield. 'The Father should have left us alone.' _

_The Grigori leader grabbed his head, as though in pain. He spoke in that strange double-speak, in the voice Audrey had begun to think of as 'beta.' 'He killed us. He killed us. The Father murdered his own children…' The voice he spoke in now was anguished. The same tone of voice Audrey had heard so many times from shell shocked survivors of the apocalypse._

'_The Father will destroy this entire planet rather than let you have it,' Audrey said gently, holding out her hand, palm up, in a universal gesture of no threat. 'But if we unite under the Savior, we can live peaceably. The Savior is not like the Father. He is compassionate. Like the Mother.'_

_All around her, a divided humanity battled. Some sided with the Grigori and Nephilim. Others with the Savior. The disciples and their followers circled the Savior, fending off the attackers, but he was too young to defend himself. Ann was not amongst the disciples. She was not one of them. She was a prophet, messenger of the Father. The seven disciples were outnumbered, but they put up a mighty battle, the Senator shouting 'remember the Alamo!'_

'_The Mother allowed the Father to destroy our offspring and enslave their souls!' the Grigori leader snarled in the voice she thought of as 'alpha,' lunging at her suddenly. 'And now we shall destroy you!'_

_Audrey screamed as the Grigori leader clamped its jaws around the wrist of her outstretched hand. The other Grigori circled her, snarling and having conversations with themselves in that strange double-speak, often voicing conflicting opinions within the same body. Madness. The Grigori were insanity incarnate._

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered in her ear, physically holding her so she knew, even in the dream, that he was still here. "It is only a vision. You must test another thread of the tapestry."

_She resisted calling his name. To call his name would summons him to his death. This time, she would hold firm. The Grigori clawed at her, tearing at her belly where her child grew large. No! She was supposed to have more time! The Savior was too young even to rally his followers! She looked across the battlefield to where Lucifer stood, his eyes filled with sorrow._

"_Lucifer!" she called, reaching out to him. "Please! Help me! You must help me save Gabriel's child!"_

"_You child is an abomination," Uriel said, suddenly appearing, the angels who firmly stood behind the Father encircling the battlefield and preventing the others from helping. "Your sacrifice is made in vain. Gabriel has not upheld his end of the bargain. It will be your CHILD who suffers at his side in the Keep in eternal torment." Uriel stood back and gestured to the Grigori to take her._

_The Grigori charged. Audrey screamed. They clawed at her belly, tearing her open and ripping her child from her womb. Before it could even take its first breath and cry, they killed it, mutilating it and tossing it into the air as though they were a cat torturing a mouse before they ate it._

"Audrey!" Gabriel said, shaking her. "Wake up! What are you doing! You must wake up!"

_She was dying and she knew it. Defiance! She was sick of these stupid recurring visions. She would not summons her husband to his death! They were all doomed anyways. She writhed in agony on the ground, her body twitching in death-seizures, but she refused to call his name._

"Lisa!" Gabriel shouted. "Get Ann! Something's wrong!"

'_She is as we once were,' another Grigori said, clutching its head as it engaged in double-speak. 'We are no better than HIM!'_

"She's going into cardiac arrest," Ann said. "Gabriel. You've got to wake her up!"

"Audrey, please!" Gabriel pleaded, cradling her in his arms. "You must wake up. You're going to hurt the baby."

_As the light faded from her eyes, the disciples fell one by one, along with those who followed them. Mighty Gunnlaeif was the last to fall, smiting one last Grigori with his dying breath. At the last possible moment, Michael pulled the Savior to safety, forever depriving humanity of his guidance. The Father had broken his own wager to gain access to his Son. The Savior was gone … not only from Earth … but from heaven itself. _

_Gabriel appeared. Too late to save her._

'_What have you done?' Gabriel keened, gathering what was left of her into his arms. "Why? Why did you not call me? It was supposed to be –me- who sacrificed my life to save you!"_

"Audrey, honey, please wake up!" Gabriel pleaded. "Don't follow this thread. It is killing you!"

'_I could not let you trade your life for mine, my love,' Audrey whispered, reaching up with her mutilated hand to touch his face. His beautiful, strong face that she had once thought was brutish. 'We are all doomed anyways.' She felt the life breath leave her body, willing her spirit to follow her baby, but part of her consciousness remained to observe._

"Flatline," Ann shouted. "Lisa … get me 10 mg of adrenaline. Marie … charge the panels."

"Audrey!" Gabriel shouted, shaking her.

"Can't he do his … thing?" Lisa asked.

"He's too upset," Ann shouted. "Azrael has not come for her. She is doing this to herself!"

'_Azrael has refused to complete his duty,' Uriel said coldly, the same inhumanity glittering in his eyes that Gabriel had once exhibited. 'I am the new Left Hand of God. The Father has sent me to escort that … abomination … to the Keep and your wife to Sheol.'_

'_Have you no humanity in you, brother?' Gabriel wept as he shakily picked up what was left of their child, the child who had never even had a chance to take their first defiant breath. Tenderly, he placed the dead infant on her chest. _

'_Humanity!' Uriel spat, contempt glittering in his eyes. 'How could you ally yourself with such filth? You are no better than HIM!' Uriel pointed across the battlefield at Lucifer, who gathered up his Sheol-deformed offspring, his human descendants, and whichever tattered remnants of humanity remained. _

'_I'm sorry,' Lucifer mouthed from across the battlefield, tears streaming down his face as he made eye contact with the brother who had personally thrown him in the Keep. 'Now you understand.' Lucifer glanced at Uriel, his eyes hardening, and gestured for his offspring and what was left of humanity to follow the Grigori, who were strong enough to defeat the Father._

'_Give them to me!' Uriel ordered. _

_Gabriel lifted the both of them and shakily stood, his heart screaming in an anguish which would never subside for as long as he existed. _

'_Is this what you wanted, Father?' Gabriel howled in rage at the heavens. 'Are you satisfied now? She sacrificed herself to save ME this time, unworthy as I am to even dwell in her presence. She has proven you wrong twice! She is more worthy than YOU are! But you cannot have her! She was your last hope! It is time to reap what you have sown!"_

_Defiance. Let the Grigori destroy the Father! With a howl of anguish, Gabriel took the bodies of his dead wife and child and willed himself straight into the void, where not even the Father dared to venture to carry out his petty punishments. It was better to have their three souls destroyed together as a single soul rather than be forced to spend all eternity apart._

_Half the angels left in heaven abandoned the Father, siding with Azrael, who refused to carry out the Father's wishes any longer. The Father could not follow Gabriel into the void to restore him and force him to fight. The Grigori had inherited the Mother's blood lust. The heavenly host saw kinship with the insane Grigori, abandoning the Father to follow them. _

_Without Gabriel to stand in their way, the Grigori stormed the gates of heaven and destroyed it. With no place left to hold the Earth-souls being held in reserve for the Savior to inherit and someday judge for uncreation or rebirth, every soul ever created was sucked into the void. They killed the angels who still followed the Father. They destroyed the garden. They destroyed the Earth. _

_Their rage still unsatiated, they turned on Lucifer, architect of their physical forms, and destroyed him and his children. They destroyed the surviving humans who had entrusted themselves to his care. They destroyed the other angels who had refused to take sides except for Azrael, who even they could not touch. They killed Ann, not even allowing Azrael to give her the single kiss he had waited her entire life to give her mortal shell before her spirit passed into the void, no heaven left to accept it. In grief, Azrael threw himself into the void carrying her body as Gabriel had done. The death-spirits followed him, there no longer being a heaven or hell to escort souls to, nor any souls left to escort._

"Audrey!" Gabriel said, grief apparent in his voice as he shook her. "Please! Don't follow that thread! Come back to me!"

"C'mon!" Ann shouted. "Frigging lack of power! Tell Lev to get that second generator on line! It's not charging!"

_Finally, with no one left to defend him, they dragged the Father from his workshop, scattering the clay images of all the –new- creations the Mother had refused to breathe life into since leaving him. They tore him limb from limb, scattering his immortal body so he could never coalesce it into consciousness ever again. They destroyed all matter the Father had shaped in the universe. When they were finally finished, they crawled up to the gates of the void, where the Mother dwelled, placed their heads upon her lap, and wept. Behind them twittered the angry, disembodied soul-fragments, shattered long ago by the void, of the heavenly host._

'_You should have let him destroy us, Mother,' the Grigori wept, two voices at once coming from each Grigori leader. 'Not punish us as he did. You should not have retrieved what was left of our children and forced them to serve him.'_

'_I am so sorry,' the Mother wept. 'I don't control the material realm. It was the only way I could get him to agree to keep your souls together. I salvaged all I could.'_

'_Please,' the Grigori leader spoke in two voices. 'Put us out of our misery. Let us pass through the gates and follow the example of our brother and his consort and child to be uncreated as one soul.'_

_The Mother allowed her long-lost children and their disembodied children to pass. There was nothing for her here anymore. Gathering her loas, she returned, heartbroken, to the void from whence she had once come, collapsing the darkness back into the light and returning all matter to the void from whence it had originated._

"Clear!" Ann shouted.

Audrey jerked as the paddles shocked her heart back into action. She felt her consciousness leave the void. The void she now remembered from the last time she had been there. Her consciousness could survive the void where the Mother had retrieved her, but not for long. Not yet.

"We've got sinus rhythm," Marie shouted.

"Audrey," Gabriel shouted. "Please honey! Wake up!"

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, opening her eyes. She reached up to touch his beautiful, broad face and trace the high cheekbones that highlighted his beautiful, inhumanly ice-blue eyes and smiled. "I finally found the courage to not call you. I found out what will happen."

"Don't ever do that again!" Gabriel shouted, anger replacing the anguish in his eyes. "I am your husband! It is my _job _to protect you." He was so upset, terror and anger blended as one emotion, that he physically shook with the intensity of it. The hand that held her now was shaking.

"I won't do that again," Audrey whispered. "I promise. I don't need to. Only annihilation lies down that path."

"Fetal heart rate has stabilized," Marie said. "The child's heart rate only dropped. It never flatlined. She had enough residual oxygen in her bloodstream."

"Time?" Ann asked.

"Three and one half minutes," Nurse Lisa said. "She was gone three and one half minutes."

Gabriel pulled her off the bed, into his arms, just as he had in the vision, and wept. A deep, keening howl of anguish as sobs wracked his body at her close call. Audrey now understood that Gabriel's promise to throw his soul into the void for uncreation rather than experience the pain of eternity without her was the truth.

"I'm okay," Audrey said weakly. "Two souls. The Grigori possess two souls in one vessel. The Father did something terrible to them to punish them for some offense and the Mother allowed it to happen. It's why they appear to be insane. Somehow … the heavenly host are connected to them."

"No information is important enough to risk your life," Gabriel hiccoughed through his tears. "You almost died."

"She wasn't out long enough to cause brain damage," Ann informed him. "She and the baby should be fine. Audrey … what happened?"

"I went back into the void," Audrey whispered. "Following that path will not work. I won't try it again."

She was tired now. So tired. Too tired to pass along the information to Gabriel before dozing off. She hoped she would retain some of it in the morning. "Please … I need to sleep."

She dozed off in Gabriel's arms, oblivious to the activity going on around her.


	95. Chapter 94

Chapter 94

Audrey's head jerked up from the bench where she had been taking a nap at the screech of ungreased hinges and blinked, momentarily blinded, by the sunlight streaming in from the door.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," the army Lieutenant who had opened the rear door of the truck said, giving them a crisp salute. "Welcome to the Pentagon."

"Thank god!" Cindy complained. "My butt was falling asleep. If I had to spend another minute on that hard bench I swear it was going to fall off!"

"Would you rather we spent two months riding here on horseback through nutjob-infested territory, sweetcakes?" the Senator drawled affectionately, pulling her into her side for a hug before getting up and grimacing as he straightened his aching back.

"I'm from west Texas," Cindy groused. "I grew up in the saddle. At least my trusty Morgan doesn't spew gas fumes back into the cargo area!"

"Not ethanol fumes, anyways," Gunnlaeif joked, pretending to hold his nose. "They leave plenty of _other _fuel residue wherever they go." Gunn pointed to his butt and pretended to lift a pretend 'tail' and drop 'road apples' all over the back of the truck, making a disgusting 'phlop phlop plhop' noise.

"That's gross, Gunn!" Lena said, punching him in the arm and tugging one of the Viking-like braids of his beard. "Congratulations. You've reached a new low in pre-pubescent boy potty humor."

Audrey couldn't help but laugh. She was grateful they had travelled far enough into the reaches of what was left of the former United States government that the remnants of that government had been able to send a series of transport vehicles to retrieve them, alleviating her of her concerns about the stress travelling via horseback through hostile territory would put on the baby. They had travelled in days a journey that would have taken months on horseback.

Getting jumbled into the back of military transport vehicles like cargo, however, was not a pleasant way to travel. Even less so for their poor horses, which Gabriel had insisted Dot Gov transport as well. He'd gotten rather attached to Haizum after he'd realized the horse had defended her at the battle of the mountain pass. So far the compass rose had not conflicted with their journey here. They were headed in the right direction, but no vision had arrived last night indicating one of the disciples was to be found at the Pentagon. This was just a stop along the way.

"How are you feeling?" Lena asked, hovering around her like a mother hen. "Any queasiness? Dizziness? Should we call a medic?"

"I'm fine," Audrey grumbled. "Just tired, that's all. And a little queasy. All I want to do is sleep!"

"That's just your hormones reminding you that you're breathing for two now," Mambo De Vivre said, giving her a hand up. "Your body will adjust in another few weeks and the morning sickness will go away."

"It's the middle of the afternoon," Audrey grumbled. She clamored to her feet and instantly regretted it. "Oh … shit…"

"Bowl!" Lena said, diving for the barf bowl that was Audrey's eternal companion these days.

The others politely turned their backs, coughed, or began to amble towards the door of the truck, pretending not to notice the indignity of queasy stomach. And to think she thought she'd ever be able to keep her pregnancy from Gabriel for another month! At least Ann had reassured them before they left that morning sickness was a _good _sign. It meant her hormone levels were rising as quickly as they were supposed to rise, whatever _that_ meant for an infant that was only half-human.

"Should I summons Gabriel?" Cindy asked, holding up the dog whistle that Gabriel could hear above the sound of the wind rushing through his feathers at high altitude.

"No…" Audrey mumbled though coughs and the occasional dry heave. There wasn't much in her stomach to heave up. She'd learned the hard way that eating anything except a single slice of bread just wasn't wise until at least after 2:00 in the afternoon.

"We should make ourselves presentable," the Senator whispered over to them. "It appears what's left of our government has seen fit to give us an honor guard."

Jose' had ridden in front with the two soldiers assigned to transport them, being too claustrophobic to ride in the back. Panic attacks. If you stuck Jose' in an enclosed space, it added to his perpetually high level of anxiety and exasperated the symptoms of his mental illness, medication or no medication. They had decided to stick him up front where he could film the territory they travelled through and use whatever his webcam caught to piece together each nights webcast, the images of shattered east coast city skylines even the remnants of the military circumvented filling the void left by their usual daily adventures on the road.

Audrey wiped her mouth, drank some water to dilute the acrid taste of bile in her mouth and dilute the odor, and shakily stood, bookended by Lena and Lyubitshke. The young gypsy was, ironically, the most knowledgeable about morning sickness, having spent her entire childhood amongst a people where most women spent their childbearing years perpetually either pregnant or nursing an infant.

"I'm ready," Audrey said, her voice hoarse from gagging.

The disciples moved to the front of the truck as one unit, the Reverend at his perpetual position of being the 'icebreaker' for most new groups of survivors. Outside, a small group of marines in their black and white dress uniforms, swords in their scabbards, stood in formation to greet them. Behind them, the shattered Penatagon, only one end still intact, rose from the carefully tended lawn like a gigantic boulder dropped from a retreating glacier. In front of the portion that had been destroyed, thousands of neatly marked graves lined the lawn as though it were Arlington National Cemetary. The people who had died when the heavenly host had invaded.

"Doctor Pasala!" Jose' chattered happily. "S-s-so very glad to m-m-meet you in p-p-person at last!"

"The Johnny Appleseed of the computer world," Doctor Pasala greeted, shaking Jose's hand, and then turning to greet the rest of them. "Where's my most unusual patient?"

"Up there," Audrey said, pointing towards a speck that could be seen circling in the sky. "He insists on patrolling reconnaissance everyplace we spend the night, whether it's supposed to be secure or not. There are a lot of buildings here that could hide enemy activity. He won't drop in to socialize until he's reassured himself there are no potential threats."

"Once a soldier," Gunn said, his _own _eyes automatically scanning the terrain as he saluted the soldiers in the group, "always a soldier."

The military personnel who were present nodded agreement. The fellowship Gabriel shared with Gunn and any other combat veteran they crossed paths with was very different than his friendship with somebody such as the Reverend. Band of brothers, Gunn called them. The sense of fellowship shared by anyone who had ever put on the uniform and spent time in a trench someplace getting shot at. Nurse Ann had understood that fellowship, having spent time places where her trauma unit had been unexpectedly overrun and forced to evacuate patients. Having just spent two years on the road as a group, Audrey was finally beginning to understand. Gabriel would probably enjoy his time here.

"I love what you've done with the place, Doctor," the Senator said, shaking his hand. He referred to the one wing still standing which had had the rubble removed from the lawn, lending the impression of orderliness to the shattered remains of what had once been the world's largest office building.

Just then, Gabriel chose to drop out of the sky and make his presence known in his usual, taciturn manner. A manner not so very different from the silent marines who had turned out to greet them. Silent. And vigilant. If anything, more silent and vigilant than usual.

"So very glad to meet you in person at last," Doctor Pasala said, reaching out to shake his hand. He turned towards one of the soldiers who had turned out to greet them, this one in Army dress green. "Gabriel … I'd like you to meet General Pine. He's our highest-ranking general."

"That should be _Colonel _Pine," the salt-and-pepper haired general said grimly, giving Gabriel a salute. "Promotion-by-apocalypse wasn't how I envisioned rising through the ranks when I joined the army."

"General," Gabriel said, his demeanor intensely alert. He had been apprehensive about coming to the Pentagon, not out of fear, but remorse. It had been one of the few targets of the apocalypse important enough to require his personal attention. The destruction which stretched before them now was his doing. He had personally instructed the heavenly host which military personnel to possess, which infrastructure to destroy, and which buildings to blow up. Gabriel was terrifyingly efficient at what he did. That so much of it had survived was a testament to humanity's defiance.

"Luckily," Doctor Pasala said, oblivious to Gabriel's discomfort, "the most important infrastructure was below ground and cordoned off from the main building by a series of security posts. Even the men guarding it didn't have access to a lot of the computer networks. Gaining access afterwards was … difficult. But that same difficulty is what made it possible to resurrect enough infrastructure to make Dot Gov possible."

General Pine appeared to be in charge here, Doctor Pasala having come in from nearby Bethesda Naval Hospital which was his usual base of operations. It was obvious from the way the guards were stationed that the military had learned from the apocalypse and set in place a series of stations that would make it even _more_ difficult for possessed military personnel, including the General, to simply gain access. At each step of the way, their party was examined for symptoms of possession, not just the usual security checks, the questions asked more and more difficult until the last few stations actually checked for things such as how rapidly their iris's responded to light, heart rate, and checked their teeth.

After a quick tour of the heart of the computer network that was Dot Gov, they left Jose' there to frolic in computer geek heaven and assigned the other disciples debriefing partners to compare notes with what was left of the government. General Pine led Audrey and Gabriel into a room with two guards and a man with a microphone, camera, and other equipment present, noted for them to sit in the chair opposite the camera, and sat down on the chair directly opposite them.

"So," General Pine said, his manner now professional and brusque. "This is the part where I ask the man who personally engineered the extermination of mankind why in hell I should believe a word he says?"


	96. Chapter 95

Chapter 95

"So," General Pine said, the veneer of courtesy gone as he got down to his _real _reason for inviting them here. "This is the part where I ask the man who personally engineered the extermination of mankind why in hell I should believe a word he says?"

Gabriel forced his face to maintain the expressionless mask he had worn ever since he had landed here. He'd flown ahead to scope out the facility a day in advance and had noted the marked increase in security patrols from one day to the next. The 'honor guard' was there to do more than greet them. The soldiers wore dress uniforms, but Gabriel could tell from the men's hyper-vigilance and scent of their 'cap' guns that they were carrying live rounds. What was left of the United States government was giving them a hero's welcome on the surface, but underneath, they were ready to spring if he turned out to be anything other than he claimed to be.

Had they done any less, he would have been disappointed…

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked, looking between the two. He watched the color rise in her face and her expression turn to anger as she realized what was happening. "How dare you!"

"It's okay, sweetheart," Gabriel murmured, moving to cover her small hand with his larger one on the interrogation table before his little Prophet indulged her temptation to reach across the table and smack the general in the face. "I was expecting this."

"Who the fuck do you think you are to speak to us that way?" Audrey snarled, standing up.

Fire flashed in her eyes and, for the first time in several months he heard the ringing of holy blasphemy tingeing her words as the Mother added her authority to her agents' voice. If he didn't calm her down quickly, she'd have one of the meltdowns which had become blessedly rare since leaving Salt Lake City, but still occasionally showed her rough edges when the Prophet became outraged.

"Honey," Gabriel said, more forcefully this time. "Please sit down. I wouldn't have any respect for them if they _didn't _ask these kinds of questions."

"I led my agents here in peace," the Mother spoke through Audrey, her voice causing the very molecules in the room to shudder. "What right does this mortal have to sequester and question the honor of my son?" As she spoke, the lights suddenly dimmed and the recording machine making little black squiggles on a ribbon of paper went wild, turning the paper black with ink.

Audrey shuddered with the rage which threatened to consume her, not just her _own _rage, but the rage of the Mother. Simbi was right. The Father wasn't the _only _one with an anger management problem. Gabriel could practically _see _the Mothers consciousness shifting beneath that of the Prophet as Audrey attempted to follow his lead, but the more powerful consciousness which kept itself hidden fought to regain control of its own anger.

"Mother," Gabriel said softly, not addressing his wife, but her connection to the Gran Maitre, "they mean no offense. It is standard military protocol to challenge the intentions of any individual who claims to have defected to their cause. Only by answering their questions can we reassure them that our request they follow the Savior is the right path."

Audrey gasped for breath as the more powerful consciousness suddenly released its vessel. She staggered, swaying into Gabriel's arms as he sat her back down in the chair in front of the camera.

"I'm sorry," she said. "She just … spoke. She doesn't … do … that very often."

"It's okay," Gabriel said, pulling her into his arms and gently caressing her cheek. "It's good the Mother made a personal appearance. If the General is going to trust us, he needs to get to know the deity who guides you." Gabriel turned to General Pine. "Isn't that right, General?"

General Pine turned to the man with all the equipment, an inquisitive expression on his face, looking for the answer to a question it was obvious was the man's main purpose for being here. The man whispered into a tiny microphone attached to his collar, and then pressed one hand to his ear to hear an answer. Gabriel could hear the voice on the microphone whisper something about the electromagnetic field in the room shooting through the roof when the second voice had spoken through his wife and that the voice-recognition software had confirmed the speech patterns were different from Audrey's. The man with the equipment simply turned to the General and nodded.

"That's right," the General said, the expression on his face becoming slightly more readable. Discomfort. The General was uncomfortable with the prospect of interrogating him, but had deemed it necessary. _Still _deemed it necessary. The Mother was not going to intimidate him. Good. The General went up a couple of notches in Gabriel's estimation of him.

"I will answer any question you ask," Gabriel said, "so long as I feel it is not knowledge that will compromise the best interests of either the Father or the Savior."

"I'd first like to ask your wife about this … Mother," General Pine asked. "Who is she? Why are we only hearing about her now?"

"In Christian theology," Gabriel explained, "she is known simply as the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. Hindu, African and Egyptian religious traditions have retained more memories of the Great Mother. Kali the Destroyer. Gran Maitre. Sekhmet. The Mother has deliberately absented herself from our world for a very long time due to marital issues with the Father which I think we can now all grasp."

"You were baptized to serve the Savior," General Pine said, "and yet you still remain loyal to the Father."

"For fourteen billion years I have done the Father's bidding without question," Gabriel said. "Countless times he has created a species, and then he has grown dissatisfied with it and ordered us to destroy it. Humans are not the first evolution of sentient life on this planet, or on other planets. The only thing which differentiates you from the other species he has created is the fact an armistice exists between the Father and the Mother, a kind of separation agreement, that the Father would set aside humankind and not interfere until the Savior grew mature enough to assume the reins of leadership of this world."

"Then why didn't he just do so in the first place?" General Pine asked. "Why did he just let himself … die … the last time?"

"He was trying to teach a lesson to the Father," Gabriel said. "Unfortunately, the Father can be thick headed. And so can your species. It wasn't time yet. The Savior decided to wait and give your species more time to grow up."

The General snorted.

"You find that amusing?" Gabriel asked, suppressing his anger.

"I find it amazing the Savior chose to come back at all," General Pine said. "I served in both Iraq wars. Man's inhumanity for man is mind boggling."

"So I used to think myself," Gabriel said softly. "But my brother, Michael, felt differently. He was assigned to protect the Savior's wife, Mary Magdaline, after he was killed. Unlike the rest of us, he actually spent some time walking amongst your species getting to know it, like the Savior did. When the Father ordered us to kill everyone, Michael was put in charge. He refused. So I was put in charge instead."

"Who ordered the Pentagon to be destroyed?" General Pine asked.

"I think you already know the answer to that question," Gabriel said softly, "or we wouldn't be in this room right now. I was put in charge in Michael's place. This was the highest value military target on the planet. I suspect the only reason anything survived at all is that more of your species than the Father realized had evolved immunity to the heavenly host as well as a fierce will to live. The Father underestimated you."

Gabriel noted the way the two guards who had been stationed in the room clenched their hands around their weapons. Audrey hadn't understood his reluctance to come here. She should have. As it had been when he had raided the diner, his actions here were more than those of some abstract soldier carrying out abstract orders from some deity on high. Here … he had _personally _overseen the creation of the battle plans to exterminate every living creature and every piece of equipment in the Pentagon. To these men, his former role as the Father's second in command was _personal._

They were also the only organized independent fighting force, according to Michael's assessment, on the planet still capable of taking on the Grigori and having a chance to at least slow them down. The Grigori had thus far avoided the remnants of the US military. It was crucial that Gabriel win them over to the Savior's cause. They didn't have to trust _him._ They just needed to trust that the Grigori were worse.

"General," Gabriel said, softening his demeanor. "The trip here has been very hard on my wife. She recently sustained life threatening injuries and is still recovering. I would be most grateful if you would allow her to get some rest and question her once you are done with me."

"I'm not leaving you," Audrey said, frantically grabbing his hand.

"Everything's all right, my love," Gabriel said softly, bending in to kiss her cheek. "If I were the General and someone like _me _just walked in his door, I'd be questioning him for days."

"No!" Audrey said. "This wasn't why we came here. I'm not leaving!"

"This is the largest remnant of a military left on Earth," Gabriel said. "You saw what your visions keep telling you. Civilians can't do it alone. The Grigori are already making incursions into this world. It is crucial we win what is left of the world's militaries over to the Savior's cause."

"You're being treated like a prisoner," Audrey said, a tear escaping one eye. "This wasn't why we came here."

"It _is _why I came here," Gabriel said softly. "I _knew _this was how I'd be treated. I have confessed many times to my part in the apocalypse. You saw what this building looks like, the graves lining the lawn. I have wronged these people personally. And yet they have only brought me to a room to answer questions, not shackled me in chains as I deserve. The only way I can make amends is by telling them everything I know about fighting the Grigori and the Nephilim. They won't know what to do unless I _tell _them."

Audrey nodded, tears in her eyes. She kissed him goodbye, reluctant to let go.

"I'll be fine," Gabriel whispered in her ear. "You felt the molecules vibrate in the room when the Mother spoke. She doesn't play games with toy soldiers like the Father does. Do you really think she's going to allow them to thwart her mission?"

Audrey sniffled and gave him one last kiss, then allowed one of the guards to show her out the door. The look she shot him before the door shut was fear.

She was gone. Good. Whenever the Prophet was present, Gabriel went out of his way to not do anything to cause flashbacks to their first few minutes together. She got upset when she caught glimpses of the Left Hand of God doing what he did best. It was time to chat commanding officer to commanding officer, the way two commanding officers _should _chat. As equals.

Gabriel flared his wings, an implied threat, and leaned forward in his chair, his expression no longer tender, but unemotional and cold. The face of the angel who had kicked down the front door of the Paradise Diner and come to destroy the mortal shell of an innocent child.

"Ask your questions, General."


	97. Chapter 96

Chapter 96

"Gabriel!" Audrey cried out, rushing into his arms the moment he came in the door. Behind him, the guards politely nodded and then shut the door. The _guarded _door. The military personnel at the Pentagon had been unfailingly polite, but evasive to her questions.

"I'm fine," Gabriel reassured her. He looked … exhausted.

"They wouldn't let me see you!" Audrey said. For the past six hours she had been impatiently pacing the floor of the Spartan, but adequately furnished sleeping quarters deep in the bowels of the underground complex that was the Pentagon which dwarfed the building which had been destroyed above ground. The guards had brought her meals and several books, but they would not let her leave.

"The general had questions for me," Gabriel said. "Lots of questions. Were I in _his _position, I would have questions, too."

"They're treating us like prisoners!" Audrey said. "They wouldn't let me leave or speak to the others."

"If we were prisoners," Gabriel said, "they wouldn't let me come to you now. They have questions, that's all."

"I want to get out of here as soon as possible and never look back!" Audrey exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm and attempting to drag him towards the door. "If I had any idea they were going to treat you so poorly, I would have refused to come."

"If they had done anything _but _put me through the third degree," Gabriel said, tugging her towards him and encircling her with his wings to stop her from pounding on the door, "I'd have no respect for their capability as a military force. Given my position with the Father prior to my fall, I'm amazed they're treating me as well as they are. The Father would have simply confined me to the Keep and let the heavenly host torture the information out of me."

"You knew!" Audrey accused, poking him in the chest with one finger. "And you didn't say anything!"

"I warned you I personally oversaw the forces which destroyed the Pentagon when they asked us to come here," Gabriel said, his expression troubled as he pulled her against his chest. "The Father said to exterminate them and destroy the infrastructure, so I sent the heavenly host to with specific instructions about how to exterminate them and destroy the infrastructure. I'm amazed as much survived as did."

"But you've changed," Audrey exclaimed. "They know that!"

"They know what Jose' has broadcast on Dot Gov," Gabriel said. "For all they know, I've been sent here to conduct surveillance so the Father can be certain to destroy it for sure next time. They're soldiers. Until they've had a chance to look me in the eye under fire and take my measure, they're not going to trust me."

For some odd reason, Gabriel seemed … pleased? Tired … but pleased.

Audrey buried her face in his chest, shuddering with suppressed anger. Not the indignation of the Mother this time, but her own anger. She had led Gabriel here like a lamb to slaughter. He had known, and he had come willingly to the altar, willing to sacrifice himself in exchange for safe passage and easy transportation in the direction of the compass rose so travel wouldn't put their baby at risk.

"The Mother was furious," Audrey said. "I have never felt her power like that before. Not even when she sent the bloodlust to help me overcome the convicts in the Appalachian pass."

"She was sending them a message," Gabriel said, tilting her head up to look into her eyes. "She fried the circuitry out of every instrument they had. I heard what the men on the other side of the mirror whispered into the second interrogators earpiece. She was warning them not to harm us."

"Did it feel like that when you channeled the holy fire of the Father?" Audrey asked. "So … I don't know how to describe it. Like … gaah!" Her inability to find words to describe the sensation not only of unbridled power, but also of the deep anger that underlay it, was frustrating.

"Sometimes," Gabriel said. "Simbi said not many humans are capable of channeling the Mother's consciousness the way that you do."

"My hands were on the table when she spoke through me," Audrey said. "For a moment it felt like my hand was about to pass right through the table."

"The Mother wields the power of the void," Gabriel said. "Matter broken down into its smallest possible form.

"I don't like this!" Audrey said, tugging away from him suddenly and wrapping her hands around her body as though she were cold. "I want to get out of here! When can we leave?" She prepared to go pound on the door and demand they be released.

"Patience, little Prophet," Gabriel said, scooping her up like she were a toddler and swinging her around, depositing her on the bed. "We have at least three more days here answering questions before their curiosity will be satisfied and they will start to trust us."

Audrey attempted to squirm out of his grip and was pinned securely in the pleasant prison of two beefy biceps and a pair of wings. "Gabriel!" she whined.

"This is the first time we've had alone together in nearly two and a half weeks," Gabriel murmured huskily in her ear, lowering his voice into that deep rumble that vibrated all the way to the core of her feminine mysteries. "A nice guard outside our door to make sure no nurses barge in on us. Soundproof walls. No worries about the other disciples hearing me pound my wings against the walls."

"We can't…" Audrey said. "Ann said no sex for another two weeks until the risk of miscarriage has passed."

"Mmmm hmmmm…" Gabriel murmured. "Doesn't mean we can't do … other … pleasant things." He began to kiss down her neck and unbutton her shirt, inhaling her scent as though it pleased him. Gabriel hated it when she wore perfume or used heavily scented soaps. He'd always acted as though her scent was an aphrodisiac.

"Gabriel!" Audrey exclaimed. "You're just trying to distract me!"

"Mmmmm hmmmm…" Gabriel murmured, finally getting her shirt unbuttoned pushing aside her bra to free one pregnancy-enlarged, exquisitely sensitive breast. He took the nipple into his mouth and nibbled on it before looking her in the eyes, one eyebrow raised in a comical expression. "Is it working?"

"Yes … no!" Audrey exclaimed, attempting to squirm out of his grip. No such luck. He had her pinned. "What assurances do we have they aren't going to keep us here?"

"The general's a good man," Gabriel said, ceasing his teasing and pulling her in to nuzzle her neck, tasting between his sentences as he spoke. "He's doing what he must. I could tell by the end of the session I'd convinced him my change of heart was real. Now he's just going to pick my brains for every tidbit he can get out of me. He'd be a fool _not _to do so."

"Are you in a … good … mood … because of this?" Audrey asked, squirming under the ministrations of his lips as a hunger to be made love to began to grow in her core. "You seem … very … happy."

Gabriel's wings fluttered as he took advantage of the unusually high ceiling in the room to shift position instead of squirming the way he was normally forced to do in human-sized quarters. Had there been anything on the walls, they would have been knocked off by now, but the room was Spartan and efficient. Someplace to sleep a few hours in between attending to more important tasks.

"Did you see how much was left intact?" Gabriel said enthusiastically, settling down into a more comfortable position, the position he preferred to sleep in. "I spent weeks planning the destruction of this facility. My plans failed." He tugged her onto his bottom wing even though by morning her weight would have cut off the circulation and caused it to go to sleep on him, and then covered her with his top wing.

"You're happy you failed?" Audrey asked, not understanding.

"I'm happy the Father's intelligence is that far out of date about how far humans have evolved," Gabriel mumbled somewhat cheerfully. "If the Father doesn't know it, then Lucifer won't know it either. He can't tell the Grigori what he doesn't know."

"Oh," Audrey said. What else could she say? They were prisoners. Sort of. Maybe more … forced guests. And Gabriel was in a good mood about it? "You think maybe the military can help defeat the Grigori?"

Gabriel didn't answer her. His breathing was deep and even, already out cold. It was rare she saw him sleeping unless he was seriously injured, but when she did, she was always amazed at how much in sleep, the worries gone from his face, he still resembled the little cherub the Mother had shown her sitting off to one side of the garden, patiently waiting to give the Mother a grubby fistful of dandelions. Being interrogated had exhausted her reticent husband far more than battling a few dozen human predators.

"Good night, my love," Audrey whispered, snuggling into her favorite position in his arms. Three more days. So long as they let them come together afterwards like this, she would endure.


	98. Chapter 97

Chapter 97

"Where are we going?" Gabriel asked. For the past twenty-five minutes or so, the General had been leading him down through a series of ever deeper levels of security beneath the remains of the Pentagon. He'd studied the layout of the building when planning the offensive about it prior to the apocalypse, so he knew there weren't many levels of security _higher _than the one the General led him into now.

"I've got something I want to show you," General Pine said, his face still wearing the same grim expression he'd worn ever since Gabriel had arrived.

For four days the General had taken turns with numerous other interrogators asking every question they could think of under the sun. First they'd tested Gabriel's knowledge of their weaknesses, then his knowledge of military affairs in general, and then they'd performed the usual overly-invasive medical tests, poking and prodding him like a lab rat. The past day had finally devolved into what Gabriel referred to as 'stupid biblical military history" questions. Why had the Father sacked Troy? Did the '300' Spartans have divine help fending off the Persians? Was Rome the Father's pet project?

Once they'd gotten to that stage, Gabriel had begun to feel confident the remnants of the US Government was about to spring the party of disciples. The entire time they'd been here, it had been obvious the General had had something else on his mind besides just how badly the Father could hurt them if he changed his mind again. Gabriel had a feeling he was about to find out just what that 'something' was.

The General nodded to the guard, who pushed a large red button. An alarm went off, red lights flashing as a computer-generated voice warned them the door was being opened. A large steel blast door slid upwards, exposing bullet-proof glass that had to be at least three feet thick. Pacing the floor in the center of the room, snarling, was a Grigori.

"Grigori," Gabriel said, the General going up in his estimation yet another notch for his poker face. "They're here."

For a mere former Colonel thrust suddenly into leadership of what was left of the US military, the General continued to surprise him. The General had kept a poker face the entire time he'd grilled him about their mutual enemy, not giving any clues that he believed him when he spoke of angel-sized dragon-like winged creatures that were insane. The General would have made a good angel.

"We captured this thing several weeks ago in what was left of the situation room in the White House," General Pine said. "The White House, Congress, and the CIA were completely destroyed. The entire seat of government was wiped off the planet by the forces you have openly admitted you commanded. If not for this … thing … taking down an entire company of my men before we managed to wound it badly enough to capture it … I don't care _what _the de facto President ordered about safe passage and cooperation. My men would have shot you on sight."

Gabriel stared at the seven-foot tall, not including the tail, slender, dinosaur-like creature that had an extra pair of limbs, wings, like a pterodactyl. Its head was much larger than a typical dinosaur, designed to hold a larger brain, and it was warm-blooded. Lucifer's boyhood impression of a variety of creatures the Father had been working on at the time. A dinosaur that was intelligent, warm-blooded, could fly, and would both protect the Mother and provide good company for her. Grigori came in a variety of colors. Lucifer had shaped four hundred of them for his brothers in just about every color scheme imaginable before the outraged Father had stopped him.

"How are you holding it here?" Gabriel asked. "Grigori are dimensional creatures. They can teleport between the dimensions the way angels can."

"Why can't _you _teleport any longer?" the General asked.

"The heavenly Father has stripped me of my ability to do it," Gabriel said. "It is as though … as though that knowledge has been wiped from my memory. It's not because of the control collar. I was able to teleport even _before _the control collar."

The General nodded. The best minds that had survived the apocalypse were working with Jose' to unlock the secrets to that collar even as they spoke. Jose' had cracked something he called the 'source code.' Some key to understanding how the Father's omnipotent 'hive mind' worked which Gabriel couldn't even begin to fathom. He was a soldier, not a computer genius, but the longer he spent with Jose', the more the mentally fragile young man reminded him of the Father.

Right down to the Jose's paranoia, dislike of being touched, and peculiar obsessions with often inconsequential details…

Gabriel had teleported between the dimensions for as long as he had memory, from the time the Father had made them self-aware and blocked off certain sections of the garden to his species and ordered them to fight Grigori. He had no idea _how _he had done it. He just … had. Until the day he just … couldn't … anymore.

"We wounded this one pretty badly when we captured it," the General said. "We've had other incursions. Including here. But this is the first one we've been able to catch. Usually there's just a flash of light and then they're gone. We think this one suffered brain damage. It keeps talking to itself as though it were ... insane."

"That's normal," Gabriel said. "The Father told us the Grigori were insane and ordered us not to talk to them. Just kill them. But the Prophet has received a vision that the Grigori possess two souls trapped inside one body. We have no idea why or how that happened. They were initially created by the Mother and Lucifer to be playthings. Like a dog. I remember playing with them in the Garden of Eden as a young cherub. It was from before the Father asked angels to become his warriors."

"Some father," General Pine said flatly, the rage underlying that statement carefully controlled behind a stoic military mask of professionalism. "Given what he just tried to do to humanity and what he _has _done with other species who've displeased him, the question I have for you is, why should we follow this Savior you claim you now serve and not try to ally with _them_?"

"If you didn't already have the answer to your own question," Gabriel said softly, "you wouldn't have bothered bringing me here to ask it, would you?"

General Pine looked at him, a hint of fleeting emotion crossing his face before he hid it beneath the mask of professionalism. Michael. General Pine reminded him of Michael when he was chewing over some military initiative in his mind before deploying resources to address a threat. Gabriel was glad the heavenly host had been unable to destroy such a capable leader.

"My CO's never had a problem ordering us to sleep with scumbags," the General said flatly. "First Pol Pot to get at the VC. Your friend Gunn was right when he said that was a cover-up. Then the Saudi kings. Rabid factions within the Israeli government. The PLO. The Afghani 'freedom fighters' who morphed into the Taliban. More African butchers and South American banana republic's than I care to list. Pakistan, even though we _knew _they were supporting Al Qaida. You can't sleep with the enemy and not walk away with a sexually transmitted disease."

Gabriel had no idea what a sexually transmitted disease was, himself only recently having acquired knowledge of what _sex _was, much less diseases that could be transmitted by having it. But from how the General practically spat out the sentence, Gabriel surmised it was a very bad thing and _he _had chosen to abstain.

"The reason, I surmise, why you never rose above the rank of Colonel?" Gabriel asked.

"Harrumph!" General Pine snorted with disgust. "Should have just learned to keep my mouth shut instead of tilting at windmills."

"It's a good thing you did _not _keep your mouth shut," Gabriel said softly. "Had you been promoted to Brigadier-General, I would have sent an agent to personally kill you like I did all the others."

Anger flashed in the General's eyes, and then was suppressed behind that professional military mask the General wore so well. Once again, the thought crossed Gabriel's mind that General Pine reminded him a lot of Michael. A much older, middle-aged version of Michael, but sharing the same intensity of thought while mulling over all the options and their possible outcomes.

"You asked me to be thoroughly honest with you in the interest of full disclosure," Gabriel reminded him, his tone respectful and low. "Would you prefer I remain silent?"

"Yes, I did ask you to be honest," the General snapped, visibly forcing himself to take a deep breath and relax. "I've got enough ass kissers willing to blow sunshine and flowers up my ass and tell me what I want to hear. Doesn't mean I like hearing it."

"I'm glad you were overlooked," Gabriel said. "You remind me of my brother. Michael."

"The archangel Michael?" General Pine asked incredulously.

"Just … Michael," Gabriel said. "My brother and closest friend. _You _are the ones who have attached significance to what he does. _He _views his role more pragmatically. To put it in human terms, in the hierarchy of heaven, archangels only rank third in the scale of ten possible ranks of importance to the Father and Michael maybe ranks a three-and-a-half."

"And where would _you_ rank?" General Pine snorted. "Messenger of God?"

"At the moment," Gabriel said. "Less than zero. But before I was cast down, perhaps a three and a quarter. We don't view rank as … worthiness … the way that humans do. More … unwanted responsibility. Every moment we spend completing tasks that amass rank is a moment we would rather spend in the garden basking in the glow of the heavenly Father. The highest ranking angel is Azrael. _Nobody _wants _his _job. Not even him. But somebody has to do it, so he does it."

"You make angels sound more like sanitation workers and garbage collectors than heavenly warriors," the General said.

"Aren't we?" Gabriel asked. "By the scar running down the side of your cheek and straight down your neck, I'd say you've spent time in the trenches. Would you classify what soldiers are asked to do any other way?"

"No," the General said, suddenly visibly relaxing. "Soldiers are the guys they send in to clean up the shit. Guess it doesn't matter whether you're God's heavenly angels, or a grunt assigned to peel potatoes or scrub latrines. Once the shit hits the fan, we're the ones they send in to scrub the walls."

"Shit…" Gabriel said, nodding in agreement. Oh … how he had learned _that _lesson…


	99. Chapter 98

Chapter 98

The Grigori finally recognized he had an audience. Screeching with rage, it began repeatedly catapulting itself into the glass at Gabriel.

"Have you interrogated the prisoner?" Gabriel asked.

"It's like talking to a manic-depressive paranoid-schizophrenic suffering from multiple personality disorder," General Pine said. "Not only can we not get a straight answer out of him … it _is _a him, I assume? But we can't even get the same answer out of him two times in a row."

"He speaks your language?" Gabriel asked, surprised. "The last time a Grigori escaped the Keep was over 6,500 years ago. Just before Lucifer was interred there. One of my Fallen brothers would be able to speak your language because it is a gift granted to us by both the Father _and _the Mother at birth. But the Grigori should not be able to speak anything except the ancient tongue. They have been separated from mankind for almost 65 million years."

"He speaks English as well as I do," the General said. "As well as any other language we've thrown at him. Spanish. German. Swahili. We threw at least two dozen languages at him and he speaks them all. So I would greatly appreciate it if you conversed with him in _my _language so I can verify you aren't conspiring with him to overthrow the government or some such nonsense."

"Agreed," Gabriel said. "How would you like for me to communicate with him through this glass?"

The General gestured to an intercom to one side of the glass and rattled off some instructions on how to use it. To speak to a Grigori had always been forbidden. The Father had ordered the angels to kill them on sight without speaking to them, citing the excuse of the Grigori spouting blasphemy, so the angels had always killed them on sight without speaking to them. Obedience. Before the Father had sent the asteroid to wipe clean the Earth, they had _all _been obedient. And scared. With the dragon like species engaging in double-speak all the time, it had been easy to simply ignore their ranting.

Now, however, Gabriel was fallen and he was finding out the Father had massaged their memories to make them forget crucial information. His little Prophet had nearly died following that thread of her vision to get clues into the true nature of one of the enemies they faced. It was time to find out the truth. Gabriel pushed the intercom button and addressed his ancient enemy.

"What is your name, Grigori?" Gabriel asked.

"Sssssoooo," the Grigori hissed, "the Left Hand of God deigns to address us?"

"He is our brother. He is our brother. Perhaps he remembers us?" the Grigori then said.

"He is our _murderer!"_ the Grigori then snarled. "He stood by while the Father murdered our children and helped them throw us in that hellhole for millions of years!"

"The Prophet has received guidance from the Mother that there are two souls trapped in one body," Gabriel informed the Grigori prisoner. "Is this true?"

"It's none of your Father-damned business!" the Grigori snarled, throwing himself against the glass. The glass was so thick Gabriel couldn't even hear the sound of the impact.

"He knows. He knows," the Grigori then said. "Perhaps he finally remembers us?"

"SHUT UP!" the Grigori then screamed at himself, tearing at his own head with his claws. "He will _hurt _you if he finds out! Do you want to be sent back to the Keep?"

"This place is paradise compared to the Keep," the Grigori then said softly to itself. "We must wait for our brothers and sisters to come for us."

His little Prophet referred to the double-speak of the Grigori as Grigori A and Grigori B. Even _before _she had foolishly followed the thread of not summonsing him to protect her in her vision to follow the thread of negating the sacrifice of his life in exchange for hers. How had he not noticed, in all his years battling them, that there were two separate and distinct personalities residing in the Grigori? Not simply the mindless rantings of a homicidal lunatic?

Because that is what the Father had ordered them all to think, so that is what they had thought. Questioning authority was forbidden when Gabriel had first been made self-aware and sent to battle the Grigori. Later, when the Father had made them take the collar, so was merely thinking about questioning the Father. It was an old pattern Gabriel now recognized. Obedience. The quiet destruction of the soul over time by demanding greater and greater restrictions not only on how you behaved, but on the very thoughts which ran through your mind. How had the angels allowed themselves to sink so low?

"It's insane," General Pine said, nodding at the way the Grigori began throwing itself against the glass and foaming at the mouth.

"It has two separate and distinct souls trapped inside one body," Gabriel reminded him with the button pressed on the microphone so the Grigori could hear. "The original personality given to it by Lucifer, who shaped it from the clay of the Garden Eden to protect the mother and be his playmate. And a second personality that the Mother inserted into its body at some point in the past. Personality A, probably the original Grigori. And Personality B … which I don't understand. Perhaps a race even _older _than the Grigori?"

The Grigori stopped dead in its tracks, eyeing Gabriel warily. "You remember more than the last time we did battle, Left Hand of God. We are surprised the Father has allowed you to remember so much."

"The Father has _not _allowed me to remember anything," Gabriel said. "It has been brought to my attention that the Father has kept his angels in the dark and fed us a steady diet of shit for the past sixty-five million years. The Mother too, for that matter. What little I remember, I have begun to remember on my own."

"Do you remember me, little brother?" the Grigori asked, this time assuming the less hostile demeanor of the 'B' personality. The words came out as a plea. "Do you remember when we used to play together in the garden? You used to sit at the Father's feet all day long waiting for him to notice you were there. So patient, our little Gabriel."

"I have memories of Lucifer shaping the first Grigori," Gabriel said, deliberately softening his demeanor into a non-hostile tone the Prophet and the Reverend had been trying to teach him to not intimidate people who did not need to be intimidated. "I remember the Mother breathing life into it. I remember the other cherubs used to treat your species as playmates. What happened?"

"You _don't _remember us," the Grigori B personality said. And then it did something surprising. The Grigori put its head down and began to weep.

"See what you did!" the Grigori A personality snarled, suddenly springing into action and launching itself against the glass. "Evil bastard! Why must you torment her?"

"Her?" Gabriel asked. He glanced at the General. This Grigori was most definitely _male_. All Grigori he had ever done battle with were male, although purportedly the children of the leaders had been mixed genders. The females had nurtured their eggs and not fought. When some of the angels had begun to ask questions, the Father had simply sent a series of asteroids to wipe all trace of the Grigori off of Jurassic Earth so he could start again with _new _life forms he had been toying with.

"Evil, evil, evil bastard!" the Grigori 'A' personality screamed, tearing at its head and launching itself repeatedly at the glass. "How could you let him _do _that to her? How could you do that to our _children? _You _helped _him murder our children!" The Grigori threw itself at the glass again and again and again, screeching in rage, until the glass was covered in blood and the Grigori finally collapsed on the floor of the cell, exhausted. It lay there, its sides heaving, moaning in pain.

"Let him do _what_ to her?" Gabriel finally asked, perplexed at the creatures bizarre, even for a Grigori, behavior.

"She was your sister…" the Grigori moaned right before the self-battered and bloodied creature lost consciousness.


	100. Chapter 99

_Note:__ I'd like to thank, once again, all the wonderful readers who've submitted reviews, private messaged questions or suggestions, or just silently lurked, pushing up those magical little numbers that let me know somebody else besides me finds all the stuff the Muse whispers into my ear even remotely interesting. Some of you (and you know who you are) will see little appetizers you've asked me for earlier embedded in the last three chapters. Bon Appetit and please keep reading!_

_X O X O X O X O_

_X_

Chapter 99

A young Lieutenant interrupted them as they brainstormed for ideas for Jose's nightly webcast.

"General Pine would like to see Gabriel and Miss Anderson" the young lieutenant said.

"We're in the middle of filming," the Senator complained.

"He says it's very important," the young lieutenant said, his expression earnest.

"C'mon," Audrey said, grab Gabriel by the hand and tugging him after the young lieutenant. "Maybe it's finally regained consciousness?"

"It's about time," Gabriel said with his usual paucity of words.

Audrey and the others had voted to wait for the captive Grigori to regain consciousness. Although each and every one of them was granted access, never more than two at a time, to gaze upon the self-battered creature on the other side of the glass, they never saw it so much as twitch. It had just lay there, sides heaving but otherwise refusing to move or acknowledge their presence, as though willing itself to die. Finally Gabriel accompanied Doctor Pasala and a unit of armed men in to tend to the creature, strapping it onto a gurney, hooking it up to every piece of medical equipment and running every test they could dream up, and waiting for it to wake up.

For some reason that Gabriel was unable to put into words, speaking to the creature had deeply unnerved him.

Azrael had quietly come by on Day 2 to inform Gabriel that the Mother had ordered him not to touch it or return its twin souls back into the Keep. When the Mother and the Father disagreed, his hands were tied. It _did _have two souls, Azrael confirmed, much to his own surprise. For some reason, this fact had previously been hidden to him. The Angel of Death was as clueless about the identity of the second soul was as they were.

On Day 3, General Pine had informed them they were free to go. The military would provide whatever resources were available within the limited reach of the former government to aid them in their mission to rally support behind the Savior. Gabriel requested they wait for the creature to regain consciousness, so they waited. _She _wished to question the creature of her nightmares as much as Gabriel did. If she could gain the creatures trust, perhaps it could act as an emissary between the others and the Savior?

Until then, the other disciples agreed to continue keeping the existence of the Grigori a secret until they knew what they _really _had on their hands. _If _they were able to gain the creatures trust, the Senator had pointed out, the last thing they wanted was a bunch of gung-ho gun-happy post-apocalyptic yahoos out taking potshots at anything with wings.

On Day 6, they'd finally gained permission from General Pine to film less sensitive areas of the computer network operations center of the Pentagon and teach their satellite-linked web audience, now estimated to be two and a half million viewers worldwide, that there still _was _a national government attempting to regroup and reach out to more remote areas of the country. It was a balancing act between showing what had and had not been damaged, while keeping sensitive information that could be used to crash the system out of Lucifer and the Grigori's hands.

The moment they walked into the General's office, Audrey knew.

"I'm sorry," the General said, his face a cornucopia of mixed emotions as he broke the news.

Glad a creature of nightmare had died? Sorry he hadn't gotten to finish interrogating it? Or sad because, as Gabriel had related to her, it had become obvious in the creatures last moments before losing consciousness that they were all fucking clueless about what the hell the Grigori _really _were. Gabriel was beginning to think that the Father had led them down some 65 million year old fucking primrose path of deception to persecute some poor creature who perhaps had done no more wrong than Charlie's unborn baby had done when he had sent Gabriel and the heavenly host to exterminate humanity.

"Oh … fuck…" Audrey's heart leaped up into her throat at the same moment her stomach lurched towards the floor. "Excuse me…"

Morning sickness. Or more accurately, mid-afternoon nerves sickness. Audrey ran into the bathroom adjacent to the General's office as she heaved her lunch out into the general's personal toilet. Much to her surprise, Gabriel didn't follow her like he usually did. She found out _why _when she finally stopped puking her guts out long enough to shakily wipe the vomit from the front of her shirt and came out of the bathroom.

"Azrael?" Audrey asked. By the grim expression on both Gabriel's as well as General Pine's faces, the news was not pretty.

"The Mother wished for you to know that both souls pleaded for her to allow them access into the void together to be uncreated as one soul," Azrael said, his dark eyes filled with the same cornucopia of mixed emotions as Gabriel and General Pine. "The Father was adamant it was the Keep, or uncreation in the void. The Mother finally took pity upon them and allowed them to pass. The Father is … irate."

Audrey swallowed, resisting the urge to heave whatever sparse contents remained in her stomach out to join the rest of the lunch she had just barfed. She remembered how pathetically the Grigori had wailed after destroying all matter in the universe to finally be allowed to pass. "The void," she whispered. "Just like in my vision."

"It is the fate of all souls who can gain neither access to heaven nor Sheol," Azrael said quietly. "To enter the void and have your soul shattered into a million pieces until it is finally returned to the ocean of energy the Mother harnesses when she creates new life. The void is death for the already dead."

What could she say? For more than two years, the creatures had haunted her dreams, occasionally reaching through into this dimension to physically leave scratches and bite marks upon her body. Grigori. Monsters. The enemy. And now … one was dead. _Really _dead. Even by heavenly terms, dead. Dead without so much as a soul, no, correction, _souls_, remaining. A valuable opportunity lost forever. Audrey felt … numb.

"Thank you, Azrael," Gabriel said quietly. "Please pass along our love to the Mother and tell her we're sorry."

"She is devastated," Azrael said, his black eyes glistening as though he were about to cry. "I wish … I wish I could remember why. Unlike all the other souls I've harvested, the souls of the Grigori have always been hidden from me. This was the first time I even recognized there _were _two separate souls carried within the same body. Usually … usually I don't miss things like that."

The last sentence came out as an emotional whisper. Azrael hesitated, as though not sure what to do, and then suddenly excused himself, teleporting out in a flash of light that left the General rubbing his eyes in surprise.

"Where is the body?" Gabriel asked.

"It just … dissipated," General Pine informed him. "Doctor Pasala was with the creature when it died. He said the body turned to light and dissolved into nothingness within seconds of its death."

Dissipated. Like she was forced to watch happen to Gabriel every night in her nightly visions after he sacrificed himself. All to appease the Father's anger for the sin of falling in love with her.

"Only angels and the higher-order creatures of heaven dissipate upon death," Gabriel said, his expression troubled. "I have slain many Grigori underlings and never once did one dissipate, although none of us were ever able to slay one of the leaders. It's why the Father built the Keep. How is this possible?"

The question was directed at himself, not the General who knew even less than _they _did. After a series of questions and answers, Gabriel abruptly asked to be excused, his demeanor … odd. Audrey followed him back to their quarters, having to nearly run to keep up with him as he hurried through the corridors and practically slammed the door in her face as he rapidly shut the door behind himself..

"Honey?" Audrey asked. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Gabriel said, his voice choked up with emotion. "I feel … I feel as though … I don't know…" The last sentence came out as a cry of anguish.

Gabriel surprised her by suddenly pulling her into his arms, burying his face into her neck, and sobbing. Great shudders wracked his body as he wept as though someone important to him had just died. Audrey had no idea what was wrong with him. Neither did Gabriel. But for some reason he could not put words to, the creatures' death affected him very deeply.

Stupid monster!


	101. Chapter 100

Chapter 100

'_Gabriel,' Audrey whispered, kneeling in the blood-soaked soil that was all she had left of the man she loved. No. Not all. Gabriel had left her with something. She had to go on. Live. Raise their child as Mary Magdaline had done. But she didn't … want … to._

"I am still here, my love," Gabriel murmured. "You must find another thread to follow."

'_You will –never- be reunited with your love,' Uriel sneered as the humans battled Grigori all around him. 'The Father will force you to forget him the minute you relinquish your free will to enter the Garden of Eden.'_

_Audrey looked up at Uriel with tear-stained eyes. Every night for more than two years she had been forced to live this moment. The baby kicked as though sensing her distress. A reminder that some part of Gabriel still existed. Her hand automatically moved to soothe their child in her swollen womb. _

Gabriel's hand gently covered hers as she touched her still-flat abdomen. "I shall protect both you and our child with my life, little Prophet. You know that."

'_Remember this moment when the Grigori come for you,' Audrey whispered. 'As the Father has sown, so shall ye all reap.' It was a prophecy carrying the weight of the void she had thus far entered and survived twice. Heaven shuddered as she spoke. _

"Audrey?" Gabriel asked, concern lacing his voice. "Are you okay?" He jostled her, feeling at the base of her throat to check her heart rate, checking to see if he needed to summons Doctor Pasala, always afraid she might follow another thread that would reach through to harm her here in the present. Audrey was helpless to move, still trapped in the throes of the vision.

_She glanced across the battlefield where Lucifer herded the Nephilim out of the fight to await the outcome of the battle between those humans who followed the Savior and those who stood on the sidelines waiting to see who the victor would be. Tears streamed down his face, but he had not helped Gabriel. He wanted to. From day one Audrey could see how torn Lucifer was. But she had never been able to get the Morning Star to act. Why?_

_Uriel's mouth moved as though to speak, but she ignored him. She ignored as the Earth militaries that followed the Savior finally failed, even their technology no match for the rabid Grigori. One by one, the disciples fell, mighty Gunnlaeif smiting one last Grigori with his dying breath. It made no difference. At the last possible instant, Michael pulled the young Savior out of the universe. Gone … forever. Humanity's last hope. _

_Audrey lay down in the bloody soil that was all she had left of her beloved and wept._

"I am right here, my love," Gabriel whispered, caressing her cheek. "How I wish the Mother had afflicted _me _with these accursed visions so I could remove the burden from your soul."

"You must bring the Prophet to the Temple of Ishtar," Audrey felt the Mother speak through her. "The handmaiden of Lillith is the eighth disciple."

"Mother?" Gabriel asked. "Mother … please! Why don't you just answer our questions?"

"Because the Father and I are at war again," the Mother spoke, a hint of rage filtering through Audrey's voice.

Audrey cringed at the misuse of her body. The Mother was angry about the Grigori who had died today. When the Mother was angry, Audrey could feel the molecules in the room shudder as she spoke. It was an energy Audrey now remembered. The void. The Mother wielded the power of the void. The power to destroy.

As the Mother spoke through her, Audrey could sense the slender thread of consciousness that stretched between her and the Mother, and from the Mother to the void she had originated from. The first time Audrey had entered the void, the Mother had retrieved her soul before it had shattered. The second time, Audrey had found her own way in and out again, following the path she had worn into the fabric of the universe when she had died and been resurrected the first time around.

The path. A dark thread. An anti-thread. The thread she had sensed in the vision as she spoke her dark prophecy. Audrey saw now that for each and every thread weaved into the tapestry of this universe, an equal and opposite anti-thread existed in the void. A shadow universe mirroring everything the Father had ever created. Or destroyed. The matter was gone, but the antimatter universe still remained. Darkness … separated from the light.

It was too vast to comprehend…

"Why, Mother?" Gabriel asked, his hands inadvertently tightening around Audrey's small frame in frustration as he tried to reach through to the mother who was not really there. "How do you expect us to help you if you don't give us answers?"

Audrey shuddered as the more powerful consciousness left her body, leaving her sweaty and spent. So tired. All she wanted to do was sleep. Not recite the changes that had occurred in the vision since last night. And they _had _changed. Not the outcome. But the length of time the battle now raged before it was finally lost. The Savior would hold out until Gabriel's death, but then he would still fall. Humanity would fall. The entire universe would fall. It wasn't enough. What she was doing was not enough.

Why couldn't she get Lucifer to act?

"She's gone," Audrey whispered.

"What did you see, little Prophet," Gabriel asked, frustration and anger at the Mother lacing his usual concern. "What changed? When you spoke, it was … frightening."

"That was just the Mother," Audrey whispered. "Another disciple is near. Please … let me sleep. I'm so tired."

"That was _not _the Mother," Gabriel said. "Not before. When you spoke … it …"

Gabriel's voice trailed off. Audrey knew what he was talking about, but she had no way to describe the future emotion and the … shudder … she had no other word to describe it … the shudder of prophecy she had uttered as she had finally had enough of Uriel's sneering arrogance and reached back into the void to show him the Mother wasn't the _only _one who could harness its power.

"Let me sleep," Audrey pleaded as she ignored Gabriel's questions and willed herself into blissful unconsciousness in the security of his arms. She felt as though the life energy had just been sucked from her body.

Some small part of her registered the fact Gabriel was still here, gently tucking her into his wings to help her fend off the soul-deep chill which always followed the visions. In her natural dreams, she crawled back into the blood-soaked earth and covered herself with the bloody dirt which was all she had left of him to grieve his loss.


	102. Chapter 101

Chapter 101

"This way," Audrey directed the driver of the military transport vehicle General Pine had assigned to take them as far as they could travel by road before the supply lines got cut off. "The compass rose points this way."

"I don't like it," Gabriel said. "DC is a death zone. We should go around." Gabriel was riding in the back of the pickup truck, only his head and shoulders peering in through the small window into the cab where Audrey sat. With his wings, he was too large to fit.

"The eighth disciple is this way," Audrey said. "In some sort of church or something. Temple. Perhaps Jewish? Or a mosque?"

A taut muscle twitched in Gabriel's cheek, his expression even more unreadable than usual. The Grigori's death bothered him, but this was something else.

"What?" Audrey asked, perplexed at his odd behavior. Even for _him._ "We're looking for another clergyman or Iman or something. Like the Reverend? Right?"

"Hardly," Gabriel growled, his expression deepening into an outright scowl. "We'll see. I hope I'm wrong. This is … too … much. The Savior is deliberately baiting the Father."

Try as she might, Audrey couldn't get anything but a scowl out of him. She finally resorted to fighting dirty.

"No secret Pentagon hidden cameras watching our every move tonight," Audrey whispered in his ear just low enough that the army private who'd been assigned to drive them couldn't hear. "We're close enough to the three-month safety mark that maybe we can have a little wing-thumping fun tonight?" As she whispered, she made sure to project her breath into his ear so that it would tickle.

This time, it was the other cheek that twitched, valiantly attempting to suppress a smile as it did battle with the opposite cheek that was suppressing a scowl. Audrey 'accidentally' brushed his sensitive earlobe with her nose and inhaled the way he often did with her, scent apparently being an aphrodisiac for his species. The cheek with the smile won as Gabriel suddenly snorted and gave a sub-audible growl that Audrey felt and not heard as she heard the slight rustle of his feathers. Arousal. After two months of going at it several times per night, suddenly being shut off for a month _must _have been driving her husband nuts.

"This is as far as we can go by road, Miss," the Private said. "What's left of the military cleared a single pathway to the Capital Building and the White House, but nothing else has been cleared in this city. This isn't exactly a … savory … part of DC. Even _before _the apocalypse hit."

"Harumph!" Gabriel snorted, the smile disappearing and the unreadable expression assuming a dominant position on his face once more.

"The compass rose usually leads us _around _dead zones and urban areas unless there's something inside we need to encounter," Audrey informed the private. "More likely than not we're going to encounter whatever we're looking for within walking distance. I suggest we split the disciples up and leave the horses behind with a light guard while a small group of us enters the rest of the way into the city."

"Archangel 2 and 3 … this is Archangel 1 …" the army private called into his radio comms unit. "The Prophet says stop and go in on foot from here. Over."

Archangel 1 was the code name for the front-runner in the little three-truck convoy. At the direction of the de facto president, the Pentagon had loaded them up with as much food, gas, and supplies as they could afford to spare along with a six-man security escort. The men would get them as far as they could go before needing to turn back, either because the vehicles ran out of petroleum, or the road became impassible. When that happened depended entirely upon where the compass rose led them. The truck was merely a four-wheel drive pickup truck. Gabriel could simply leap out of the rear and get airborne in a heartbeat, while the maneuverable vehicle could pass most places where they needed to go.

"Archangel 1, this is Archangel 2," the radio crackled. We are pulling over. I will inform the passengers." Truck 2 was carrying the other disciples, except for Gunn, in the back. The same uncomfortable troop transport vehicle which had transported them from South Carolina. Audrey didn't envy them anything except the opportunity to socialize and stretch out in the back.

"Archangel 1, this is Archangel 3," the third truck called in. "We're right behind you. Viking is going back to check on the horses." Truck 3 was a tractor trailer carrying the horses and their food, water, and supplies. Truck 3 was the weakest link in the bunch, requiring the most passable roads and the highest fuel consumption.

At some point, travel on horseback would prove inevitable. The 'United States' under the control of what was left of the government was a fragile network of small to mid-sized towns and small cities clustered around old pre-industrial resources, such as old mill towns, navigable rivers, and railway lines that still had steam engines. Petroleum was now so scarce that even the military measured it by the thimbleful.

"Roger, Archangel 3," the army private said. "The Prophet says horses not needed. Move them about as needed for comfort only."

"Archangel 1, that's a Roger," the truck carrying Gunn and the horses replied.

"Let's go find this handmaiden of the temple," Audrey said enthusiastically, deliberately ignoring the dark scowl Gabriel gave her as she leaped out of the truck.

"You're supposed to be taking it easy," Gabriel grumbled.

"And as soon as you find a way to take … _this _… off of my hand and stick it onto somebody else's hand," Audrey stated, her tone teasing as she deliberately baited him, "I will agree to those terms of surrender."

Gabriel rustled his feathers in annoyance, his scowl deepening, and did not reply. Audrey gave him her most winning, innocent smile. Just to annoy him. After her close call in the Appalachian mountains, an uncomfortable ride to Maryland, practically being held prisoner for two weeks by the former US government, and the fact the Mother and Father's short-lived cooperation now appeared to be over, Audrey was feeling quite … _perky _… today. Free! They were free to move about the country! What was _up _with him today?

"Which way, Miss?" the private asked. They decided that two soldiers would accompany her and Gabriel into the city while the remainder of the group and four other soldiers would remain behind to guard the supplies. A larger group was bound to attract unwanted attention. Gabriel took to the air, his presence too conspicuous on foot. Gabriel attracted attention. In a dead zone such as the former seat of government, that attention was usually violent.

Washington DC looked more like bombed-out London or Berlin at the close of World War II than the remnants of the former seat of government for the Earths' superpower. The Father had wished to make an example of it, and Gabriel had made certain the the Father had gotten his wish. Very little remained of once had been a densely populated city. Silence. The snow had begun to fall as they had driven here and her breath billowed visibly from her mouth in the crisp, late-January air. Given the lack of footprints in the snow, nothing human had passed this way as they worked their way up Fourteenth Street from Pennsylvania Avenue until the compass rose suddenly indicated they should veer off.

"Logan Circle," one of the soldiers muttered, giving the second soldier a knowing look. "Not the kind of place you'd expect to find a church."

The second soldier merely snorted in derision. What? The area had probably been quite lovely at one time, with the remains of multi-story Victorian houses surrounding a small, circular park containing a large statute of a man on horseback which had somehow miraculously avoided destruction. They walked around the circle, avoiding the rubble of destroyed houses, until they came to the house that could only be the home of the eighth disciple. It was the only one still standing.

"This doesn't look like any sort of church or temple," Audrey said, examining the tasteful architecture of the red brick Victorian home. "It looks quite nice." With every other home in the area flattened, it was hard to tell what the neighborhood had looked like before, but judging by what little still remained, it had been a lovely neighborhood.

The two soldiers snickered. What?

"I'll go in alone," Audrey instructed the two soldiers. "Please wait here until I am finished. Or if you hear something that leads you to believe there's trouble."

"Oh, believe me, Ma'am," one of the soldiers said. "There will be no trouble."

The second soldier let out a quick guffaw before stifling the emotion, his face turning red as he held his breath to avoid being disrespectful to the person General Pine had ordered them to follow until they ran out of road.

Audrey shrugged them off and boldly marched up the decorative wrought iron front steps, grasped the ornate brass doorknob highlighted on the brightly painted red door, and knocked. Within moments, somebody could be heard at the door, rustling behind the peephole to see who was there, and then the fumble of several layers of locks before the door opened to reveal a beautiful raven-haired woman dressed in a kimono.

"There was a time we always left our door unlocked," the young woman said cordially, her voice light and musical as she spoke. "What business does the remnants of our government have with the Kisaeng?" The woman was Chinese. Or Japanese. Probably Japanese by the look of the kimono-like attire she wore.

"I believe somebody I'm looking for may live here," Audrey said, assuming her most polite tone. "Or perhaps works here?"

The two soldiers burst out laughing. The Asian woman raised one carefully painted eyebrow at their rude behavior, but otherwise maintained her courteous expression.

"I'm sorry," Audrey said. "The military must have fed them silly pills or something this morning. _They _can stay outside. May my husband and I come in?"

"Husband?" the Asian woman asked, looking behind her to see who else besides the two soldiers Audrey had just ordered to stay outside was present.

"Oh … sorry," Audrey said. She gave the dog whistle she kept perpetually around her neck on a string three inaudible blows, the signal to Gabriel that she had found the place.

The Asian woman recoiled, finally some expression other than the courteous smile registering on her face, as Gabriel unceremoniously plopped out of the sky and tucked his wings into his back only inches behind where Audrey stood. "Oh!"

"This is my husband," Audrey said, automatically reaching back to lace her fingers into his as Gabriel moved into his customary position at her back. "Gabriel. Archangel and now my husband and protector. We've travelled a long way to find you. It's very important we find … somebody … who apparently lives _here_."

The Asian woman appeared to be used to unusual visitors, because within moments the courteous, bird-like expression had reappeared upon her face as she gestured them to come inside, carefully shutting the door behind her but not locking it out of deference to the two soldiers who waited outside. It appeared as though important government officials had perhaps visited here before, their guards stationed outside to wait. Did a diplomat live here? Perhaps stranded in a strange country by the apocalypse with no way to return home?

"Good day," Gabriel stated stiffly, that twitch back in his cheek muscle as his unreadable expression solidified into a mask of ice.

"We had heard stories," the Asian woman said cordially to Gabriel. "Non Gae will be pleased to have such an … esteemed … visitor to our gwonbeon." The Asian woman turned and led them down the hall, her tiny, graceful steps making it appear as though she glided beneath the voluminous folds of her kimono-like dress.

"Gabriel!" Audrey whispered. "You're being _rude!"_

They passed through a parlor where several similarly beautiful, similarly dressed young women were practicing some sort of folk dance with what appeared to be two short swords with some sort of rings on them that made them 'clack' as they moved. Their costumes were even _more _elaborate than that of the woman who had answered the door, with a royal blue over-dress, white sleeves with red cuffs, and a red criss-crossed sash across the bodice.

"What dance do they rehearse?" Audrey asked.

"The geommu," Gabriel said from behind her. "Jinju two-sword dance."

"You are familiar with our customs?" the Asian woman asked, beckoning for them to continue down another hallway.

"_All _of your customs," Gabriel stated flatly. And coldly. What was _up_ with him today?

The Asian woman rapped twice lightly on a heavy wooden door, and then entered, gliding inside and gesturing for them to sit on a settee and wait while a middle-aged Asian woman knelt on the floor with a second, much younger Asian girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen years old patiently correcting the girl as she sang the words to what appeared to be a very long song. The two women ignored them until the young woman had finished the song and politely bowed to the floor.

Audrey clapped enthusiastically. "That was … beautiful!" Audrey exclaimed. Everything about this place was just … breathtaking. Beautiful. Graceful. Tasteful. Some sort of cultural center honoring Asian culture that had somehow survived the apocalypse unscathed. A temple. A temple of art. The young girl blushed slightly and excused herself from the room, displaying that same graceful glide as the young woman who had escorted them in from the door, while the middle-aged teacher rose gracefully to her feet, even tinier and more bird-like than the other women, and confidently glided over to greet them.

"She learns to sing the pansori," the woman said, offering her dainty hand for a western-style handshake. "I am Non Gae, the hojang for this establishment. And you would be Audrey Anderson, wife of the Archangel Gabriel."

"Yes," Audrey said, shaking her hand and pleased the woman had heard of them. She could hear the vibration of the Mother coming through the beautiful raven-haired Asian woman's voice as she spoke. This was _definitely _the eighth disciple. "And this is Gabriel, my husband."

The woman offered her hand. Gabriel hesitated to shake it.

"Gabriel!" Audrey hissed, discreetly elbowing him, hard, in the ribcage. Gabriel reluctantly reached out to take her hand.

"Non Gae," Gabriel rumbled, his voice low in the tone Audrey usually associated him using with people who were potential threats. "Very fitting to assume the name of a kisaeng prostitute known for slaying a Japanese invading general to set up your house of ill repute here in Washington. A North Korean spy sent to pose as a kisaeng prostitute to spy on enemy congressmen and military leaders."

"What?" Audrey asked, appalled at his rudeness.

"She's a prostitute and a North Korean spy," Gabriel rumbled. "Temple of Inanna … temple of sacred prostitutes. Handmaiden of Lillith … Innana's chief prostitute sent to mingle with the movers and shakers and ply them with sexual favors in order to find out information that would solidify the power of the temple. This place is a brothel, and _she _is their madame. Isn't that right, Miss Gae?"


	103. Chapter 102

Chapter 102

_X_

'_It is not enough to conquer. One must also know how to seduce.' - Voltaire_

X

"This place is a brothel," Gabriel said, scorn lacing his voice as he jerked back his hand in disgust. "And _she _is their madame. Isn't that right, Non Gae?"

"Gabriel!" Audrey exclaimed, the expression on her face horrified.

Good … Audrey would spurn this fallen woman and leave this offensive place. The latest instructions must be a mistake, sent because the Mother was angry at the father about the Grigori who had chosen to cast its twin souls into the void rather than surrender. Surely the Mother was doing this to needle the Father and would reconsider?

"We are courtesans," Non Gae said, no sign of anger registering the patient, courteous expression on the woman's face as she gestured towards some of the artwork adorning her private suite. "Not prostitutes. A kisaeng's main duty is to entertain and provide comfort to men of power through beauty, the arts, and intellectually stimulating conversation, not provide sexual favors. As you can see, we take our duty very seriously."

"You have sex with anyone who knocks upon your door and asks for it," Gabriel said. "You use your sexual prowess to entice men of power to tell you secrets that will bring down opponents and empires. And then you _sell _that information to their enemies."

"All who enter here have no illusions about what we are," Non Gae said courteously, her light foreign accent sprinkling her English with just enough exoticism to add to the carefully cultivated aura of mystique the fallen woman deliberately projected. An act. It was all an act designed to entice good men to fall!

"Gabriel!" Audrey said again. This time, she stomped upon his foot. "You're being rude!"

"She is a fallen woman!" Gabriel said, his revulsion obvious in his voice. "Obviously the Mother has made a mistake! We must continue searching the city."

"According to the Father," Audrey said, her eyes flashing with fire as she deliberately schooled her voice into a low monotone, "every single human being on this _planet _was a fallen person slated for extermination. She is the eighth disciple and you will treat her _courteously! _Or you will be sleeping _alone _tonight!"

What? His little Prophet was _defending _the harlot's lifestyle?

"Throughout history," Gabriel said, his words rumbling and even as explosively enunciated his words, "harlots such as this … female … have caused some of the Father's staunchest allies and most powerful empires to fall. Lillithu. Delilah. Salome. Cleopatra."

"All women I grew up admiring!" Audrey hissed at him. "Early feminists who refused to be subjugated under the yoke of male domination!"

"They … defiled … themselves!" Gabriel said angrily. "The Father forbade it! Harlotry was a crime punishable by stoning to death!"

"The Father views women as little more than housekeepers, cooks and wombs!" Audrey shouted. "Is it any wonder the Mother left him? They used the only tools available to them in that day and age to survive!"

Gabriel stared at her, resisting the urge to ask something idiotic such as 'who are you and what have you done with my wife?' He realized his jaw had gone slack with surprise at his little Prophet's outburst and he quickly shut it, retreating behind a scowl.

"Who taught you to … admire … such women?" Gabriel finally asked, deliberately forcing his voice and facial expression to assume a more appropriate tone in front of a stranger.

"I studied religious education under a Dominican Nun," Audrey hissed. "They believe the _truth _of the bible will set you free! Not some bullshit PR version promulgated by the Father and a bunch of male chauvinist pigs so they could enslave 53% of the population! You're no better than _he _is!"

Gabriel paused. She was angry at him. Why? Why was she angry at him? He hadn't seen her this angry since … not since she'd had one of her episodes of holy blasphemy, screaming obscenities at the Father in the desert after he'd been cast down from heaven. Audrey had threatened she'd toss him out to sleep alone if he didn't knock it off. Was his attitude _really_ that out of line with humanity?

"I'm not like that," Gabriel finally said after a long pause.

"You are the _biggest _male chauvinist pig I ever _met!"_ Audrey snapped.

Gabriel glanced over to Non Gae and noticed the kisaeng had sat down on the settee, a bemused expression upon her face as she watched her two guests verbally duke it out as though it were the most normal thing in the world. For all heknew, it probably was. The Father only knew what went on in such … establishments. The angels had been strictly ordered to avoid such places. They were publicly airing dirty laundry. When the Prophet was angry, she would not back down. It was up to _him _to offer the olive branch.

"How can you condone the selling of something so … sacred?" Gabriel asked softly, searching her eyes.

Audrey had fallen long before he'd ever met her. He had known it instantly as he had burst through the door of the diner and the Father's omniscient hive mind instantly fed graphic information about every sin every single person in that diner, including his future wife, had ever committed. But at least she had given away her own purity to fill a void in her soul. Not … sold it.

"Not every union is sacred," Audrey said. "You have to _intend _for it to be sacred. Otherwise … you're just satisfying an itch. Like an animal."

"I must disagree with you both," Non Gae finally said at last, interrupting their argument. "_Every _union should be treated as though it is sacred. You both mistake _sacred _for permanence."

Gabriel and Audrey _both _turned to Non Gae, who they had both been very rudely arguing in front of in _her _house. Although Gabriel felt revulsion at her presence, it wasn't normally in his nature to argue in front of a total stranger. In fact, it wasn't his way to argue, period. Gabriel's normal means of dealing with conflict was either to smash in their skull with a mace, or retreat and brood about it if skull-smashing was not an appropriate response. Such as now. Sometimes … Audrey brought out another whole side of him that he hadn't known existed until he had fallen.

"You are a prostitute," Gabriel stated flatly.

"She is a courtesan," Audrey said, her tone apologetic as color crept into her cheeks in embarrassment for creating a scene in her house. "I don't revere her lifestyle. But I don't condemn it, either."

"I am both," Non Gae said. "Sacred prostitution has been around since the Babylonians established temples to their goddess, Ishtar or Innana depending on the language spoken. Nations would send their kings and leaders to commune with the goddess by ceremonially joining with one of the high priestesses."

"They were prostitutes," Gabriel stated flatly. "Ishtar would send her prostitutes out into the streets of Babylon trolling for men of influence to seduce and grant favors to the temple. The Father finally had enough and ordered their destruction."

"What happened to her?" Audrey asked. "Princess Ishtar? Did you ever meet her?" For some reason, his little prophet was intensely interested about Ishtar/Inanna.

"Reportedly Ishtar was banished along with the other old gods in the time of the Prophet Mohammed," Gabriel said. "I never met any of them personally. The Father forbade us to even think about them."

"And yet their influence lingers," Non Gae said courteously, her head tilting slightly as she spoke, her voice musical and high like a song thrush. "Everywhere you go, men of power still seek to commune with the goddess who was banished from their midst by communing with women who still remember her ways."

"Including the Father himself," Audrey said, giving him that soul-baring look she had that always made him feel as though he'd just been publicly stripped of all his clothing. "You never met her because she was probably an agent of the Mother. Like Simbi. If not a Prophet of the Mother herself. Was she, Gabriel?"

"The Father … never … well … only once," Gabriel stammered. "When the Mother conceived the Savior. Everything else was … created. Shaped from matter by the Father and given the life spark by the Mother."

"Is it any wonder that she left him?" Audrey asked softly. "She gave herself to him physically, and then he told her it was dirty and refused to touch her a second time. That's why you created Simbi for her, isn't it? She wished to be touched, and he refused."

Gabriel shuddered as an unwanted memory triggered. A memory from his time before the Father had made them self-aware.

'_Come outside and get some fresh air, my love,' the Mother whispered in the Father's ear, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled the Father's scent. 'You need a break. It will help you think.'_

_Gabriel sat silently underneath the Father's workbench, trying to make himself invisible. The Mother had not noticed him, and the Father had long ago forgotten he was even there._

'_I've got to finish this creation,' the Father said without even looking up from his work, swatting her away as though she were a fly. 'Go play with the cherubs. That's why I made them. To keep you out of my hair.'_

'_We created them together,' the Mother gently reminded him as she assumed her customary place at his back, her wings curling around him so that the leading edge caressed the Father's arm as she nuzzled one side of his neck beneath his ear. 'Remember. They are our children. Born to be loved. By both parents. They –need- you to spend time with them.'_

'_They are no such thing,' the Father said without even looking up. 'They're just … things. Pretty playthings created to appease you so you'd stop whining about how lonely it was standing at the gateway between here and the void. No different from a sun or a rock. They're here to serve –us-, not the other way around.'_

_The Mother stiffened._

'_You have grown callous and cruel in your middle years,' the Mother said, the droop of her ebony wings apparent as her eyes grew wet with tears. 'You used to –enjoy- having me around. Now … I feel like all you want is the life-spark I provide so you can bring your creations to life.'_

'_Mmmmm Hmmmm,' the Father said, not even listening to what the Mother had just said, so intent was he on shaping the tiny, mouse-sized primate he'd been spending an inordinate amount of time on lately. The tiny primate Gabriel now knew was small and intelligent enough to survive when the Father someday sent the asteroids to wipe the planet clean. The predecessor species of all modern mammals, including mankind._

_Tears streamed down the Mother's eyes as she realized the awful truth the Father had just uttered. Silently she stood, and then spotted Gabriel sitting silently under the table at the Father's feet. They made eye contact._

'_Be sure to imbue your latest creation with a desire to commune and be touched,' the Mother stated flatly, her statement for Gabriel's benefit, not the Father. 'The most sacred gift you can give another creation is the gift of your touch. If they are capable of receiving comfort from others of their own species, like the cherubs, they will evolve faster than every other creature you've dabbled with so far.'_

'_Hmmmm,' the Father muttered. 'Might as well. Darned thing's been giving me trouble. I'll just alter a few and cast them down on the planet to see if they survive.'_

'_They'll survive,' the Mother said, giving Gabriel a look that made him shudder with … truth. The truth of prophecy. 'Let's make a wager? If you give this creature the need to be physically touched, to seek each other's warmth, to commune physically to reproduce and hold those it loves close to it at all times, I wager that it and all of its progeny will prove superior to anything you've got roaming around on the planet right now. Like the cherubs. Give it all the features we imbued into the cherubs to make them more like –me- when we created them.'_

'_Deal,' the Father said, finally looking up. The Father loved a good wager. Especially when it related to some project he was currently working on. 'But you will lose. Allosaurus will gobble this tiny creature up for a midnight snack. What do I get if I win?'_

'_I will breathe life into any single creation you desire,' the Mother said. 'Even if it is one I loathe.'_

'_And what do you wish if I lose?' the Father said. _

'_I wish, just once, for you to taste the fruit you so contemptuously keep rejecting,' the Mother said, running her hands suggestively down his narrow shoulders to his biceps. She snaked her hands around to his chest and nuzzled his ear once more, whispering something so quietly that even Gabriel, with his super hearing, could not hear what she said. But by the way the Father stiffened, it was something he found revolting._

'_You're going to lose,' the Father said finally. 'So I don't have to worry about it. Here … I have done as you asked. There's two of them, one of each gender. Give them the life spark and I'll dispose of them onto the planet to die._

_The Mother gave Gabriel a secret, victorious smile which the Father didn't see as he'd already dismissively handed her the two small creatures and was already reaching for a new clump of clay to shape some new creation for another world he was attempting to build. As Gabriel watched, he saw the Mother focus much harder than usual as she breathed the life spark into the little pair of creations, caressing them as she breathed them into life so they would always crave her touch. He watched, as he always did, so he could learn. He learned that lesson well. It was the knowledge he had drawn upon when he subsequently created Simbi a few days later to give the Mother the touch the Father refused to give her. The need to be touched the Mother had imbued –all- of her cherubs with, including Gabriel, the last cherub to be born._

'_There you go, little creations,' the Mother said quietly as she turned and walked out the door, gently caressing the tiny creatures as she walked in the palm of her hand. She waved off the Throne who sought to take the pair from her hands to dispose of on the planet to sink or swim like most species the Father created. 'I'm going to establish these two little creations myself. I wish for them to be fruitful and multiply.'_

_Tiny mouse-sized primates. Mammals. The species which evolved entirely on their own to take the place of the dinosaurs after the Father had sent the asteroids to destroy all life on the planet and the Mother refused to breathe the life spark into any more of his creations. After the Father sent the asteroid, he could only shape life by tinkering with the genetics of existing creatures. Not create new ones from scratch. The breath of life was more than merely intent or breath, it required touch, something the Father had never learned to give._

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked. "Gabriel?"

Gabriel grew aware that the Prophet was gently shaking his forearm, trying to get his attention.

"Huh?" Gabriel asked.

"You went a million miles away," Audrey said.

Gabriel looked up and realized, at some point, Non Gae had left the room.

"Where'd she go?" Gabriel asked, suddenly feeling ashamed of himself for his outburst earlier. Touch. Non Gae did the work of the Mother. "I need to apologize."

"She excused herself after you froze mid-sentence," Audrey said. "It appears she's either used to such peculiar behavior, or at least trained to be tolerant of people's foibles. She suggested we discuss this quietly amongst ourselves and decide what we want to do."

"She must come with us," Gabriel said with a certainty that surprised him. "The Mother has gifted me with another memory from the time before. I may not like it, but Non Gae does the Mother's work."

To accentuate that point, he reached out suddenly and pulled his little Prophet against his body, relishing the feel of her body pressing against his, their shared warmth, the way he could feel her anger dissolve beneath his touch as he caressed her back and nuzzled her neck, inhaling her scent. All traits he had inherited from the Mother, not the Father. Including his craving to be touched. The craving the Father had done everything to stamp out of both the cherubs and later humanity, and failed miserably.

Audrey suddenly giggled, the last holdout of her anger escaping with her mirth.

"Talk about a 180," Audrey said. "Now … I _do _believe we were talking about where we could shack up for the night to get a little wing-thumping fun. It's been too long."

Gabriel's lips hungrily touched down upon hers. "Not here," he whispered. "But … lets find someplace and come back later."


	104. Chapter 103

Chapter 103

"One … two … three … _HEAVE!"_ the army private bellowed as they shoved yet another dead, abandoned car off of what was left of Interstate 95.

Gabriel grunted with the exertion as they heaved yet another car out of the way. The remnants of the national government had done a good job of clearing major supply routes north between the new national headquarters in Arlington, Virginia through Philadelphia. Beyond that, the road faltered. It had been a long, slow slog getting through New Jersey. They'd been forced to move off the highway numerous times to get around destroyed bridges and overpasses. Only enough highway had been cleared to weave through in a four-wheel-drive jeep or pickup truck, not a tractor trailer transporting more than a dozen horses.

Just behind them, a second and third group made up of two of the soldiers and several disciples, both male and female, did the same thing. They needed a clear path at least 10 feet wide for the truck to pass.

"Do we really need to bring the horses?" Non Gae asked in her lightly accented, lilting voice. "It would seem more efficient to just leave them behind and go ahead in the smaller vehicles." Although dressed like an exotic Korean bird, Non Gae pushed as hard as the rest of them.

"Yes," Gabriel said bluntly. He made an effort to be marginally polite, but he wished to convey he didn't wish to engage in conversation, or any _other _activity, with the fallen female. Just because Audrey said he needed to be polite did not mean he was required to be … friendly. Friendliness was for ones … friends.

"The last thing you want to do is have to travel the country on foot," Lena chipped in. "Once you get inland, there's no place to buy gas. You walk. Trust me on this … even your bunions will develop bunions."

"Just like the Savior and his twelve disciples did the _first _time he visited this world," Gabriel said. "He believed walking amongst your kind was the best way to get to know the people he would someday lead."

"He sounds very wise," Non Gae said, giving him a delicate smile and cocking her head slightly to one side as though inviting him to speak some more. "I'd love to hear more about him."

Gabriel just grunted a response and pointed to the next vehicle which needed to be shoved out of the way. Schooled. Every mannerism of the middle-aged woman was schooled. The mannerisms of a lifelong performer whose stage was life itself. Only the Prophet's insistence he be polite and the memory gifted to him by the Mother caused him to force a thin veneer of politeness.

Where Non Gae had once entertained senators, millionaires, judges and generals, she now survived by entertaining colonels and gang leaders. After two years of coarser pickings than she was accustomed to, the courtesan had been ready to move on. She'd been following their progress since Santa Fe on the Dot Gov uplink, one of her Pentagon clients immediately ensuring the brothel had access to the latest news. She'd quickly put the young woman who had answered the door in charge and packed her bags. With the government no longer in Washington, the kisaeng brothel's grip on existence within the shattered city was tenuous at best.

"Excuse me," Gabriel said, heading over to help the Reverend and Gunn move a much larger vehicle as an excuse to get away. Sacred prostitution his tail feathers! He didn't want the fallen female anywhere near him! The very … thought … of what she did for a living disturbed him even more than even Lena had at first. At _least _Lena had been in a committed relationship with the same man for eighteen years until the heavenly host had taken him.

"She's very beautiful," Gunn said, an expression of unabashed admiration on his face as he watched Non Gae daintily place a tiny hand upon a VW bug and help Lena shove it off to the side of the road. "Don't you think?"

"Harumph!" Gabriel snorted in revulsion.

"What's your problem with her?" Gunn asked.

"She's a harlot," Gabriel snapped. "That's the problem!"

"Never underestimate the power of a good harlot," Gunn jibed, slapping him on the shoulder as they got into position to shove the box truck off the road. "Hey! Reverend! You got that thing in neutral?"

"All set!" the Reverend shouted from the front. "This thing's too high for me to jump out and push from the door. Do you think you two can push it without me?"

"One … two … three … _HEAVE!"_ Gunn shouted. They both put their backs into it and shoved, grunting with exertion as they put their shoulders to the wheel and pushed.

"That's good!" the Reverend called. He hopped out of the cab and moseyed over to the next vehicle blocking their path.

"What do you think, Reverend?" Gunn asked, a wolfish grin on his face.

"Think of what?" the Reverend asked.

"Of our newest disciple?" Gunn asked.

The Reverend made eye contact with Gabriel, noting the scowl upon his face and disapproving glances he kept shooting Non Gae's way. Not only had the Reverend known him the longest, but he was also the only other person besides Mambo and Audrey who could reliably pick up on the undercurrents of Gabriel's thoughts.

"Let he amongst you who is without sin cast the first stone," the Reverend said softly, looking Gabriel in the eye. The words of the Savior Gabriel had been sent to kill.

"Won't be _me _casting no stones," Gunn laughed, either oblivious, or willfully taunting Gabriel. "I was stationed in Vietnam for four years. Spent a lot of time in Bangkok on liberty earning myself a good stoning!"

"I thought you were married then," Gabriel asked, stepping back and sizing his friend up. This was a topic of conversation that had never arisen before.

"I was," Gunn said, suddenly realizing he had stepped over some magical little moral line with his friend. All jesting was suddenly gone from his voice. "You get shot at every day … the wife is on the other side of the world. A guy's got needs."

"Is _that _why she left you?" Gabriel asked, his tone accusatory.

"No," Gunn said, his expression suddenly serious. "She never found out. It never meant anything. Just … relief. It was _her _I was picturing fucking most of the time. Not some cheap whore in a red light district. My wife left me because I was a real asshole when I got back. Between my shitty attitude and the flashbacks … she just couldn't take it anymore. A whore doesn't care _how _you act so long as you pay her. A wife … does. You don't treat her right, she'll leave."

Gabriel silently digested this information, his friend reduced in his estimation a few notches. _He _would never seek … relief … from anyone but his wife. If he couldn't have _her, _then he wouldn't want _anyone._ When they made love, it was special. So special that not even the Father had ever been able to replicate the warm glow of ecstasy he felt merely by thinking about her, much less made love to her. Why would humans seek a union that was less than perfect?

"We're not all blessed with the connection you share with your wife," the Reverend said, as though reading his thoughts. "We seek it, but it's so very hard to find. We're imperfect creatures grasping at something elusive."

"_You _never defiled yourself," Gabriel said.

"Oh yes I did!" the Reverend laughed. "When I was younger and a lot more impulsive. You didn't think I mastered that Elvis pelvis tilt on a whim? Did you?"

Gunn held up one hand to give the Reverend a high-five. The Reverend slapped his hand.

"You never mentioned it before," Gabriel said, surprised that everyone but _him _seemed to have little or no problem with Non Gae's profession. _Or _talking about it so … openly. "I just assumed…"

"It was a mistake," the Reverend said quietly. "Actually … quite a few mistakes. A whole long, sordid string of mistakes. It wasn't … it just didn't give me what I thought it would. Usually I was lonely and needed someone to talk to. I finally realized I got more out of prayer and connecting to others via missionary work than I did bedding some gal who wasn't worth marrying."

"Missionary work is better than missionary position," Gunn joked. "Right, Reverend?"

The Reverend snorted, stifling a laugh at Gunn's off-color joke. "Something like that... At least outside the confines of a committed relationship."

"So the Father is right?" Gabriel asked.

"From what you've told us," Gunn said, "the Father doesn't have a clue either. He's in the same stinking boat as the rest of us single guys. Jerking off 'cause no one will have him."

"By the time I graduated from the seminary," the Reverend said. "I'd made up my mind that the next woman I slept with would be my wife."

"Speaking of wives," Gunn asked, the wolfish grin back upon his face. "When you going to take that new wife of yours for a ride? The poor gal's so hot for you she's got me lecturing her about the physics of sharpshooting to fill in the boring parts in that terrible science book you're making the poor girl memorize!"

"She's too young," the Reverend said. "She just turned fourteen. Just because she _acts _a lot older than her age … she's too young. The minimum age in Nevada is sixteen."

"You're not in Nevada anymore," Gunn pointed out. "Besides … I banged my first girlfriend when I was only thirteen. This is a whole new world."

"The Saviors human mother," Gabriel said. "His _first _human mother, was barely even twelve. The Father had to pick one that young to get a pure vessel because their custom was to be married between thirteen and fourteen years old. Lyubitshke's customs are much more closely aligned with the will of the Father than modern ones."

"Probably because by the time a guys twelve or thirteen years old," Gunn laughed, "that's all he thinks about. Sex. Sex. Sex. I remember jerking off day and night. Even in the locker room at school between classes."

"I plead the Fifth," the Reverend said.

"The what?" Gabriel asked.

"The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution," the Reverend said, a guilty grin lighting up his _own _face. "I refuse to answer that question on the grounds I might incriminate myself."

"What about you, Gabriel?" Gunn asked. "C'mon! You can't tell me you and all your brothers didn't think about all those pretty female angels you keep saying you can't remember."

"No!" Gabriel exclaimed, horrified at the very thought. "They were our _sisters!_ We would never…."

He stopped, mid-push of the vehicle they were in the process of shoving off the road, as the memory triggered.

'_Armieta,' Gabriel called, running to catch up to his bigger sister. 'Would you like to play hide and seek?' _

'_Oh, Gabriel,' Armieta said, tossing her raven-black curls with annoyance. 'I'm too –old- to play such childish games.'_

'_But you used to –like- playing hide-and-seek with me,' Gabriel complained, pouting. 'Why won't you play with me anymore?'_

_Lately, his sisters had been acting … strange. Although he was the youngest cherub, the last to be shaped by the Father and breathed into existence by the Mother, he was also by far the largest, the Father wishing to use up the last little leftover bit of clay he'd gathered that day and not waste it. His sisters had grown taller, though, strange protrusions sticking out of their chests like the Mother had. _

_The … protrusions stuck out at eye level. Gabriel couldn't resist the urge to reach out and touch them. They were soft. Squishy. Pleasant to touch... _

'_Gabriel!" Armieta snapped, slapping his hand. She glowered at him._

'_S-s-sorry,' Gabriel stuttered. Obviously he'd just done something wrong. She was angry at him. Why was she angry at him?_

'_Why don't you go ask Michael to play?' Armieta snapped, waving her hand dismissively. 'Or Lucifer. They're always up for a good game of hide-and-seek.'_

'_But I want to play with –you-,' Gabriel sulked. 'All you ever want to do is play with Asmodeus and his brothers!' _

_Asmodeus was the first of the Grigori shaped by Lucifer to be their playmates, but now even the Grigori didn't want to play with him anymore, saying he was just a baby. As the last cherub to be shaped, Gabriel had always lagged behind the others. He was forever being told to go away and play elsewhere, which is why he spent so much time at the Father's feet. Only Michael and Lucifer ever took him under their wings and let him tag along._

_And the Mother… For some reason the Mother always sought him out and tried to lure him out of his shell._

'_Asmodeus is –fun- to play with,' Armieta said in a taunting voice. 'We play chess and games that strengthen the mind. You … are a child. Why don't you go sit at the Father's feet until you learn to be more like him?'_

_Gabriel suppressed his tears as his sister jauntily turned and walked away, her dark curls bobbing down her back over her feathers as she went. As soon as she got down the path, Asmodeus hurried to catch up with her and followed, rearing up onto his hind legs and obediently assuming a position at Armieta's back, his leathery wings flared to protect her from the wind. Armieta didn't tell –Asmodeus- to take a hike! In fact … she seemed to –enjoy- his company._

_Gabriel hurried back to the Father's workshop so he could hurry up and learn whatever it was his sisters expected from him so they wouldn't tell him to go away anymore._

"Gabriel?" the Reverend asked.

Gabriel came back to reality and realized he was standing in the middle of Interstate 95 pushing on a car that was no longer there, Gunn having pushed the vehicle the last little bit to get it off the road.

"Dude," Gunn laughed. "You were a million miles away. Thinking of some hot babe you met in heaven?"

Slowly Gabriel became re-oriented to what was going on in the here and now and remembered what they had been talking about just prior to his memory. This was the second memory in three days. Were his memories starting to return?

"The Father forbade … intimate … relations," Gabriel stated coldly, retreating behind his customary unreadable expression. "When the time comes to leave this plain of existence, the Father is going to punish me severely for taking a wife. The _last _brother who defied his law has cooled his heels in the Keep ever since."

"I'm sorry," the Reverend said quietly. "Perhaps it would be best if we changed the topic of conversation, Gunn? Gabriel grew up with different values than we did. Let's just agree to disagree."

"Agreed," Gunn said. "So … Gabriel … tell us what it was like when Hannibal sacked Rome?"

Gabriel knew an olive branch being offered when he heard it. He launched into a description of the battle the Father had watched with great interest, but had ordered the angels to not interfere. With what he knew now, he suspected it had been another one of the wagers between the Father and the Mother. Hannibal was the kind of military leader the Mother would find intriguing, while causing the military leaders death by sending the heavenly host to whisper to his own people to betray the general to the Father's pet Romans was the kind of thing the Father would do to wreak vengeance once the Mother had moved on to post-victory concerns. Ancient biblical military tactics. Always a good, neutral topic of discussion amongst former military men.

"Cannae," Gabriel corrected. "Hannibal never made it as far as Rome. It was at Cannae that he took on far superior numbers of the Roman army and won."

For the next several hours, as their party slowly inched their way up the highway until they hit another stretch of clear road, Gabriel distracted his friends from discussing the matter of their newest disciple, and all the problems he had with her profession, by indulging their every question they had about ancient biblical military history.


	105. Chapter 104

_Note:__ I'd like to thank once again all the wonderful readers and reviewers who drop me messages, give me ideas, and remind me when to drop breadcrumbs about this tantalizing thing or that._

_Special thanks to VoodooChild3000 who did some great fan-art of Audrey with her tattoos. I hope you all go over for a visit and check it out. Replace the [dot] with [.] and paste it into your web browser (fanficnet deletes anything with a URL in it):_

_http:/spamwarrior21__ [dot] deviantart [dot]com/art/Little-Prophet-214838140_

X

X

Chapter 104

Audrey stared in dismay at the collapsed ruins of the Holland Tunnel spanning underneath the Hudson River from New Jersey into New York City. The very _wide _Hudson River. Too wide and swift-moving to swim, fjord, or get across in anything except a _real_ boat.

"This is the end of the line," the army private said, speaking the words they'd been dreading for the past two days. The end of the remnants of governments reach … and their comfy ride in petroleum-powered vehicles. "We can't go any further. Everything beyond this point is a dead zone."

"I don't like it," Gabriel said through his perch on the back of the pickup truck. "I flew ahead and scanned the area earlier. Everything has been gutted and gangs are openly roaming the streets. We should go around."

Audrey lined up the compass rose on her hand in the direction it was headed. Straight into what was left of the Manhattan skyline. "Isn't there another way around? Another bridge, perhaps?"

"The only bridge still in existence is the Brooklyn Bridge," Gabriel stated flatly. "The inhabitants have jury-rigged a wooden foot bridge attached to one of the suspension cables that survived. Nothing larger than a man would be able to get across. Not even a horse."

"Then why don't we take _that?_" Audrey asked.

"Because it's on the other side of the river," the Private informed her. "Manhattan is an island. The Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River, not the Hudson. To get there, you first have to _get_ there."

"Is there a problem?" the Reverend asked, coming up to bang on the cab of the pickup truck from the truck behind. "I take it our way is blocked again?"

It did not surprise him the way was blocked. Most of the last two days had been spent clearing dead motor vehicles off the road so the trucks could pass, not driving. Several times they'd been attacked, gunfire ringing out as survivors and road bandits took potshots at the military convoy, but the moment they started firing back the attackers disappeared. The further they got away from the Pentagon, the worse it got. At this point, it was taking them longer to travel by motor vehicle than by horse.

"Look for yourself," Gabriel stated. "I scouted as far north as the Tappan Zee Bridge. Everything has been decimated. If the heavenly host did their job, there won't be anything left until well north of Albany." None of them mentioned the fact that Gabriel would know. He'd personally planned and overseen the destruction of those key assets before personally coming to kill the Savior after the heavenly host had failed.

By now the other disciples had come out of the transport vehicle to stretch their legs, find out what the delay was, and get ready to help move more dead cars if necessary. There was no moving anything unless they wanted to dig a new harbor tunnel under the Hudson River. The Holland Tunnel was completely collapsed.

"I saw boats," Gabriel said. "Does the government have any connections to any of them?"

"There are boats plying the Hudson from towns upriver," the Private said. "The boats don't dare make landfall here at the mouth of the river. New York City was always pretty rough even _before _the apocalypse. The boat captains treat any smaller boats as pirates and blast them out of the water."

"Maybe you could radio one of them to come help?" Audrey asked.

"The government has only been able to establish tenuous contact via ham radio, citizens band and two-way frequencies," the Private said. "We could _try_ to raise one … can't hurt."

"We've got no Dot Gov uplink into that area yet," Jose' added. "I'm scanning for radio traffic right now. Not getting any answers to my hails."

"General Pine said New England and upstate New York have reestablished their old pre-colonial trade relationships and are recovering," the Senator said. "They've completely divorced themselves from the New York Metro area and the national government. They're blaming _them _for the apocalypse."

"_That _doesn't surprise me," the Reverend said thoughtfully. "My brother lives … lived … I'm not sure if he's dead or alive. Anyways … he and his family moved to the Rochester region. The upstaters always resented the hell out of the financial drain on the rest of the state caused by the concentration of power in New York City. New York City kept all its property tax wealth, while the entire state subsidized public transportation, public housing, and state benefits for jobs too low-wage to pay their own way. They called it a modern-day Babylon."

"Then the Father agreed with them," Gabriel said, his expression unreadable as his unearthly blue eyes scanned the ruins of the unreachable Manhattan skyline. "New York City and Los Angeles were near the top of his hit list. Right after Washington, the Pentagon, Beijing and the Kremlin."

"I thought you said Rome was the Father's pet project?" the Senator asked. "Wasn't Rome the same way?"

"The Father liked Rome's military strength," Gabriel said. "Not all the political drama that went with it. Once Rome became like New York City, the Father sent the Huns and the Visigoths to cut them back down to size."

"So what you're saying is the Father allowed his own son to be brutally murdered in zero BC because he favored Rome," Audrey said sarcastically, silently patting herself on the back for remembering that obscure bit of ancient history from some late-night History Channel documentary, "and then four hundred years later he grew bored with it and sacked it himself?"

Gabriel silently shot her a look communicating his displeasure at her flippant disregard of the Father. Much to her annoyance, Gabriel _still _tended to defend the Father even when it was obvious his actions had been short-sighted or just plain wrong. Audrey retaliated by shooting him her most innocent, winning smile, coyly batting her eyelashes as she sidled up to him and caressed his arm through his thick winter coat. Gabriel rolled his eyes and exhaled, not quite a sigh. Without either of them speaking a word, they'd disagreed, agreed to disagree, and then made up.

"It's getting late," the Private reminded them. "This territory is pretty unsettled. We should probably find someplace to set up camp for the night."

"Agreed," Gabriel said.

"But we need to get across…" Audrey protested.

"We have received no guidance about a disciple to be found in that … pit," Gabriel stated bluntly. "Unless we have good reason to enter that cesspool, we're going to go around."

"I second that motion," Gunn stated. "The last thing you want is to engage in urban combat in a concrete jungle. Too many sniper positions. Too hard to defend"

"But…" Audrey said.

"Remember what happened in Las Vegas," Gabriel reminded her. "I can fly. The others cannot."

Audrey shut her mouth. Gabriel was right. With no clear way to get across, they would be bedding down in hostile territory without adequate time to scout ahead for trouble.

"I'll s-s-set up the uplink to d-d-Dot Gov," Jose' offered, his hands trembling more than usual. "And the s-s-scanner, too. M-m-maybe we can hail a ship?"

"We'll find a defensible position on this side," Audrey finally said after a moment's consideration. "Give Jose' chance to do his magic. Okay?" Jose's nervousness got through where Gabriel and Gunn's worries failed. Gabriel _always _wanted to go around danger zones and Gunn _always _seconded that opinion. But talk of snipers and indefensible positions had Jose' on edge. Unless they wanted to swim the horses across the mile-wide river and risk losing a few, Jose' was their best bet for hailing assistance.

Within an hour Gabriel scouted out an abandoned apartment building on 14th Street overlooking the docks and harbor in case they managed to hail a ship. The place was filthy and reeked of urine, but it was defensible and not too badly gutted out by fire. Audrey liked it when Gabriel scouted ahead. Although it had been more than two years since the apocalypse, the dead zones were always filled with the remains of people murdered by each other and the heavenly host. He never said what he did with the bodies, but whenever possible Gabriel tried to spare her from being reminded of just how gruesome the apocalypse had been, or how it was he had come into her life.

Guilt. No matter how much the Father punished Gabriel for loving her, Audrey knew it would be his guilt over his blind obedience, not later defying the Father to marry her, which would haunt him for the rest of his existence…


	106. Chapter 105

Chapter 105

"CQ CQ CQ … this is the Church of the Reborn Savior calling CQ CQ CQ to any ship plying the Hudson River … over," Jose' called out over numerous bands on the ham radio. He'd jury-rigged an antennae to the roof with one microphone while a webcam recorded him broadcasting the message and relayed the uplink via a miniature satellite uplink on the same roof. Jose' could jury-rig an antenna out of practically any material he laid his hands on. Just give him a couple of strands of wire and some junk steel and he'd have you uplinked to Dot Gov in no time. Jose' could even build satellite dishes out of old hibachi covers!

Without the FAA enforcing band plan restrictions anymore, Jose' had reprogrammed a ham radio to broadcast on all frequencies. Amateur. Military. Citizens Band. Public Safety and 2-way frequencies. Television and FM/AM radio. Satellite TV. Ship-to-shore radio. Even little kids walkie-talkies and baby monitors could pick up Jose's broadcast if they were close enough. Jose' let people know they were in the area. If people could offer assistance, needed assistance, or wished to have the Reverend baptize them, Jose' would coordinate with Gunn to meet them later in a defensible location. They had learned the hard way never to tell people where they were. Someone with an old citizens band radio had attempted to lure them into an ambush in west Texas.

Non Gae sat quietly off to one side, a pariah even amongst the odd little band of disciples. Audrey, Lyubitshke, and Cindy were all married. They felt threatened by the sudden addition of a prostitute...

'_No! Kisaeng …' _Audrey reminded herself. _'A geisha.'_ Non Gae was a Korean geisha, not simply a prostitute. Sleeping with the men she 'entertained' was only a small part of what Non Gae did. Gabriel's bias was creeping into her view of the woman, which would otherwise be curiosity, not scorn. The soldiers and Gunn were, of course, intensely interested, but not for the reasons the Mother was interested in her. It was up to Audrey to try to find out the _real _reason the Savior had chosen their newest disciple.

Gabriel silently watched her from across the room. The men were engaged in their nightly routine of cleaning the weapons and making sure everything was operational for the next days' foray into the city. Audrey could practically _see_ the clock ticking in his head. How long before he could respectably whisk her away to whatever secretive little bower he had selected for the night? The other men often ribbed Gabriel about his voracious sexual appetite. Now that they were past the three-month miscarriage danger zone, he was making up for lost time.

Disciple! She had been brought back to life by the Mother to do a job! Gabriel would just have to wait before he stripped the pictures from the walls of tonight's love nest with his wings!

"Did you ever come to New York City before now?" Audrey asked Non Gae, making small talk.

"Yes," Non Gae said softly in her lilting, musical voice. Her expression was wistful as she surveyed the ruin of the Manhattan skyline from the shattered window of what had once been a multi-million dollar ocean view luxury apartment. "Many times. Where I came from was very … poor. The wealth your nation had … and how much your people took that wealth for granted … always amazed me."

"Were you really a spy for Kim Jong Il?" Audrey asked.

"I was trained from birth to serve my country and love its' leaders," Non Gae said without remorse. "Kim Il-Song was our leader then. Not Kim Jong-Il. He was a better man. They taught us to serve our country and its leaders as soon as you are capable of walking. I did what I was told to do without question."

"You sound a lot like Gabriel," Audrey said, glancing over to where Gabriel sat scowling at Non Gae for even speaking to her. Gabriel was walking that fine line between being just polite enough to not incur Audrey's wrath, but not polite enough to make Non Gae feel like one of the other disciples. Somehow, Audrey needed to help the two past this impasse.

"I was hoping he'd be more accepting of me," Non Gae said quietly, also noticing the scowl. "I've been watching your webcasts for almost a year now. I thought that he, of all people, might understand."

"Give him time," Audrey said. "It took him a long time to accept every one of us. Especially Lena. The only one he didn't have problems with was Gunn. They were both soldiers fighting wars that later turned out to be unjust."

"Gunn can't seem to decide if he wants to hate me for being a communist," Non Gae said. "Or sleep with me because I'm a kisaeng. He said he spent time in Cambodia and Vietnam battling communism and gets this angry look in his eyes, but then he propositions me. I've decided to just stay away from him until he makes up his mind. Is that what bothers Gabriel?"

"Honestly," Audrey said. "I don't think it's the fact you were a spy that bothers him. It's the … way … you get your information. The Father is … misogynist. God hates women because the Mother ditched his sorry ass for being such an asshole. He forbade the angels from taking wives because every time it's happened, they start to question him. Gabriel was pretty … repressed … when we first met."

"Gabriel was obviously madly in love with you when Jose' started the satellite broadcasts," Non Gae said, a sweet smile appearing on one side of her mouth that was different from the courtesan's customary courteous smile. This smile was _real_. "You were our heroine at the gweobong, our headquarters in Washington. We were all rooting for you."

"Thanks," Audrey said, blushing. "Yeah … Gabriel … I'm not sure _when _exactly he fell in love with me. I was pretty oblivious when I first met him. And mad as hell the Father had sent him to try to kill Charlie's baby. If Michael hadn't pleaded with me to save his life, I would have left him broken at the foot of the cliff to die."

"It is fortunate for us all that you did not," Non Gae said softly. "Lena has been filling me in on some of the information Jose' has been leaving out of the webcasts. Demons?"

"Not … exactly," Audrey said. "More like … dinosaurs … with wings and human intelligence. And pissed off as hell the Father killed off their entire species and locked them down in a hellhole for 64 million years."

"I'd be angry, too," Non Gae said, turning back to stare out across the water at the skylight that was only now visible by moonlight. "Did they rebel against the Father because they took wives? Like Gabriel did?"

This question took Audrey aback. She'd never considered it before. From what Gabriel remembered, all of the Grigori had been created by young Lucifer to be male so that his brothers would have rough-and-tumble playmates in the garden, not female. Had there once been another race of sentient dinosaurs roaming the planet, one whose remains no archeologist had yet uncovered?

"I'm not really sure," Audrey said. "Gabriel doesn't remember much from that time. The Father stole their memories of the time before the Mother left so they would serve as his army without question. Gabriel thinks the angels were asked to step up to the plate to do the job the Grigori used to do before they rebelled, but he has no clear memory of it. Only that the Grigori were originally created to be playmates, not demons."

"Perhaps then kisaeng is like Grigori?" Non Gae said. "Our leaders would pull pretty young girls from poor homes at eight years old to begin training. It's not until later some are chosen to become spies."

"Eight years old?" Audrey asked, horrified.

"Not _that _kind of training," Non Gae quickly interjected. "Kisaeng are trained to entertain through conversation, song, traditional dance, and poetry. We learn how to dress, to speak, how to move so that every mannerism is pleasing to men of power. They told us someday we would do something great for the world."

"The young girls you trained in Washington?" Audrey asked. "Were you training them to…" She didn't finish the question.

"No," Non Gae said, a hint of anger flashing in her dark eyes. "Not the little ones! Only kisaeng from Pyongyang were sent here to entertain clients!"

"Why do you train them, then?" Audrey asked. "The young girl you were teaching the song when we first met? She looked to be eleven or twelve."

"Your Gabriel rebels by loving you," Non Gae said, passion lacing her voice for the first time since Audrey had met her. "I rebel by taking runaway girls off the street and training them to be _true_ kisaeng! Gyobang have always drawn girls from the lowest classes of society and trained them to intellectually stimulate and provide beauty to the ruling class. To be kisaeng is to possess the mind of a scholar underneath the pretty package of male desire and use that desire to shape the thoughts of the ruling class!"

"I wasn't aware there were that many runaway girls of Korean descent in Washington," Audrey said.

"Black. White. Asian," Non Gae snorted. "Doesn't matter what race the girls are. I try to be like Hwang Jin-i. Famous kisaeng who shaped the minds of men of power! If girls are earnest in their studies, I help them get off the street and teach them to be cultured and beautiful. It is up to _them _what they do with those skills! Some become courtesans, but most find powerful husbands."

"How did you end up here?" Audrey asked, intensely curious. "In Washington? Wasn't it hard to get a visa to come here?"

"Kim Il-Sung was still our leader when I first trained and was assigned to Washington, not Kim Jong-Il," Non Gae said, glancing down at her hands. "I came on a cultural visa. My job was to educate your political leaders about our culture and soften their hearts to our countries interests. Sleeping with clients to gain a concession was encouraged, but never required. We were supposed to charm your political leaders into relaxing trade embargos and grant humanitarian aid to our people, not spy."

"How successful were you?" Audrey asked. "Our country was still technically at war with yours when the apocalypse happened. I only know that because my grandmother always told me."

"The way your leaders would promise to serve your countrymen," Non Gae said, scorn lacing her voice, "and then turn around and take bribes from corrupt capitalists even when it made your people suffer… It was too easy. Make them feel important and sleep with them and your leaders would give away the house. North Korean sanctions were never _about _communism. We were the unacknowledged battle ground between the ideologies of Washington capitalist warhawks and Chinese communists ones. North Korean people suffer because we are caught in the middle, both countries shoring up Kim Jong-Il's government instead of letting it fail. My experiences here only reinforced what we learned in the gyobang. Capitalism is evil!"

"We were taught communism is bad, too," Audrey said. "The Soviet Union fell."

"Kim Il-Sung was an old-school communist," Non Gae said, her dark, almond-shaped eyes focused off much further away than the darkened Manhattan skyline. "Like Lenin. He wasn't a perfect leader, but we felt he tried to take what little we had and spread it as best he could amongst the common people. Perhaps it was just a fairy tale, propaganda? But that was the way we felt. If we did something for our country, he would give you an award for it. It didn't matter if you were a janitor on the street. If you did a good job, you got an award. No money. There was never enough money. Usually note even enough food. But someone would say thank you and give you an award. We were starving … but we felt appreciated. We were all very proud to be asked to serve."

"What changed?" Audrey asked.

"Kim Il-Sung died in 1993," Non Gae snorted. "I had been here several years already when his son took over. He's a pompous little ass! He takes what little we have and uses it to fund his lavish lifestyle and the pet projects of the military. Kim Jong-Il demanded the kisaeng start aggressively propositioning the powerbrokers in Washington with sexual favors and ferret out top secret information over pillow talk, not entertain. That's _not _what a kisaeng is supposed to do! It cheapened our profession…"

"Why didn't you just quit?" Audrey asked. "Wouldn't they grant you asylum?"

"I tried," Non Gae said, her eyes far away once more. "I was in love with one of your US Senators. He was married, but he helped me obtain US citizenship. He was supposed to set me up here … in New York City … for a new life."

"Did he change his mind?" Audrey asked, wondering which Senator it had been. 1993. The year she had been born. She had a feeling Non Gae would never tell.

"No," Non Gae said quietly. "One day a package came to the gwonbeon with my name on it. In it was a finger and a video of my younger sister and her family being held in an interment camp. They cut off her pinky finger on the video and warned me to stay in line or my entire family would be next. After that … I did what they asked."

"Are they still alive?" Audrey asked. "Your family. Did any of them survive the apocalypse?"

"I have no idea," Non Gae said, her shoulders slumping. "My senator friend was voted out of office shortly after that and returned to his wife. He cared for me, but it was his _wife _he loved. Not me. All of my influential clients were killed during the apocalypse, so I have no way of finding out what happened on the other side of the world. My only consolation is that Gabriel said he sent an angel, not just those creepy heavenly host things, to kill Kim Jong-Il to make certain he was dead."

"So Gabriel _is _speaking to you," Audrey said, smiling.

"As little as possible," Non Gae said sadly. "But … yes. If I ask a direct question, he gives a direct answer. And not a single word more."

Audrey started to laugh.

"What?" Non Gae said, her head taking on the birdlike tilt, a courteous expression upon her face that Audrey was learning was the courtesan's equivalent of Gabriel's unreadable expression he hid behind when he didn't wish to disclose what he was really feeling.

"That's just Gabriel," Audrey said. "Out of all the angels in heaven, Gabriel was chosen to be the Word of God because otherwise he would never speak at _all _if left to his own devices. He spoke the message sent by the Father, and never a single word more!"

"But he was _always _speaking on those webcasts Jose' broadcast every night," Non Gae said, perplexed.

"Jose' plants cameras everywhere and tries to catch him at inopportune moments," Audrey said, "and then blackmails him by piecing video clips of him together. What you see in the one-hour webcast? That's probably every word Gabriel speaks over the course of an entire day!"

"Oh," Non Gae said, and then brightened. "There _was _that one night on that little riverboat just after your honeymoon…"

"And if you _ever _want to get on Gabriel's good side," Audrey chuckled, "you will _never _speak of that webcast again. I thought he was going to _throttle _Jose' when he found out!"

They both laughed, earning curious glances from Gabriel. Although Gabriel had never worn a watch, he pointed to his wrist, indicating it was getting late.

"I think your beloved resents my hoarding his time with you," Non Gae said, also noticing the gesture. "Let's not give him another reason to dislike me."

"Just give him time," Audrey said, giving the courtesan a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder. "It takes Gabriel a long time to warm up to anyone new."

"Lena and Mambo De Vivre have been going out of their way to make me feel welcome," Non Gae said. "They both understand what it's like to be an outcast."

"We _all _know what it's like to be an outcast," Audrey said. "Did you ever see that corny Christmas cartoon, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer?"

"Yes," Non Gae said. "Is this the part where you break into singing 'we're a couple of misfits' and the rest of us start dancing like a bunch of toys?"

"See?" Audrey laughed. "It's only been a few days and already you're fitting in!"


	107. Chapter 106

_Note:__ I went back and edited Chapter 105 about Non Gae's background in North Korea and the role of a kisaeng, making the chapter overly-long, and then split off the part where Audrey checks back in with Gabriel into Chapter 106. My thanks to readers who brought to my attention I hadn't gotten everything that was in my head about Non Gae onto the written page! You can't know it if I don't write it! So if you've already read Chapter 105 and just got an alert for Chapter 106, it's probably the previous chapter you want to re-read (in less, of course, you wish to re-read a little smut __ as well). Hazard, I guess, of late-night writing!_

X

Chapter 106

Audrey glanced across the room. Gabriel stood, tilting his head slightly, and frowned. He was ready to blow this joint and carry her off to … wherever. Audrey bid their newest disciple good night and met him halfway.

"What was so interesting?" Gabriel said, giving Non Gae a suspicious glance.

"I can see why the Savior selected her," Audrey said. "I think you'll find you have a lot in common. You should speak to her sometime."

"We have _nothing _in common!" Gabriel scowled, his posture stiffening at the mere _thought _of being close enough to her to hold a conversation.

"And neither did _we _at first," Audrey whispered, standing up on tiptoes to reach his exquisitely sensitive ear. "Until we found out we _did._ I think you'll find she understands your former obedience to the Father better than any of us."

Gabriel glanced at Non Gae, his glance curious this time, not merely hostile. Audrey hoped Gabriel would get past the Father's prohibitions and _speak _to the eighth disciple, not just grunt answers to questions. Non Gae's description of her childhood indoctrination into communism, the brainwashing, the colorful parades and militant youth groups, the way the government encouraged young people to spy upon their parents and report back their very _thoughts _about the people in power, not just how they acted…

Audrey suspected Gabriel would find it all hauntingly familiar. Non Gae could provide insight into _how _the angels had been indoctrinated to serve the Father without question, indoctrination Gabriel had little memory of ever receiving, but which influenced his every thought even now.

One of the things which troubled Audrey each night in her vision was _why _she was unable to get Lucifer and his 200 rebellious angels to act as the Grigori battled the forces aligned with the Savior. _Why _were there 200 'neutral' angels who did not agree with the Father, but who never took on the angels standing guard to ensure they did not interfere. 200-200-200. 200 rebels. 200 loyalists. And 200 undecideds. Perhaps Non Gae could help Audrey understand what it would take to break through to the undecideds? It was another thread she would need to follow.

"Let's get out of here," Gabriel finally rumbled, his voice husky and low in the way he knew got her all quivery inside as he bent next to her ear and inhaled her scent. After nearly a month of abstinence and morning sickness, her hormones were beginning to even out enough that her appetite for him had returned. And then some! Lately, she was a bigger female chauvinist sow than Gunn!

"Okay," Audrey said, running her fingers around to his back and up the underside of his wings where she had discovered a ticklish spot near the elbow-joint. She had discovered that if she hit the sensitive spot just right immediately after lovemaking, she could make Gabriel giggle like a little girl.

Gunn whistled a cat-call from next the fire. "Get a room, you two!"

"Y-y-yah!" Jose' seconded. "Get a r-r-room!"

Gabriel growled and tugged her over to the ledge, pulling her into his arms and leaping off the edge with her. Audrey shrieked in terror as he allowed them to fall a bit longer than usual for dramatic effect, thanks to the height of the apartment the group had hold up in, before spreading his wings and catching the air to carry her up into the luxury penthouse he had prepared for their bower for the night.

"Don't do that!" Audrey laughed, hitting him half-heartedly in the chest once they landed on the balcony.

"You like it when I do that," Gabriel said as he inhaled her scent, walking her backwards towards the bedroom he had prepared for them to spend the night. "I can smell your level of arousal increase."

It never ceased to amaze her, the accommodations Gabriel could rustle up. At 30 stories high and no electricity to run the elevators, not many people had bothered raiding the penthouse suite they now used.

"Nice digs," Audrey commented on the luxurious apartment. The apartment had been raided for supplies, but thirty stories was too high for anyone to hike up and trash without a reason to do so. The apartment had been spared from fire and still had all its windows, a luxury in this day and age.

"Mmmm hmmmm," Gabriel growled, stripping off her winter coat as he backed her up and tossing it on the floor. Words. He was down to two-word wordless phrases.

"Pillows!" Audrey exclaimed in delight spotting the luxurious confections they had learned to sleep without. "And a real down comforter! Where'd you get them?"

"Here," Gabriel said without even looking up from where he already had her shirt unbuttoned. One word. He was down to one-word phrases as his manhood pressed insistently through his cargo pants into her lower abdomen. Audrey finished unbuttoning his shirt and splayed her hands across his broad, muscular chest, teasingly running her thumb across his nipples before bending in to suckle them. Gabriel hissed with pleasure as she did so, every part of his anatomy exquisitely sensitive to her every caress. Gently he picked her up and lay her upon the bed.

"You," Audrey said, reaching up to caress his manhood and enjoying his sharp exhalation of breath, "are insatiable."

"Mmmmmm…." Gabriel growled, nuzzling down her abdomen to nip just below her belly button as he unbuttoned her jeans and slid them off. They were getting too tight for her. Soon, she would need bigger clothes.

Audrey gasped with delight as Gabriel nuzzled further south and tasted the forbidden fruit of her feminine mysteries. She wrapped her thighs around his cheeks and held his hair hostage with both hands until he brought her to orgasm before allowing him to move into position to slide into her feminine mysteries.

"For an angel who spent the first fourteen billion years of your existence sheltered from all carnal knowledge," Audrey whispered huskily as she gripped his cheeks and gazed into his eyes right before he entered, "you've certainly proven to be a quick and avid learner of all things related to lovemaking."

Gabriel was down to zero words now, her only answer being his ecstatic groan of pleasure as he sank his manhood into her feminine mysteries down to the hilt and the strange internal illumination his unearthly, ice-blue eyes often got whenever they made love. Thwack! Glass shattering. Thud! Furniture falling over. Whump-whump-whump. The beating of his wings and his cries of pleasure were the only answer to her question as they rose towards sacred union together.

Whenever they came together, just for an instant, Audrey caught a glimpse of what Gabriel described heaven had been like before he had fallen. Before the Mother had left and the Father had become angry and sad all the time. That Gabriel had chosen to spend what scant moments he could with _her, _rather than return to heaven and have all forgiven as the Father had offered in Santa Fe, all because she had whispered three little words he longed to hear, humbled her.

"What's that song you're humming?" Gabriel asked afterwards, in between lovemaking session number two and three.

"Oh … just an old song from a kids cartoon," Audrey said. She sang a few bars. "We're a couple of misfits…"

"A fitting song for this group," Gabriel growled, already beginning to 'rise' to the occasion a third time. Nothing turned Gabriel on like a good song. Or her scent. Or taste of her sweat. Or a touch. Or a certain look. Or batting her eyelashes. Actually … _everything _turned Gabriel on!

Aha! His guard was down. Snaking her hands up to the underside of his wings to the knee joint like a striking cobra, Audrey reached up and tickled the sensitive joint.

"Tee hee hee hee … oh! Stop that!" Gabriel giggled in a childlike voice before capturing her hand and forcing himself to act more … fearsome.

Audrey pealed in laughter as he tickled her in return, no real challenge as even on a _bad _day she was ticklish and prone to fits of girlish giggles. It was making _him _giggle that was the challenge. They ended up as they always did after such exercises, panting with exertion and ready for the next round of lovemaking.

"I love to hear you laugh," Audrey whispered, grabbing his face between his hands and looking into his eyes as he prepared to enter her feminine mysteries for the third time that night. "I wish you would do it more often."

"Never in my whole existence have I known such happiness," Gabriel said, gently kissing her. "No matter what the Father does to me afterwards, he will never be able to take this time away from me. Not even if he reaches into my head and tries to steal my memories. I will carry the memory of you in my heart and protect it with my very soul where even _he _can't touch it. Always."

Tears sprang to her eyes as she reached up to touch his chest over his heart. The heart that beat only for her.

"Me too," Audrey whispered, tears silently streaming down her cheeks as she nodded agreement. "I won't let him make me forget you. Or our child. I will teach our child to follow his heart as his father did before him."

This time, their lovemaking was tender and slow, both mindful of the painful knowledge that these precious few moments together were stolen. If her vision was right, someday soon it would end. Really soon. She was running out of time. Although the nightly battle she saw waged lasted beyond her beloved's death, the fact remained that in the end, the Savior, and all who followed him, lost. She was going to lose him, and it would be for nothing. In the end, not even heaven would be safe from the wrath of the Grigori.

It came as no surprise that night when the Mother spoke through her after her nightly vision and informed them they would find the Ninth Disciple by the opening bell.


	108. Chapter 107

Chapter 107

Gabriel felt … no. Not his brother's presence. This presence felt … odd. The hair stood up at the nape of his neck as his feathers rose in his follicles. They weren't alone.

Shuffle. So quiet it was almost inaudible. The living room. He had barricaded the door when he had first scouted out this room so no human could gain entry without creating a ruckus, but the presence felt … off. Not Grigori. But no brother he could remember in all the time since the Father had made them aware. Not even the Fallen.

"Audrey," Gabriel whispered, pressing a finger to her lips to prevent her from crying out with surprise as he slid from her embrace. "Wake up. Danger." His little prophet's eyes shot open and she started to speak. Gabriel shushed her. Their likelihood of success increased if the intruder wasn't aware they were awake.

He'd left the guns downstairs with the others when they'd flown up, their height giving him a false sense of security. Only his mace was with him. Slipping on his trousers and hastily pulling up the zipper, nearly zipping his manhood into the confounded contraption in the process, he crept out the door towards the source of the strange sensation.

"Who's there?" Audrey mouthed, no sound coming out of her mouth as she silently formed the words.

Gabriel shrugged and signaled he couldn't see by nodding 'no' and then pointing to his eyes, the living room beyond, and then nodding 'no' again. Whoever was there had moved into another room to investigate. The rustling now came from the kitchen just beyond. Someone was going through their things.

Audrey slid from beneath the covers and started pulling on her clothes, her eyes round with fear. Although they had run into numerous dicey situations since fate had first thrown them together and Audrey was no shrinking violet, the fact remained that she was no hardened combat veteran. And now she was carrying his child. He would not put her at risk.

Gabriel signaled for her to stay put. She nodded. Good. This was not the time for her to be defiant. Silently he crept across the living room in his bare feet. What was good for stealth right now would be a handicap when he engaged the intruder in battle. Whoever was there … stank. Like sickness. Gabriel had occasionally retrieved the soul of a cancer-ridden human and _that _was the scent he smelled now. Whoever was here was so filled with the disease that they should have been dead a long time ago. He raised his mace high above his head and leaned over the countertop to strike.

"Eeeek!" the disease-twisted Nephilim shrieked in terror, curling up into a ball and skittering over to one side of the kitchen.

"Don't hurt him," Audrey shouted from behind him, leaping in front of him and narrowly avoiding getting smashed into brain-pulp by the weight of the mace. She grabbed his forearm to still him before he could strike again.

"Don't _ever _do that!" Gabriel shouted. He'd nearly killed _her _instead of the twisted, grey … _thing _… huddled on the floor sobbing in fear. He raised his mace-arm a second time, ready to whack the thing and kill it if it so much as twitched.

"It's one of _them,_" Audrey said. "In the vision. They never attack. Just egg them on."

"Im rumex … im rumex!" the terrified creature cried over and over again, curling what appeared to be diseased grayish wings that were in the process of molting around itself. "Ego eram iustus curiosus!"

"We won't hurt you unless you try to hurt us," Audrey said gently, giving Gabriel a look that let him know there would be no arguing with him. "Gabriel … what's he saying?"

"He said he was just curious," Gabriel said flatly. The creature looked … young. Too young to be one of the offspring of the Fallen. One of the grandchildren, perhaps? Most of the grandchildren had also been born with wings, although by the fourth generation the gene had become too diluted unless they married one of their own kind. Something Lucifer had discouraged as he had hoped to spare his offspring from being punished by blending into humanity. A strategy which largely failed when the Father had responded by simply flooding the entire planet and wiping nearly everyone out, human and Nephilim alike.

"What's wrong with him?" Audrey asked. "He looks … sick."

"You call it radiation sickness or cancer," Gabriel said. "No mortal creature can exist that close to the Keep without becoming diseased from the vapors. Only the original Grigori and the Fallen are immune from putrefaction. Their life spark originates with the Mother."

"Donec non moceret mihi," the Nephilim cried. Please don't hurt me. And it _was _crying. Like a little boy.

"Quam veterem es Nephilim?" Gabriel asked. How old are you, Nephilim?

"Nescio [I don't know]," the Nephilim boy cried. "Erat cumque venisset ad nos undecim [I was eleven when they came to take us]."

"He's just a boy, little Prophet," Gabriel said. "He would be eleven of your earth years."

"How is that possible?" Audrey asked. "You said the Father incarcerated them in Sheol thousands of years ago."

"Time moves differently in Sheol," Gabriel said. "The condemned are forced to revisit their sins over and over again. Unless you know how to navigate the city, it's like being trapped in a single moment in time."

"You mean the Father took an eleven-year-old _child _and sent him to Sheol," Audrey asked, her voice rising in anger, "and you guys never _stopped _him?" Gabriel could hear the holy blasphemy rapidly rising in his little Prophet's voice.

"We…" Gabriel trailed off. The Father had sent them to gather any winged humanoid that took to the air after he sent the flood and immediately incarcerate them in Sheol. Asking questions was forbidden, so Gabriel hadn't asked. Just done as he had been ordered. _Most _of those they'd incarcerated had been third or fourth generation Nephilim. Innocent children and good, decent men and women whose only sin was being descended within four generations of the Fallen.

"You incarcerated _children?"_ Audrey shouted, her face turning red with anger as she clenched her fists. "And you never spoke up?"

"We …" Gabriel said, lowering his mace. There was no way he was going to explain his way out of this one. Glancing now at the pathetic, radiation-twisted creature that cowered before him on the floor, he had to wonder himself _why _he had never asked any questions. He couldn't even remember whether or not it had _bothered _him to gather up children and throw them into Sheol. It was all just one, big, blank dead spot in his memory. As though someone had selectively gone through his memories and wiped out any memory that was inconvenient or would cause trouble.

"What the _hell _kind of sins could this child have done to deserve _that?"_ Audrey screamed at him, her voice taking on that strange undertone it had been taking on lately during her nightly visions. Not the voice of the Mother. Something else. The hair rose on the back of Gabriel's neck.

Behind her, the Nephilim cowered even further, cringing in fear at Audrey now. Audrey was scaring the boy even more than _he _was.

"I didn't … think," Gabriel said stupidly, as though he were some big dumb mutt whining pathetically after his owner had just dragged him over to a pile of shit deposited in the middle of the living room carpet and rubbed his nose in it.

"No fucking _shit _you didn't think," Audrey screamed at him, her rage so palpable that Gabriel could almost feel the molecules in the room vibrate in harmonic resonance to her words. "Just like you didn't _think _when that fucking homicidal maniac of a Father sent you to murder an innocent newborn!"

"I…" Gabriel said, and then shut his mouth. There was no getting out of this one. The 'evidence' of his past blind stupidity was cowering in one corner of the kitchen in terror. Sometimes … you just needed to shut up and take your lumps.

"God damned fucking sonofabitch motherfucker worthless piece of fucking _shit _Father of yours who you're always defending!" Audrey screamed, the very architecture of the building around her beginning to shudder as she screamed. Every piece of glass in the apartment shattered, including the windows they had been lucky enough to find intact, and a strange musical 'hum' began to ring through the steel understructure of the building. A rage not her own had now taken over. This was not just Audrey's anger. This was the anger of the Mother.

For the first time, Gabriel recognized the nature of his little Prophet's holy blasphemy and why the Father had placed a prohibition upon her forehead warning him not to argue with her. When the Mother got angry, she destroyed. The mere vibration of her voice speaking through her mortal vessel could destroy matter. The longer Audrey carried the Mother's will into this world, the better she was getting at speaking with the Mother's voice. Arguing only increased the Mother's anger. It was the reason the Mother had chosen to stay away. Her power when she was angry was too destructive. There was no defending what the Father had made the angels do. It was best to shut up and not defend him.

The Nephilim child made a mad dash suddenly straight at him. Gabriel instinctively started to swing the mace at the child and just barely stopped himself in time as he realized the boy had run to hide from _Audrey, _not attack _him_. Gabriel looked between his wife, her face dark with rage, and the terrified child with an almost detached curiosity. The child was more terrified of his _wife _than he was of _him._

"Ne mihi noceant, mater [don't let the Mother hurt me]!" the boy screamed in terror, clinging at his legs and trying to hide behind him. "Cras [please]! Venit illa mihi [she has come for me]!"

"Little prophet," Gabriel said, making his voice as soothing as he possibly could. "You are right. What the Father asked me to do was wrong and I _should_ have rebelled. But you're frightening this child. Please, honey. Calm down so we can question him."

Audrey gasped for breath, trying to get the rage under control. She had gotten better at controlling the destructive rage which flowed to her from the Mother, usually able to recognize when it was starting to rise and deliberately re-routing it into some other, less destructive response. But the sudden appearance of the Nephilim child in their bower had surprised the both of them. Once Audrey lost control, all you could do was let it run its course and hope she wasn't too incapacitated afterwards. The fact that the Prophet had grown powerful enough to channel a small portion of the Mother's voice was … a wrinkle.

"I'm going to take him into the living room until you calm down," Gabriel said soothingly. "I won't hurt him. I promise. I'm just going to ask him some questions."

Audrey stood with her hands on the black marble island, hyperventilating and gasping for breath as she fought to shut down the channel she had inadvertently opened to the Mother's rage. She nodded, clamping her mouth shut so she would not speak. Audrey, obviously, had begun to realize what was happening during her episodes of holy blasphemy as well. His little Prophet trusted him. She knew he wouldn't hurt the boy unless he did something outrageous.

Gabriel led the terrified boy out of the room.


	109. Chapter 108

Chapter 108

"Quod nomen est tibi puer [what is your name, boy]?" Gabriel asked in the ancient language of heaven since the boy did not understand English. "Ubi sunt parentes [where are your parents]?"

"Anu," the boy prattled nervously in the ancient tongue, his wings twitching in fear as he sat on the couch Gabriel gestured to. "My name is Anu. My parents don't know I came."

"Why are you here?" Gabriel asked.

"I was curious," the boy cried out, cringing as he glanced around the room looking for a path to escape and eyeing the now-shattered windows longingly. "I didn't mean any harm! Some say a Savior has come to save the humans and that a Prophet leading his disciples was in this city. I was hoping he'd save us, too?"

"It's true," Gabriel said. "The Savior has returned a second time to help the humans. Your kind had already been removed from this world when he came the first time and you had not yet escaped when he began the process of incarnating into his human shell. I cannot pretend to know his mind, but when I see him, I will ask. He is very compassionate."

"Why is the boy afraid of me?" Audrey asked, standing in the doorway, her anger now reasonably under control although Gabriel could tell from the rigid set of her spine that he was going to have to answer some unpleasant questions from his little Prophet later.

"The Prophet asks to know why you fear her?" Gabriel asked the boy. As if she didn't know. For a moment, Gabriel had feared the entire building might shatter.

"The Grigori said the Mother will destroy the children of the Fallen the _same _way she destroyed the children of the Grigori," the boy said, eyeing Audrey fearfully. "The Prophet is powerful. She is angry that I came."

"She was angry at _me_," Gabriel said. "She is angry that, once upon a time, I was foolish enough to follow the Fathers' orders and sent children to Sheol because of who their sires and grandsires were. She is angry that you have sores all over your body and your feathers are falling out. When she becomes angry, she can speak with the Mother's voice. Luckily, that doesn't happen very often."

"I don't want to become like _them,_" the boy said. "They set us free and we are grateful, but the Grigori are insane, and their children are even _more _insane. Please. Don't let the Mother send me to the void!"

"I was told it was the _Father _who destroyed the children of the Grigori," Gabriel said to the boy. "Not the Mother. I know nothing of the fate of their children beyond that. They were not incarcerated in Sheol."

"Asmodeus does not lie!" the boy said, his mangy grey feathers bristling with anger as he spoke. "If not for _him, _we'd still be in Sheol!"

"The Grigori have been telling him it was the _Mother _who destroyed their children," Gabriel translated to Audrey. "Not the Father. The boy fears the Mother even more than the Father."

"Why would Asmodeus tell them that?" Audrey asked, perplexed. "Although they reject following the Mother when I offer it to them in the vision, it is most definitely the _Father _they are angry at. They finally beg the Mother to allow them to pass into the void for destruction."

Gabriel didn't have an answer. They would need to discuss it later. He wondered how long it would be before an armed force of Fallen came hunting for the child. The child was here because he was curious and young enough to be disobedient. Gabriel wasn't certain how strong the psychic link that existed between angels was for third-generation quarter-angel hybrids, but he suspected the boys' parents had already sensed their child was in danger and were amassing a rescue force even now.

"Who is your sire?" Gabriel asked.

"Ohya," the boy said proudly. "Begat by Shemihaza."

Shemihaza was one of his Fallen brothers who had refused to give up his wife and family when the Father had snapped his fingers. They had never been close. Not in the way he and Michael had been. But they had never been estranged, either. Shemihaza was a brilliant military leader, on par with Lucifer and Michael. Ohya had been one of the leaders storming the gates of Sheol to get back his sire. Gabriel had no intention of stepping between him and his offspring.

"Have you called them to come for you?" Gabriel asked. He wondered how much time would pass before the Fallen would come smashing through what was left of the windows of the penthouse. If there was one thing Gabriel had learned when the Father had ordered them to battle the offspring of the Fallen, it was that they would defend their young to the death.

…Just as the people in the Paradise Diner had defended an impure woman and her illegitimate child to their deaths even though the child hadn't even belonged to any of them…

"They are already on their way," the boy said haughtily. "They will kill you if you harm me."

"I'm a full-blood," Gabriel said softly. "Like your grand-sire. Only the Father or the Mother can uncreate my soul. But I will not harm you. I'm all done following the Father's orders unless it makes _sense._"

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked. "Please … translate."

"He's the grandson of Shemihaza," Gabriel said in English, "one of my Fallen brothers. They'll come for him. We've got to let him go."

"I have questions," Audrey asked.

"They are working with the Grigori," Gabriel said. "We can't defend this building against such an attack. He's just a frightened boy. If we hold him here against his will, we'll be no better than the Father."

Audrey took a deep breath as though about to argue with him, and then let it out, her shoulders slumping.

"His parents must be worried sick," Audrey said. "Is he still afraid of me?"

"He seems … curious," Gabriel said, noting the way the boys' wings twitched with a combination of curiosity and fear as he studied the tattoos visible on the Prophet's body. The child had the outward appearance of an angel, but inside he twitched with the insatiable curiosity and emotion of a human child. "Approach slowly and sit down. I don't think he'll hurt you."

"The rumors are true?" the boy asked, his mouth moving silently as he read the tattoos visible on the Prophets body. "She really _did _attend the birth of the Savior and save his life. And you really _have _been sent to protect her? And … there. She really _did _die and was brought back from the void by the Mother. Like the heavenly host!"

"What?" Gabriel asked, sitting shock straight. "What about the heavenly host?"

"Oh," the boy said, his eyes round and fearful once more. "I don't think I'm supposed to say anything. Asmodeus will punish me!"

"The heavenly host?" Gabriel demanded. "What about them? What's this about them being brought back from the void?"

Anu pulled his legs into his chest and began to rock, fearful. Whatever he feared, it wasn't Gabriel. Or Audrey. He feared having disclosed something the Grigori didn't want him to know.

"What's wrong?" Audrey asked. "He's afraid."

"I'm trying to decide whether to pry information we need to know out of a child and hope he doesn't get killed by the Grigori for disclosing it," Gabriel said. "Or let it drop and possibly lose the only opportunity we may ever have to question one of them."

Audrey glanced between him and the child. This was one decision he wanted _her _to make, his past judgment on matters such as this child being woefully inadequate. That's why _she _was the Prophet, and _he _had been assigned to protect her. One of the few things the Mother and the Father agreed upon was they trusted the Prophet's instincts to be truer on matters such as this than their own. Or _his._

"Let it drop," Audrey said. "We don't know how long this war will last and the kid seems curious about the Savior. It's more important he leave here and return to his people with his hope of the Savior offering a solution intact than to pry flawed intelligence out of a child."

Gabriel nodded affirmation. Her rationale made sense. As always. Not the reason _he _would have let the boy go, but a sound one. He'd learned to never underestimate humanity's capacity to hope. This child was three-quarters human. Maybe the Savior would be willing to include the hybrids in whatever plans he had for this world. _If _he prevailed. Right now, things weren't looking too hopeful.

"Will the Savior help us, too?" the boy asked Audrey, looking her in the eye with an expression of hope that only a human could have. Gabriel translated the question for her.

"The Father really mucked things up down here," Audrey said gently, glancing at Gabriel to translate. "We're still finding out _how _badly he messed up the Saviors plans. But if we can get my people to follow him then, yes. I don't see why not. All you have to do is ask. If your intent is pure, the Savior will do what he can to help you."

The boy nodded, his eyes round with fear as Audrey reached out to touch just underneath a gaping sore the boy had on his cheek. A single tear escaped one of the Prophet's eyes and dripped onto another gaping wound where the skin was peeling off the child's arm. The boys' abysmal condition really bothered her.

They were running out of time. Gabriel could _feel _the hair rising on the back of his neck as other presences encircled the building. Not just Fallen and the strange sensation of their half-human offspring. But Grigori. The disciples weren't ready to do battle, and Gabriel wasn't ready to die just yet. He'd long ago accepted his life as the price he'd pay to spare his little Prophet the fate of the wives and descendents of the Fallen. Seeing the Nephilim child only solidified his resolve. Gabriel would rather spend all eternity in the Keep rather than have any offspring of _his _suffer the way this poor child had suffered.

"We've got to let him go," Audrey said. "It's the right thing to do."

Gabriel nodded and turned to the boy. "The Prophet gives you permission to leave. If you ever wish to come back and speak to her, just make sure I know it's _you_ first so I don't accidently smite you. Okay? It's my job to protect her."

"Okay," the boy said. In a flash, he was out the window and racing through the dawn.

Slowly, Gabriel felt the presence of the other Fallen recede, but not go away completely. He'd sensed the odd prickling of senses in other dead zones they'd passed since leaving the Pentagon, but he'd been unable to place it before now. The sensation had been weak. Not attached to any of his brothers. Or even their half-human offspring. Third and fourth-generation Nephilim. Now that Gabriel knew what he was sensing, he could _feel _the Nephilim who filled the city. Thousands of them.

They'd better be careful from here on in. It wasn't just human predators they needed to fear anymore, or a finite number of purebred Fallen or Grigori. The Nephilim had escaped Sheol since the last time he'd touched base with his brothers. Once you included the one-eighth angel fourth-generation offspring of the Fallen who appeared totally human except for their enhanced size and strength, they numbered over one-hundred thousand.

"Michael!" Gabriel shouted out into the sky. Before he entered the walls of modern-day Babylon to retrieve the ninth disciple, he wanted to know what in _Sheol_ he was walking into!


	110. Chapter 109

Chapter 109

"Brother?" Michael inquired as soon as he appeared.

"It would have been nice if you'd warned us the Nephilim had escaped," Gabriel said, scowling to communicate his displeasure at being caught off guard. "We're lucky it was just a curious child who paid us a visit and not the kids' father."

"Wh-? What?" Michael asked, his wings twitching with surprise. By the furrow of his brow, it appeared this was news to Michael as well. "I wasn't…"

"Shemihaza's in the city," Gabriel stated flatly, his voice rumbling and low. "So are his offspring, including Ohya. Several thousand of his descendents, I estimate. Along with three or four Grigori."

"Did you capture him?" Michael asked, glancing around at the shattered glass of the penthouse. "The kid?"

"We let him go," Gabriel said.

Michael breathed a sigh of … exasperation? Relief?

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"Now I know how Azrael has felt all these years," Michael said, his expression troubled. His shoulders slumped as though he were carrying the weight of the world upon his shoulders. "The Father ordered us to recapture and reinter any Fallen we encounter. But the Savior has forbidden it."

"The Savior is now able to communicate?" Gabriel asked, his wings perking up with interest. "I thought…"

"He's over two years old," Michael said. "All human children gain a few words by two years old. The Savior accelerated the brain development of his mortal shell so it can handle more of his consciousness, but he can only do it so fast without damaging it."

"So he mightbe ready to lead us before the excrement hits the fan," Gabriel asked hopefully. Hope. That frailest of human emotions. That most _powerful _of human emotions.

"No," Michael said flatly, his back stiffening. "Nobody is going to follow a two-year-old. No matter _how _articulate he is. Your wife and the disciples are going to have to take up the slack."

Silence stretched between them.

"He must hate me," Gabriel said softly, his wings drooping with shame. "I tried to kill his human shell." There. He'd put it out there. The question he did not dare ask.

Michael silently stepped over to the shattered window overlooking the harbor. The shattered glass crunched beneath his boots as he surveyed the shattered skyscrapers, his hand over his heart, as he pieced together the words that he knew would break his brothers' heart.

"You have much to atone for, brother," Michael said, his stern expression softening as he reached out to place his hand upon Gabriel's shoulder. "The Father sent us after him when he knew he was vulnerable, and you did so without question."

"I _did_ question," Gabriel said softly. "But not because I questioned the Father's judgment. I questioned what was in his heart because _you _questioned. I _did _listen to you, you know? When you said the Father had made your heart, and your heart said he should not lose faith in them now. I listened. I listened to what was in _my _heart."

"And what did your heart tell you?" Michael asked.

"My heart told me I was sick of watching the Father suffer," Gabriel said. "He'd had enough of them. So I did too."

"The Father has always been inconsistent," Michael said, staring right through Gabriel as though he wasn't even there. "He creates things with the best of intentions, and then he plops them into this world to sink or swim. It's all nature and no nurture."

I never shared your love for humanity, Michael," Gabriel said, suddenly angry. "While you spent time amongst them, picking them up when they fell, I spent time with the Father. I watched them break his heart time and time again. I didn't remember that it was the _Mother _who had broken his heart. I only knew what I saw. I did not question it when he told us they finally broke his heart for the last time. I thought … I thought if he started over, he would be happy again. As I remembered when he had been when he first created them."

"But you chose to exterminate the Savior, too," Michael said. "How could you be so blind as to follow an order to kill the Father's son?"

"We're his sons, too, you know," Gabriel whispered. "Why is it he views us as little more than dogs?"

"You were jealous?" Michael asked, as if this thought surprised him. "Of the Savior?"

"Weren't _you?_" Gabriel asked, his wings twitching defensively. "Let's be honest, Michael. When the Savior just showed up one day in the garden and the Father announced he was his only begotten son without announcing _how _he had gotten begotten or even reminding us that _we _once had a mother, too, didn't you feel just a _little _bit jealous?"

Michael's silence was more damning than any admission he could have made. The droop of his wings. The slump of his shoulders. Michael looked … exhausted. Discussing what was happening with the Savior was forbidden, but for the first time Gabriel realized that Michael had aged since throwing himself down from heaven to rescue humanity.

"Yes."

"I was always separate from the others," Gabriel said, anger rising in his voice. "I was the last one shaped by the Father and breathed into life by the Mother. The dimwitted little brother nobody wanted around. _You _were the only one who ever let me tag along. You. And Lucifer. So if the others wonder why my first loyalty has always been to the Father, they need look no further than themselves! At least the Father would let me sit at his feet!"

"Brother," Michael said, reaching out to clasp Gabriel's cheek. "I am sorry I never noticed your pain. Perhaps if I had…"

"I have asked myself that same question every single minute of every day since I was cast out of heaven," Gabriel said, pulling himself from his brothers' grasp and turning away. "I never got to know them the way that _you _did. Until I was cast down to dwell amongst them, I bore nothing but contempt for them. _That _was not your doing."

Silence stretched out between them, the only sound the winter wind blowing across the harbor into the shattered windows of the penthouse suite and the beating of Gabriel's own heart.

"We _both_ have much to atone for," Michael said, turning back to gaze upon the skyline once more, the late winter sun highlighting the blackened, craggy buildings from the east and giving the illusion of rising over a range of mountains, not the remnants of a once-great city. "Do you remember what Lucifer said when we threw him into the Keep?"

"He said it is our place to guide them," Gabriel said softly, and then was surprised at the sudden upwelling of emotion from his belly. "Why did we do that? I understand why I was susceptible to judging humanity so harshly, but no matter how much I ask, I _cannot _understand why I followed the Father's orders to throw Lucifer into the Keep. He was our favorite brother! I loved him almost as much as I loved the Father! _Why_ did we let the Father punish our brother so severely and not speak up? Why did we let him punish his _children _so severely? Why! Why! Why!"

Gabriel slammed his fist into the concrete post between windows in frustration as he shouted the last three words. These were the same questions his little Prophet had asked him the moment the Nephilim child had left. Questions he had not been able to answer and had left her distant and cold.

"We all have sins we need to atone for," Michael said, his eyes troubled. "This whole … situation … is like a puzzle box. The Savior is angry at _you_. Lucifer is angry at the _both _of us. And the Grigori hate us _all._ Who's to blame?"

The question stretched between them, neither one of them, even now, daring to speak the epithet they both had on their minds.

"I accept full responsibility for all that has transpired," Gabriel said stiffly. "When the time comes, I want you to chain me in the Keep without remorse. It is what I deserve for what I have done."

"This is not your burden to bear alone, brother," Michael said, compassion lighting up his eyes. "We are all to blame. Each and every one of us."

They stood apart. Brothers. Separated by some terrible sin that _neither _of them could remember. Was it their sin? The Mother and the Fathers? Pure, random chance? When had things become so bad?

"I want my child to be born into a world cleansed of my sins," Gabriel said softly, his voice choking up with tears. "Cleansed of all that has gone before, whether it is my fault, or ours, or the Mother and the Father's sins."

"Sacrificing yourself is futile," Michael said. "The Savior already tried that. He failed."

"I _saw _what we did to that Nephilim child, Michael!" Gabriel shouted. "It's what I deserve for allowing the Father to throw that poor child into Sheol without questioning it!"

"We were following orders," Michael said. "I am as guilty as you are."

"The poor child's diseased body should have expired," Gabriel said, his voice filled with anguish at the scent which _still _lingered in the penthouse from the boy's diseased flesh. "The Father is so intent on making the poor boy suffer for the sins of his grandfather that he wouldn't even let the poor boy die! The child's entire body is one huge, open sore! And yet … he comes to _us _looking for hope? How is it that we have been to Sheol countless times and saw what the Father did to these children and never questioned it?"

"I don't know," Michael said, his wings drooping in shame. "Until he ordered me to kill the Savior, it troubled me, but I told myself it wasn't our problem."

"The Savior is right," Gabriel said, his shoulders slumping. "No matter what else happens, this … pattern … _has_ to end. I realized it the day the Father offered me the chance to return to heaven or stay here. It is why I have pledged my service to the Savior even though I know he doesn't _want _it."

Michael stared off into the skyline, his eyes turned to some point in the past as his voice caught in his throat. "I wish Mary Magdaline were here," he finally whispered. "Shealways knew the right thing to do."

"You loved her," Gabriel said gently. "Of course you miss her."

"Your wife reminds me of her," Michael said, and then got a wry expression on his face. "Although, quite frankly, Mary never possessed your wife's sewer mouth. I've heard sweeter language come out of the mouths of longshoremen and scaliwags than comes out of your wife's mouth when she shouts her holy blasphemy into the heavens. He can hear it, you know?"

"Who?" Gabriel asked.

"The Father," Michael said. "When your wife has an episode, it resonates throughout the entire Garden of Eden for all the angels to hear. That last episode was a doozy. Whatever power she's harnessing, it's not just the Mother anymore. It's … I don't know _what _in Sheol it is, but it made the iron hum in Saint Peter's gate."

"Really?" Gabriel asked. "How?"

"Something to do with whatever wager the Mother and the Father made when they brought you two together," Michael said. "I don't know the details. All I know is that the Father bit off a lot more than he can chew. When she rants at him, he's unable to tune it out. She's like … the heavenly host. Only she has the power to torment _him _for _his _sins instead of humans."

Gabriel frowned. The heavenly host. Another puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle box.

"The Nephilim child said Asmodeus is telling them it was the _Mother _who destroyed the Grigori offspring," Gabriel said. "Not the Father. He also said they told him the heavenly host are the _Mother's _creations, retrieved from the void. Not that the Father created them as he claims. What do you remember of this?"

"Nothing," Michael said. "Nothing at all. I have a vague recollection that there were Grigori in the garden, but nothing more. My first real memory of them is facing one down screaming obscenities at me and tearing into my flesh."

"I think Asmodeus was in love with our sister, Amiteal," Gabriel said. "The captured Grigori? The one who died? It said _we _were their tormentors."

An emotion of pure grief tore at him, surprising him. For some reason he could not put words to, whenever he remembered the voice of the second soul who had spoken through the creature, he became so stricken with grief that he could not function.

"Gabriel?" Michael asked, his expression puzzled.

"I can't remember," Gabriel gasped, the emotion welling up in his chest giving him a feeling of overwhelming horror, but with no memory attached to give it context. "I think maybe we did something terrible to the Grigori. There's a _reason _they hate us so badly they're willing to destroy the universe to get back at us."

"If we did something terrible," Michael said. "We would remember. The Grigori fell before our time. We were little more than animals then. Not even sentient."

"We _were _sentient!" Gabriel shouted. "We were far more sentient than we are now! I can remember thinking, and feeling, and learning, and experiencing! I can remember shaping life forms from the soil and breathing it into life. And then something bad happened and the Father took away our memories. But I remember, Michael. I remember things, and now I'm beginning to notice _gaps _in my memories where I _should _remember things and I don't!"

"Like what?" Michael asked.

"Like that Nephilim boy who visited us this morning," Gabriel shouted. "We incarcerated _children_, Michael! Innocent … _children_! Our own species!"

"I know," Michael said. "I remember…"

"Do you?" Gabriel asked. "Do you _really _remember doing it? Or do you remember some sanitized version of it where you did what you were told to do without question and never gave it a second thought? Because when I think back on it now, it's not right."

"Of course it wasn't right," Michael said. "Many of them were innocent souls. But right or not, it has always been the Father's commandment that he will punish the progeny of those who don't keep his commandments to the third and fourth generation. Lucifer _knew _that when he disobeyed."

"No!" Gabriel shouted, shuddering with the intensity of emotions he wasn't accustomed to feeling and could not put a name to. "I'm not talking about the Father's law. I'm talking about the way I remember things. It's not _right!_ It's as though my memories are a basket of cherries and somebody went through and picked out the ones they didn't like and replaced them with plastic ones. I have … gaps. Things I _should _remember, but don't. Things that _should _have some kind of emotion attached to them, but don't. We were _aware _then, Michael. I should be able to remember!"

Michael stared at him, his mouth moving as though to speak, and then discarding whatever it was he had been about to say. It was more the uneasy quiver of his wings that gave away what Michael was feeling. Michael had the same questions, but did not dare voice them because, technically, he still served the Father. Michael was still attached to the Father's hive mind, his every thought upon for scrutiny except those portions he was able to squirrel away in that part of his mind he had trained to think separately from the portion that was open to the Father.

"I wish Mary Magdaline were here," Michael finally said, staring out at the shattered Manhattan skyline once more. "She always had insight into things such as this. I could talk to her and she would help me figure it out."

The sun had risen, shattering the illusion of a dawn over a mountain range and exposing the gutted city in all of its post-apocalyptic hideousness. The city _Gabriel _had personally overseen planning its destruction.

"Does the Savior know you're in love with his wife?" Gabriel asked. He found his answer in his brother's eyes. Gabriel had tasted the forbidden fruit of love, but would be punished. Azrael would spend time with the woman he loved and get one, brief kiss before she passed into the garden and forgot him. But Michael? Michael's fate was worse than any of theirs. He loved someone who cared for him deeply, but would never love him in return because she already loved another.

"It doesn't matter," Michael said, sorrow etching his face. "She's gone into the bosom of the Mother, awaiting his return. Time moves differently there. For _her, _the Savior will be gone from her embrace but for a moment. I am glad of that. It is much harder on _him."_

"I understand how he must feel," Gabriel said. "Separation. How is it we were so blind to the humans pain?"

Michael was silent with his thoughts. Obviously, these were questions Michael had dared asked and found answers to a long time ago. Answers that had caused him to defend them when nobody else would. If only Gabriel had asked the same questions!

"The Savior has watched you protect the Prophet and put yourself out on a limb to protect his disciples," Michael finally said, a hint of smile twitching up one corner of his mouth. "Savior Dot Gov is his favorite reality satellite show."

"Oh, Christ…" Gabriel groaned. "You mean … he watches that garbage Jose' streams live via satellite?"

"Let's just say that your willingness to very publicly make an ass out of yourself _now _to atone for your sins _is _making inroads into his displeasure," Michael said, an impish grin suddenly escaping. A grin which suddenly triggered a memory in Gabriel from the time before.

'_What are you doing, Michael?' Gabriel asked as he tagged along behind Michael and Lucifer._

'_Playing a joke on Asmodeus,' Michael said. 'Shhhhh…'_

_Asmodeus was stretched out on a large, flat rock in the sunlight, soaking up the rays. Although Grigori were warm blooded, they shared their dinosaur lookalikes love of warmth and sunbathed every chance they got. The Grigori was sound asleep._

_Carefully Michael crept up and gently placed some whipped ambrosia upon the Grigori's clawed hand. Lucifer snickered. Creeping back, Michael reached around and plucked a feather from Gabriel's wing._

'_Hey!" Gabriel protested._

'_Shhhh!' both Michael and Lucifer hissed._

_Silently, Michael reached out with the feather and began to tickle Asmodeus on the forehead with the feather. Asmodeus grumbled and twitched._

'_It isn't working,' Lucifer hissed._

'_It will…' Michael said, moving the feather down further to tickle Asmodeus's snout._

_With a snarl of annoyance, Asmodeus swatted at the 'fly' tickling his face, smearing it with the whipped confection Michael had smeared all over his hand._

'_Hey!' Asmodeus snarled._

"_Ha ha ha ha ha!" Michael and Lucifer roared with laughter. Gabriel just stood there like a big, dumb, ox._

_Asmodeus launched himself at Michael with a roar. Michael kept laughing, wrestling with the Grigori until the larger, stronger creature finally pinned him to the ground._

'_Now it's time to pay, angel,' Asmodeus rumbled._

_With a single motion of his neck, the Grigori reached down, rubbed his face against Michael's neck, and smeared the now-muddy, fluffy confection from Michael's neck all the way up into his hair. _

'_Ha ha ha ha!' Lucifer laughed. 'Michael … you look stupid!'_

'_You're next, Father,' Asmodeus snorted. With a roar of laughter, the Grigori launched himself at his squealing creator as he high-tailed it down the footpath, grabbed Lucifer mid-air, and rolled with him down into the mud like two puppies._

"Gabriel?" Michael asked, perplexed.

"You used to play tricks on Asmodeus," Gabriel said, a hint of a smile causing one side of his mouth to twitch upwards before the frown that immediately followed. "Once upon a time, we were all friends. What happened?"

"I can't remember," Michael said.

"Those are the last words Mary Magdaline ever said to me," Gabriel said. "She said I must remember."

"What did you feel?" Michael said. "When you remember the day the Savior died… You said you have gaps?"

"I feel sad," Gabriel said. "But it feels … dull. Like someone put a blanket over it. I … I remember reaching out to take her hand to comfort her as she wept. It's the only time I remember feeling any emotion other than contempt for a human until I met my wife."

They stood there, an awkward silence. Michael didn't have answers to his questions, only more questions. With a nod of farewell, Michael cast himself off the ledge and flashed 'between.'

It was time to enter Babylon.


	111. Chapter 110

Chapter 110

Audrey stared up at the perfectly preserved Corinthian columns that came into view as they picked their way through the rubble of what had once been New York's financial district.

"Ugh!" Cindy complained, giving Gabriel an accusatory look. "Of all the buildings for you to leave intact, why the New York Stock Exchange?"

"That bastion of corporate excess," the Reverend seconded. "Capitalism at its worst."

"Hey!" the Senator protested. _"Some _of us did very well investing on Wall Street. I managed to feather quite a comfy nest egg before the apocalypse came along and turned all those stock certificates into toilet paper!"

"You can't sleep in your stock portfolio," the Reverend observed.

"Or eat it," Gunn called out, rubbing his stomach. "Is it lunch time yet?"

"My 401(k) account took a beating during the last economic downturn and never recovered," Mambo De Vivre complained. "I was already retired and living off of it to supplement my pension when the Wall Street fat cats absconded with my life's savings. I wish Gabriel had sent one of his brothers to give _them _a beating."

"Same here," Lena groused. "Though at least I'm supposedly young enough to recover. Not that it matters now."

"I never realized being a voodoo high priestess _had _401(k) benefits," the Reverend complained. "All my parish ever provided _me _with was a skimpy pension and no social security benefits."

"It doesn't," Mambo De Vivre said, leaning on her cane. "I worked as a hairdresser. It didn't pay much, but with my income from the store, I was able to sock away most of my income."

"Doesn't pay to save anymore," Cindy complained. "The government taxes you five times as much if you save than if you invest, and then the Federal Reserve keeps printing money so if you _are _stupid enough to set a little aside for a rainy day, inflation eats away the value of what you save."

"Didn't," Audrey said. "Past tense. Unless the Father decides to wave his magic wand and restore everything he's destroyed, money is now useless."

'_Not that I ever had a chance to learn to manage it,' _she thought to herself. _'I was seventeen when the world ended as we knew it.'_

"This place was supposed to be _gone,_" Gabriel stated flatly in a rare admission about his part planning the destruction of this city. "It was near the top of the Father's 'hit list.' The ninth disciple must have been here when the heavenly host arrived or this building would have been leveled."

Jose' simply filmed their conversation, fodder for tonight's webcast. New disciples were always a favorite topic of post-apocalyptic reality television.

Audrey noted the tension in Gabriel's wings, the careful way he stood solidly at the back of the group, nostrils flared, carefully scanning their surroundings for danger. The Nephilim child had rattled them, more so that Michael hadn't been aware they'd escaped Sheol along with the Fallen and the Grigori. The Father was withholding key information from Michael. Not a good sign. Gabriel said he could sense perhaps several thousand third and fourth-generation Nephilim holed up in the city along with a Fallen brother he described as Michael's equal in all matters military and 3-4 Grigori.

"Look," Gunn whooped from just a bit up the street, springing up to the top of the famous Wall Street 'bull' statute that graced the front of Merrill Lynch. "I'm a bull-rider." With his Viking-like braided beard and hair and his machete slung across his back, Gunn resembled a cross between some mythological Norse god and a comic book super-hero. Larger than life. If not for Gabriel standing off to one side, wings flared, Gunn would have easily dominated Jose's webcam.

"Where's the head?" Lyubitshke asked about the iconic bulls mangled head. Part of a building had fallen on the statue, smashing it's head down to the ground. Too neatly to be coincidence. The charging bull stood in the middle of a traffic island. One of the heavenly host must have had a possessed _aim _the rubble at it from the nearby collapsed building.

The Reverend bent down to whisper something into her ear which was obviously off-color by the pinkness which rose in her swarthy cheeks and the quick 'goose' she gave him afterwards in his rump.

Were they? Or weren't they? Audrey noticed she wasn't the only one with this question by the way Jose' zoomed in his webcam and whispered something into the camera. Now that the drama over whether she and Gabriel were ever going to hook up was 'old news,' the Reverend and his very young wife were the subject of worldwide internet betting pools about who was going to romance whom, and when.

"It's still got the only part that matters," Non Gae leaned forward and whispered in Audrey's ear in her lilting, lightly accented voice. She pointed to the rear portion of the statue where … other … portions of the iconic bull which depicted the strength of capitalism had been spared destruction. Dangly … portions.

Audrey suppressed a snort of laughter and then started to choke. The water she had just sipped out of her canteen passed through her nostrils, causing Gabriel to immediately step in closer to her back to check her well-being. She pushed him away. To say that Gabriel was on her 'shit list' this morning would be the understatement of the year.

All she could think about was the decaying flesh of the Nephilim child and wonder how the hell Gabriel could have incarcerated an innocent boy in Sheol? Orders or no orders, she'd spent the last two years telling herself the incident regarding Charlie's baby had been an anomaly. It was how she'd finally managed to learn to live with the protector the Mother had saddled her with. Denial. But the Nephilim child had forced her to take a hard look at the man she loved and acknowledge some of his less desirable traits. Gabriel was still distressingly prone to do as he was told without asking questions. She needed an equal partner. Not a dog. His tendency to allow others to think _for _him needed to change.

"Let's get this over with," Gabriel said, hiding his hurt feelings at her rejection behind his customary unreadable expression. But not for the subtle droop of his wings, Audrey would have believed he was oblivious to her anger. Gabriel refocused his energy into pushing open the enormous front door of the stock exchange. It didn't budge. It was locked.

"Smash it down!" Lena laughed. "Give Jose' some great footage of you bashing down the door with your mace."

"Y-y-yah!" Jose' seconded, aiming his webcam at Gabriel. "S-s-smash it d-d-down!"

Gabriel shot them both a scowl. A scowl that didn't last very long. If anything, Gabriel appeared to be _curious. _Who had been able to keep the heavenly host from touching such a large structure when they had been directly ordered to destroy it?

"This door is locked, too," Gunn called from the right of the building. "And the one around the corner as well."

"This one too," Non Gae called from the left. "It's been boarded up by the looks of it from the inside."

Audrey looked with dismay at the building. This _had _to be the place. The compass rose pointed right at it, and it was the only building in the area still intact. The rest of the Wall Street financial district had not been spared. All around them, buildings had been gutted, burned out, and some had even collapsed. The Father had ordered Babylon destroyed, so Gabriel had left no corner of the metropolis intact. Like Washington, the city bore the signature of her husband's distinctive style of smiting the Father's enemies. Smashed and no longer recognizable as what it had once been like the opponents he smote personally with his mace.

Audrey shuddered. And to think Gabriel had been the Father's _second _choice to exterminate mankind. What would have happened if Michael had not defied the father and rebelled? Gabriel refused to speak of it, but she had quietly overheard Gabriel discuss the matter with Gunn, the Senator, and the Reverend once. The apocalypse wasn't the _first _extermination of a city, or even an entire race of people, Gabriel had overseen for the Father. Or even the same _world._ Micheal and Gabriel were a deadly one-two punch.

At least, when he had discussed his past military endeavors, it seemed like he felt unsure about what he had done in the past. Not remorse … from what both Gabriel and the bible said about some of the cities he and Michael had destroyed they had it coming. But then again, with the Father being in charge of what went _into _the bible in the first place, Audrey was no longer sure. She was no longer sure of _Gabriel._ The Nephilim child made her doubt him.

"Before you smash down the gates," the Senator suggested, "why don't we go around and look for a back door? I suspect if we circle around the block, we'll be able to gain access through the back alley."

Gabriel nodded affirmation and immediately took to the air to survey for another access point. Moments later, he was back.

"Rubble has collapsed in the back alley," Gabriel told them all. "It's impassible. But it appears somebody has been coming in via the rooftop from the ruins of that building to the left. The glass has been pushed aside from the shattered window and there are boxes to get up to the ledge."

"That building looks unsafe," Mambo De Vivre said, her dark eyes squinting into the sun as she surveyed the adjacent skyscraper which was nothing but a fire-gutted shell. "And it's at least ten stories up to get level with the stock exchange roof. Before we all go tromping up unsafe stairs, we should probably send somebody up first to make sure it isn't going to collapse."

They all turned and looked expectantly at Gabriel.

"I'll do it," Gabriel said, shooting her a glance to see if she approved. Audrey deliberately withheld giving him an indication of what she was feeling either way, doing her best approximation of _his _unreadable expression. A series of emotions briefly flitted across his face. Confusion. Hurt. Anger. Acceptance. His brow furrowed for a moment before he continued. "I'll do it. I'm most likely to escape unscathed if something collapses."

Her thoughts exactly, but she didn't tell _him _that. Starting today, Gabriel was going to do a lot more thinking on his own and a lot less looking to the others to do his thinking _for _him. She had already pulled the Reverend and Gunn aside and told them her concerns and they agreed with her. Although the Reverend felt honored to have become Gabriel's _de facto _spiritual advisor and Gunn was tickled the Father's #2 archangel often looked to him to help strategize military endeavors, they both knew Gabriel well enough to understand her reservations about his tendency to just follow orders.

The evidence of that tendency lay in rubble all around them…


	112. Chapter 111

Chapter 111

"Whoops!" Audrey exclaimed as her foot slipped on the box she was trying to find blindly with her foot as she crawled out the shattered window of the skyscraper to access the roof of the New York Stock Exchange. A pair of strong arms caught her around the waist before she could fall.

"Be careful, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured, his hands lingering much longer than was necessary around her waist as he helped her get her footing and made sure she got down.

"I've got it!" Audrey snapped, pushing him away. "I'm not a baby, you know!"

"Let me help you," Gabriel said softly. He was in the 'dog house' and he knew it.

"That's what you _should _have said to that poor boy!" Audrey snapped, fire flashing in her eyes as she felt her anger rising in her belly. "Like … any one of the millions of times you stumbled across the _children _you threw into Sheol!"

Audrey quickly suppressed the anger which threatened to spiral out of control. Part hers. Part the Mothers. It would do _none _of them any good if she shattered windows from the decimated skyscraper down upon the other disciples' heads. The Mother wasn't the _only _one who was pissed off at Gabriel this morning, but Audrey sensed the Mother's anger ran a lot deeper than the fate of an eleven-year-old quarter-angel child. The wellspring of rage she had felt this morning had frightened her.

Gabriel's mouth opened as though to speak, and then shut. Quickly he retreated behind his customary unreadable mask, his wings twitching with … Audrey couldn't tell _what _he was feeling right now. Maybe lashing out at him wasn't such a good idea? After more than two years of coaxing him out of his shell and encouraging him to express himself, might anger be destructive? After all … look where it had gotten the Mother and the Father…

"I'm sorry, honey," Audrey said, reaching out to touch his firm bicep visible beneath his armor, which she had _insisted _he wear into dangerous territory this morning. "We'll talk. Later."

Gabriel nodded, no sign of any emotion other than wariness in his eyes. A wall. Gabriel had appeared to be a big, unemotional wall when they had first met. If not for the fact she had watched him emotionally break at the bottom of the cliff when he had realized the Father had abandoned him, Audrey would have never looked deeper. It had taken her a long time to learn to read the emotions he so carefully kept hidden from the others. Now … he was hiding from _her _as well. Not good. Punishing him for mistakes he had no power to go back into the past and change was counterproductive. It was more important Gabriel feel safe to discussthe _reasons_ he had made such poor decisions so he wouldn't repeat those mistakes in the future.

Audrey noticed Non Gae's black, almond-shaped eyes intently watching her as she interacted with her husband. The kisaeng noticed Audrey watching her and gave her that courteous smile she always gave, the courtesan's equivalent of Gabriel's unreadable expression. What?

"Senator?" Gunn called from the doorway which opened to a stairway leading down from the roof. "Will you ride shotgun? I want Gabriel at our back in case those creepy lizard things come calling."

"Ten-four," the Senator called.

"It should be _me _riding shotgun," Cindy grumbled. "I'm a much better shot than _he _is."

"Um…" the Senator hemmed, giving Gunn a pleading look. "I should go first." Cindy _was _a better shot. But they'd been moving so fast lately that they had little time for sparring. Cindy _still _couldn't fight worth shit.

"Shotgun is not about shooting," Gunn said, coming to the Senator's rescue. "It's about size and weight. Like football. The Senator is the Left Tackle, while you're the wide receiver. Got it? We need you to guard the back door."

"Oh," Cindy said. "Okay." Cindy was a rabid West Texas A&M football fan. Gunn had discovered he could avoid nearly all arguments with the strong-willed, modern-day Annie Oakley about who should go barreling into the OK Corral if he used football analogies. As 'wide receiver', it would be her job to shoot anything that came at them. What Cindy lacked in hand-to-hand combat skills, she more than made up for with her deadly aim.

"Stay here," Gabriel told Audrey, a flash of concern registering in his eyes as he scanned the sky before hiding behind the emotionless wall again. "Remember to watch the sky. Some of our enemies fly."

Audrey nodded. Grigori. Nephilim. Fallen angels. Thousands of them living in the city, and every one of them could sense Gabriel's presence like a beacon. She clicked off the safety of the M-16 the soldiers had given her when they had seen them off onto the small boat which had responded to Jose's call. The remnants of the US military would come no further. Audrey was adamant that it be the _disciples _to greet each new member of their group. Not heavily armed soldiers. The soldiers had been left back on the Jersey shore to guard the truck with their horses.

Gunn, the Senator and Gabriel headed down the stairway. They waited. And waited. And waited some more. Several times the disciples spooked at the rustle of wings, but it turned out to only be pigeons roosting in the upper floors of the ruined skyscraper they had come up through. It felt as though dozens of pairs of eyes were watching their every move, but no opponent moved at them.

"You should not punish him for things in past he cannot change," Non Gae said softly, coming up behind Audrey.

"Huh?" Audrey asked.

"Maybe not my place to say," Non Gae said. "If so, tell me to shut up. But last night you so happy to go with him. This morning, boy come. You angry. You bite his head off all day."

"You didn't see what they did to that poor child," Audrey said, nervously scanning the sky for anything larger than a pigeon. "How could he just throw a _child _in hell for sins committed by the parents and grandparents?"

"Kim Jong-Il ask me, ask my family, do many things for North Korea," Non Gae said. "Not right. My uncle loyal sergeant in army. Guard interment camp. Most people there not there because they commit crimes. Most people there like my sister. Keep somebody else in line. Not right, but way things are."

"Your uncle was one of the guards at the camp where they imprisoned your sister?" Audrey asked.

"Uncle one who cut off sisters finger," Non Gae said, her eyes black with … resignation? "Army make him show loyalty to party when I try to leave. So uncle cut off. Put on film they send me."

"That's horrible!" Audrey exclaimed. "If _my_ uncle did that to one of my family members, I'd rip off his head and shit down his neck!"

"Uncle have no power to change mind of leaders," Non Gae said, shrugging resignedly. "Make no sense to throw _two _families in camp. Give Byung-Soon morphine beforehand, not hurt too bad. Cut off clean below knuckle so can still use hand. Make sure don't get infected. Make sure she have enough food. Smuggle out letters for her to send me, let me know she okay. Protest not North Korean way. Protest get you killed. American way to protest. North Korean way to _endure._"

Audrey stared at Non Gae in horror. The kisaeng spies' worldview was so alien to her she didn't even know how to react to what Non Gae had just told her.

"At least you remember _why _you acted the way you did," Audrey said. "You've given it some thought, even if you felt powerless to change it at the time. Gabriel doesn't remember. Anything."

"That is most insidious kind of programming," Non Gae said, her intense black eyes staring right through her. "North Korean leaders institute such programming with youth. Starts as soon as can walk. Control thoughts of child, what think. Child become adult. Don't know how to think for self. You must help him recognize such programming and learn how to resist it, even if resistance silent. In own mind. Not push him away like you do now. You push away, you lose. Gabriel not learn. You teach, not judge him, he learn. Is way of kisaeng. Gentle persuasion to right way of thinking. Like Hwang Jin-i. Love accomplishes what might cannot."

"_You _did what you were told to do," Audrey said softly. "What makes you any different?"

"Outside," Non Gae said emphatically, "I do what _they _want me to do. They have my sister, so I look obedient to outside eyes. But inside? Inside I free. They no control my thoughts. American government selfish. Greedy. Help people at home by giving leaders tips to get more money out of greedy politicians. But American people have big hearts. Not selfish. Not hurt _them_. Sometimes just … forget … to pass along information about weapons. Oops! So sorry... Codes to missiles just slip Non Gae's mind!"

Gabriel _really _needed to get over his puritanical hang-ups about the courtesan's profession and talk to the woman because the two of them _really _had an awful lot in common. Gabriel had been obedient because the Father had brainwashed him to not question. Non Gae had been obedient because they held her sister hostage. The courtesan was _aware _that a lot of the things she had been raised to believe were propaganda and what she called 'fairy tales.' She picked and chose which beliefs she wished to still believe in, and which she did not. The woman had an uncanny ability to spot bullshit.

"You and Gabriel really need to talk," Audrey said. "I was raised to be defiant. To fight injustice. To stand up and put your life on the line for what you believe in. That's how I got _this _thing tattooed on my forehead." She pointed to the tattoo that said she'd sacrificed her life for the Savior.

"Mambo tell me you dead," Non Gae said. "Come back because of Mother. No Mother for rest of us. Dead is dead. Can't fight if dead."

Audrey's shoulders slumped. Non Gae was right. Someday soon, Gabriel would sacrifice his life to spare her and their unborn child the fate of Lucifer's family and then he wouldn't be around to fight for them anymore. Although the forces they gathered were beginning to prolong the battle waged by the Savior long enough that she was beginning to _hope _their child would have a world to exist in when it was all said and done, the fact remained that _no _thread she had followed to date included Gabriel being left alive to walk that road _with _her. Dead would be dead and she would be forced to walk that road without him.

"I guess it's time to stop blaming him for things he did in the past that he's powerless to go back and change," Audrey said quietly. "All I can do is help him see why he shouldn't do it again."


	113. Chapter 112

Chapter 112

Finally, the Senator came back up the stairwell and told them to come on down. The stairwell was neatly swept of all debris and clean. So were the hallways they snaked through until they got to the great hall of trading. Above them was the balcony with the opening bell which had rung every morning to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange. Audrey looked down to the large group of people who had gathered beneath the bell.

"Audrey," the Senator said, gesturing to a man standing amongst a group of men, all wearing black hats and white prayer shawls with a black stripe. "Meet Harel Ben Eliezer. Rabbi. And a large group of his flock."

"Hello," Audrey said, glancing at the group of bearded Jewish men, women, and children who, by the look of things, had taken up residence in the New York Stock Exchange after the apocalypse had decimated the city. The women all wore scarves twisted around their hair and clothes which covered them from head to foot. Orthodox Jewish by the look of them.

"Shalom," the Rabbi said, giving her a slight bow and gesturing towards Gabriel. "We are honored to have the Master of Courage in our midst and those who follow him. But I must say. We are at odds with some of the claims he is making."

"We follow the Savior," Gabriel said softly, his expression somewhat frustrated. "My wife is one of his prophets."

"So I see," the Rabbi said, squinting slightly in the gloomy candlelight to read the tattoos on Audrey's face. "She has been marked by God himself, authorized to speak blasphemy on his behalf, as well as good tidings of the birth of this Savior you have spoken of. It even confirms you were sent to protect her. But I must be honest. We are Hasidic Jews. We do not recognize Jesus as our Messiah. Nor do we believe there is a trinity, or Holy Sprit, who is separate from God. Or that it is possible for God to make a mistake and then change his mind. If God wiped out mankind, than it must be just and good."

Audrey could tell by the annoyed rustle of Gabriel's wings that this latest disciple was not what he had been expecting. But then again … had _any _of the disciples so far been 'normal?' It had started with their Elvis-impersonating Reverend, and gone downhill from there. But at least so far, the disciples they had encountered had all believed in the existence of the Savior, albeit in cases such as Confucianist Non Gae or Voudun Mambo De Vivre, that belief had been peripheral to their own pre-existing core beliefs.

If anything, the Rabbi was the Father's disciple. Not the Savior's. Except … Audrey could hear the voice of the Mother filtering through the Rabbi's voice even as he claimed he did not believe in her. Or her son.

"Why are your people here?" the Reverend stepped in, taking charge of the situation as the groups diplomat. "The New York Stock Exchange is a peculiar place to set up a refugee camp."

"This building has been blessed by god as a sanctuary," the Rabbi said, gesturing to the trading floor which the Jews had kept immaculately clean and tidy. "Of all the buildings in the city, it is the only one that was untouched by gods' judgment upon the gentiles."

By the haunted looks of many of the Rabbi's flock living here in the building, the gentiles hadn't been the _only _ones decimated by the Father's judgment.

"Which of you was in the building when the heavenly host decimated the city?" Gabriel asked, looking around at the others hopefully, most likely praying the person standing in front of him was _not _the person they were looking for.

"Of the people who are here now," the Rabbi said, "only I was here. Working late. Christmas Eve has no meaning for Jewish people. It is just another night. I had work to do, so I was here doing it when explosions started out in the street."

"What do you trade?" the Reverend asked.

"Commodities," the Rabbi said. "Diamonds. Christmas is a very good time for selling diamonds, so it has always behooved me to work unless Christmas happens to fall on the Sabbath. Lots of gentiles like to buy diamonds for gifts for their wives."

"How have you survived?" Audrey asked. "The city is decimated." One thing they had learned from the Pentagon was that cities such as New York and Washington had a far slimmer ratio of survivors than the population at large. Less than two percent of the population of the once-great cities of the world had been spared.

"God provides," the Rabbi said. "We pray for what we need, and then we are led to go find it."

"The Rabbi has informed me I am not the first of my kind he has encountered," Gabriel said, giving Audrey an intense look. "The others are surviving the same way the Rabbi and his flock are surviving. By scavenging off the remnants of civilization."

"They have not molested us so far," the Rabbi said. "Nor have we bothered _them_. Whoever is there first, stays. Whoever stumbles upon the other group, leaves. If your needs are simple and you treat one another with respect, there is still plenty for those left alive. They have cleared the street gangs out of this part of the city and leave us alone. Only the demons molest us."

"The Grigori?" Audrey asked. "Like velociraptors. With wings?"

"We have only encountered one twice," the Rabbi said. "He was with the others of Gabriel's kind. Both times it attacked and the others had a hard time making it stop. It screamed at us in Yiddish that we were all going to go to hell. The creature did not appear to be sane."

Yeah. That sounded about right…

"Have you spoken to those like Gabriel?" Audrey asked. "What are their names?"

"Their leader calls himself Shemihaza," the Rabbi said. "He is a watcher. One of the fallen angels described in the Book of Enoch. We feared at first he would destroy us, but he keeps his mal'ach under tight control, making sure they do not take too much. He said his children have suffered enough for his mistakes and he just wishes to be left in peace."

"Enoch," Gabriel said to the Rabbi, glancing over to give Audrey a knowing look. "The Nephilim ran amok after the Father captured their sires and grandsires and incarcerated them. Teenaged quarter and eight-angel hybrids inherited chiefdoms and kingships from captive fathers. Never a good thing to put angry, fatherless teenagers in charge of running a country."

Gabriel had disclosed to her that half of what Enoch wrote in the dead sea scrolls about fallen angels was political propaganda against Sumeria, who the ancestors of the Jewish people were perpetually battling for resources in ancient Mesopotamia. Reportedly sixteenth-angel Gilgamesh had been quite the teenaged hellion when he had suddenly inherited the Uruk throne from his captured great-grandsire after the great flood. Lucifer's surviving daughter, Aruru, had tasked another surviving great-grandson, Enkidu, with keeping the fiery young king busy and out of trouble until he grew up enough to focus on building cities instead of how many battles he could win or other men's wives he could bed.

"Doesn't speaking with the Fallen conflict with your teachings?" the Reverend asked, conveniently not mentioning that, technically, Gabriel was _also _fallen. Just … a different kind of fallen. Still serving the Father fallen.

"Enoch was an important prophet," the Rabbi said. "But Judaism has never had Christianities fascination with angels. They were around a lot more in the time of the Old Testament. And then they stopped coming around. End of subject. Modern Judaism barely mentions them at all. We view angels more as … messengers. Extensions of the Father's will. God needs something done. Doing it himself is beneath him. So he sends an angel. Not much different than me sending this boy here to go fetch me a roll of toilet paper because I'm busy."

By the scowl on Gabriel's face, Audrey could tell he was less than pleased with the Rabbi's less-than-overawed response to his presence even though it had the ring of truth to it. Gabriel himself had informed her that the Father had lost interest in humanity after their expulsion from Eden, only sending an angel once in a great while to deliver a message or oversee extermination some group which particularly displeased him. Most angels' lack of recent contact with humanity was the reason so many of them, such as Gabriel, had been so willing to blindly follow the extermination order of the Father.

"I think the Rabbi has pegged the Father's attitude about his angels' accurately," Audrey said, giving Gabriel her most winning smile. "Don't you agree, honey? Always sending you to fetch toilet paper to clean up somebody else's crap?"

It was not her words, but the way she protectively encircled her small hands around his arm and gave him an affectionate squeeze as she nestled into his side to disarm his annoyance. She could feel his flesh quiver with emotion beneath his shirt, betraying the lie that was the unreadable expression on his face. Confusion, and then an expression of relief crossed his features as it dawned upon him that for some reason she was no longer angry at him.

"Yes," Gabriel said softly, curling his wing on that side around to pull her in closer, the leading edge of the outer joint lingering on her arm as he looked into hereyes, ignoring the people who surrounded him. "We were created to serve the Father. To give him what he _needs_. Not just what he asks for."

"Not just what he asks for," Audrey agreed.

Non Gae was right. Gabriel understood things needed to change and was looking to _her _to teach him how to not repeat the same mistakes. It was time to stop punishing him for things he had no power to go back and fix and start teaching him how to avoid those mistakes in the future. She had a feeling the ninth disciple would help them stare the Father's attitudes right in the face so he could examine them and decide which ones were right for him.


	114. Chapter 113

Chapter 113

"I can sense your presence, brother," Gabriel called out from the rooftop of the New York Stock Exchange where the disciples had decided to spend the night in the hopes of convincing the Rabbi to come with them. "Hiding does not befit one of your stature."

Shemihaza stepped out from the shadows, his expression guarded. All around him, Gabriel could hear the subtle shifting of feathers, sense the presence of the others as they waited, coiled like overwrought springs. Shemihaza looked … aged. Exhausted. As though he carried the weight of the heavens themselves upon his shoulders. But his brother also bore another emotion Gabriel knew well. Defiance. The Father had forced the Fallen to bend, but he had not been able to break them.

"Do not molest them," Shemihaza said quietly, pointing down to the roof where the Hasidic Jews dwelled below. "The Rabbi and some of his followers are my distant descendents. I have ordered my children to protect them from harm."

"It's been a long time, brother," Gabriel said, hiding the cornucopia of conflicting emotions behind his customary unreadable expression. "The Father has ordered your recapture. You take a big risk clustering so many in one place."

"The Father does not have the resources to take on our combined forces," Shemihaza stated flatly, a hint of hatred flashing in his eyes at the mention of the Father. "We outnumber the dogs of heaven in this city ten-to-one and the heavenly host will not oppose us. The only way he's going to win is by cheating. Again."

Silence stretched between them. Shemihaza had been one of the first males shaped by the Father and breathed into life by the Mother. He had always had little time for Gabriel, the _last _brother to be shaped. But they had never been rivals, either. Until the Fallen had been cast out of heaven for defying the Father, it had been Lucifer and Shemihaza leading the one-two punch of the Father's will, not Michael and Gabriel.

"I no longer serve the Father," Gabriel said quietly. "At least not exclusively. I serve the Savior even though he does not _wish _to have anything to do with me."

"You serve your _wife,_" Shemihaza said, his wings stiff and ready to take flight if necessary. "His Prophet. Your service to _him_ is peripheral to your service to her."

Gabriel could sense more angels gathering now, or more accurately, half- and quarter-angels. Would they attack? Gabriel didn't think so. Shemihaza's military style was similar to his own. If he'd wanted to attack, he would have done so already.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said, looking his brother in the eye for the first time in 4,500 years. "I'm sorry for not understanding what you were going through when you refused to abandon your family."

"A little late," Shemihaza said, his expression softening. "But accepted."

Gabriel looked at him in surprise. "You're accepting my apology?"

Shemihaza turned towards the shadows and gestured towards one of the presences Gabriel could sense lurking in the dark. A weak presence that was not purely angel. A familiar one.

"Anu?" Gabriel asked.

The boy cautiously came out of the shadows and ambled gawkily to his grand-sires side. Shemihaza tugged the child protectively into the lee of his wings. The only light was starlight and the crescent moon, but the boy smelled … different. The stench of illness still lingered, but was not the putrefaction of before.

"His face?" Gabriel said, realizing the large open sore on the boys face had scabbed over and was beginning to heal.

"And his arm," Shemihaza said. "Anu … show him."

Anu hesitantly stepped forward and rolled up his sleeve. The enormous rotted chunk of meat the Father refused to allow to heal that _should _have caused the boys' death long ago was similarly scabbed over. It was hideous. But it was healing.

"She touched me here," Anu said, pointing to his face. "And her tears fell here. It doesn't hurt there anymore."

"But…" Gabriel said, perplexed. "To my knowledge, the Prophet does not possess the gift to heal."

"_You're _alive," Shemihaza said. "Do you think you just got up after falling off that cliff on your own?"

"She…" Gabriel said, searching his memories for those early first few sensations of his wife. The sound of authority speaking through her voice. Her scent. The light warmth of her touch as she had tended his wounds. What was it Azrael had said? The Mother had given him a chance by including his service in her wager, but _neither _deity had expected him to survive. "I was in a coma for forty days before I woke up."

"She has returned from the void," Shemihaza said. "She willed you to live, so you live. She _still _wills you to live, and her will is growing stronger every day. Every building in the city shuddered when she channeled the Mother's rage."

Gabriel inhaled, his nostrils flaring as he interpreted the scents around him.

"More than those two wounds are healing," Gabriel said at last. "His scent has changed. He no longer reeks of brimstone. He's no longer condemned."

"She baptized him with her tears," Shemihaza said quietly. "Anu went to her hoping the Savior would heal him, and she wished for him to heal. Whether they said the words or not, the fact remains that the Savior has reached through your wife to claim him as his own."

Anu looked nervously up at his grand-sire. "Avus?" [grandfather]

"You have to go with them," Shemihaza said quietly to his grandson. "You are no longer one of us."

"I didn't mean…" Anu said, tears welling in his eyes.

"It is not a condemnation, _parvulus _[little one]," Shemihaza said gently. "If _he _can smell the change in your scent, the Grigori will too. They will kill you for betraying them."

From the shadows, Gabriel could hear sobbing and the sound of a sharp intake in breath. Anu's human mother and her half-angel mate, Ohya. Leader of the Nephilim who had dared storm heaven trying to get back their sires. They were entrusting him with their son.

"My wife believes he would be willing to save _all _of you," Gabriel said. "If your intent is pure."

"Let's not kid ourselves," Shemihaza said, gesturing to the shattered city at large. "These humans believe we are demons, and so do our other brothers. The Rabbi is my descendent, but even _he _only tolerates us because he has no choice. If we join forces with the Savior, the humans will reject him. Our un-fallen brothers will reject him. It will provoke the Father into changing his mind again."

"And that will provoke the Mother into retaliating," Gabriel said, nodding in understanding. "But why do you side with the Grigori?"

"They carry all that is left of our sisters," Shemihaza said. "Or didn't Eloa tell you that before she and Abaddon cast themselves together into the void?"

'_Don't you remember us, little brother?_' the second soul of the Grigori had asked.

'_Why must you continue to torment her?'_ the primary voice of the Grigori had screamed when Gabriel had been unable to remember.

That overwhelming sensation of grief poured into Gabriel once again, the feeling that he _should _remember who spoke to him, but could not. Gabriel began to hyperventilate as emotions without memories attached to them began to flood through his entire body and caused him to shudder.

"You still don't remember," Shemihaza said, placing his hand upon Gabriel's shoulder. "The Father made us forget. But _they _remember _us._"

"What happened to them?" Gabriel asked.

"Our memories have been wiped," Shemihaza said. "The same as yours. But we remember fragments. Enough to confirm the Grigori's claims."

"The Father killed them?" Gabriel guessed. "Why?"

"The life spark granted by the Mother craves love," Shemihaza said. "As _she _craves to be loved. The Mother does not care what species her children love. Only that they _are _loved. And learn to love in return."

As _he _had instantly clung to his little Prophet's voice, her touch, and clung to life because _she _had commanded it. He couldn't remember exactly when his contempt had turned to admiration, and admiration to love, but it had happened quickly once the Father's over-arching consciousness had stopped intruding into his own and suppressing his emotions.

"I have a single memory of Armaita," Gabriel said. "She didn't want to play with me anymore. She preferred Asmodeus's company."

"And so she still does," Shemihaza said. "You can ask her yourself the next time you cross paths with Asmodeus. Right before he kills you. Her consciousness is secondary to his. She will not be able to stop him."

"The Grigori at the Pentagon never told me his name," Gabriel said. "As soon as the second soul realized I couldn't remember her, he went insane and injured himself so badly he died."

"Abaddon," Shemihaza said. "That's unfortunate. Abaddon was the voice of reason compared to the others. Only Lucifer can still get through to them, and it's getting harder and harder every day."

"Abaddon said the Mother destroyed their children," Gabriel said. "Not the Father. Why would the Mother do that?"

"I can't remember," Shemihaza said, an expression of frustration crossing his face as his wings twitched in annoyance. "All I know is what Asmodeus and the others have told us, and their version of the story is tainted by their hatred. They ally with us because we tip the scales against the Father in their favor. Not because they wish to have anything to do with us."

"My wife has the gift of prophecy," Gabriel said. "She has foreseen that the Grigori will destroy the entire universe if they are not stopped."

"The Grigori helped us escape," Shemihaza said. "They carry the souls of our lost sisters. We will not betray them. We will not betray our un-fallen brothers, either, even though they wish to reinter us in the Keep. Lucifer has ordered us to remain neutral and do what we can to protect our own."

Gabriel nodded. One of the things which troubled his little Prophet was the fact she was never able to get Lucifer to choose a side. Every night she called his name and begged him to help, and every night Lucifer expressed great sorrow, but he would not get involved. Now … Gabriel understood why.

"Father," a voice called from the shadows. "They come."

"You are in danger here," Shemihaza said, suddenly alert. "You must take my descendents and leave the city. We will distract the Grigori while you escape, but you must get them out of here. _Tonight!_"

"Pater! Mater!" Anu called, reaching back towards his parents in the shadows as he sobbed.

"Go!" Ohya ordered from the shadows. "You are reborn. You have the chance we never had."

"The Father's son has accepted your offer of service, parvulus," Shemihaza said, pulling his grandson into his embrace and kissing his forehead. "Now go! Delay puts these people in danger."

"Asmodeus will kill them," Anu whispered.

"Come," Gabriel said nervously, pushing the child towards the stairwell as memories of past battles against Grigori caused fear to rise in his belly. "I sense more than Asmodeus's presence."

"For some reason the Grigori can't pinpoint the presence of the Prophet or the disciples," Shemihaza said. "You must get Anu in their presence until you can escape."

"How will you distract them?" Gabriel asked.

"There is a trading ship large enough for all of you and your horses heading back upriver to Albany," Shemihaza said. "Your horses are being transported from the Jersey side as we speak. A small boat will be waiting at the docks at Battery Park an hour before dawn."

"Won't they sense us?" Gabriel asked.

"There is a gang of thugs in the Bronx who have been tormenting families of survivors," Shemihaza said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "I have sent men to warn the families to hide. I will lead my men to clean house of the thugs. The Grigori cannot resist tearing any human they get their hands on to shreds. They will be drawn to the fight, not a boat full of humans crossing the harbor."

Gabriel nodded. "Thank you."

"Just get my human descendents out of here," Shemihaza ordered, shoving Anu through the doorway. "That will be thanks enough."

Shemihaza shut the stairwell door in his face. Instantly, Gabriel felt the presence of the Fallen fade away. He shoved the sobbing child down the steps, back into the presence of the disciples and the Prophet who, for some reason, the Grigori could not sense.

The Rabbi had stated they had no intention of leaving. It was up to _him _now to convince them otherwise.


	115. Chapter 114

Chapter 114

"Book," Audrey said, holding up Lyubitshke's English grammar textbook.

"Buc," Anu repeated, his face focused in intense concentration as he tried to memorize the new word. The Fallen and their first-generation offspring had been born with the Father's gift of tongues, the ability to learn and speak any language, but second-generation offspring such as Anu had to learn the old fashioned way. Through pure, brute memorization.

"Book, silly," Lyubitshke teased. "Not buc."

Anu let loose a string of gibberish in the ancient language which, it turned out, the Rabbi understood a little. The Rabbi spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, languages which retained words left over from the universal tongue of heaven.

"You are a poor influence on the boy," the Rabbi chided Audrey. "He takes the lords name in vain."

"You mean the motherfucking, genocidal maniac of a Father who murders babies and incarcerates innocent children," Audrey sniped, deliberately baiting him. The Rabbi and his condescending holier-than-thou attitude bugged the _fuck _out of her. She hadn't deliberately baited anyone this much since her parents had died.

The Rabbi started to speak, and then stopped when the Reverend placed a calming hand upon his shoulder and whispered something in his ear, pointing to the tattoo on her forehead that said she was _entitled _to cuss out the Father as much as she wanted. The Rabbi gave the Reverend a knowing nod and then shot her a patronizing smile. Cussing wasn't any _fun _when it was _permissible_.

Audrey glanced over and noticed Gabriel was staring at her with a bemused expression on his face.

"What?" she snapped at him.

Gabriel annoyed her further by shooting her a knowing grin. For more than two years she'd tried to get him to smile, and now he did it to annoy her!

Ever since they had left New York City two weeks ago with Anu, the Rabbi, and around 45 of his holier-than-though Hasidic Jewish congregation in tow, she had been in a pissy mood. Hormones from the pregnancy? Or being forced into too-close quarters with a group of people who were the polar opposite of everything she believed in? Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease with the Rabbi and his bizarre religious beliefs transplanted directly out of the Father's 'old testament.'

Divine justice for all the fun she'd had at _his _expense at watching him being forced to adjust to each new, whacky disciple the Savior had chosen just to piss off the Father? Now _she _was the one being forced to adjust to a walking, talking, spouting fountain of old testamentary bullshit!

"When are we due in Rochester?" Audrey snapped. "I can't _wait _to get the hell off this boat!"

Shemihaza had been good for his word. They'd snuck out of New York City under cover of darkness to board a wood-fired steamship as far as Troy, New York, where they'd been able to change ships and access the New York State Canal System, the remnants of the Erie Canal. She'd hoped the Rabbi's flock would stay in Troy, but _no! _The Hasidic Jews believed in sticking together no matter what. So the disciples, the Rabbi's flock, Anu, and the horses were all crammed onto a too-small barge that just barely fit the tight confines of Erie Canal.

Luckily, with more than a dozen horses to tug the barge along the horseway-turned-bikeway-turned-horseway, they were making almost as good time as they would have made by powerboat. They were due in Rochester sometime today, where Jose' had been able to make contact with a friend of the Reverend's brother, who was still alive. The Reverend was in an ecstatically good mood, which made her even _more _pissy.

"Audrey," Mambo De Vivre called. "It's your turn at the next locke." Ever since they'd accessed the canal system, they'd taken turns switching out pairs of horses at each locke, leading them to tug the barge upriver. Because of this, the canal boat captain was allowing all of them to ride for next to nothing.

"I'll get Cheevers," Audrey answered. Cheevers was the name of her Morgan pony.

"I'll do it," Gabriel said. Ever since she'd told him she was pregnant, Gabriel insisted she not lift a finger to do anything.

"No!" Audrey snapped. "I'll do it. I need an excuse to get the hell _off _of this boat."

"I'll come with you, then," Gabriel said, the slight lift of his eyebrow warning her that he wouldn't be dissuaded on this.

Audrey hadn't had any 'alone' time with Gabriel in nearly two weeks! Anu was a sweet boy, but the last thing she'd thought she'd ever be saddled with was a _second _winged … male … clueless about what it meant to be human.

Actually … that wasn't fair. Anu was every bit as emotional and unpredictable as _she _was, which was part of the problem. The fact the child had flown to snoop on them against his parents' wishes should have been a warning that Anu was more like _her _than the emotionally repressed full-blooded angels she had met so far. With his intensely curious nature, he was a handful. A handful Gabriel felt obligated to closely supervise less the boy get into the kinds of mischief which had earned the human-angel hybrid Nephilim the wrath of the Father in the first place.

"I can't wait to meet my new family," Lyubitshke said, moving over to snuggle up with her 'husband.' "Family is very important to the Romani."

"They're going to _love _you," the Reverend said, whirling her into his torso as though spinning a dance partner, dipping her backwards, and then tilting her up for an affectionate hug and a kiss on the forehead. "They've been hounding me for years to get married."

Were they? Or weren't they? They sure _acted_ like they were! Gabriel and his superhero angel spider-senses knew, but he wouldn't squeal, stating cryptically that such private matters were between a husband and wife.

Not that they had a _chance _to do anything on this confounded barge! Audrey wasn't the _only _one walking around snarling at everyone due to the lack of privacy. Cindy had let loose a barrage of foul language this morning for much the same reason. Too many people. Not enough elbow room. No place to pin your man to the deck and have your way with him.

And to top it all off, her goddamned clothes didn't fit anymore! She'd given up on trying to zip up her cargo pants and finally borrowed a hideously frumpy full-length black skirt from one of the Hasidic Jewish women. She looked … awful! And the more awful she looked, the more _pleased _Gabriel looked.

Gabriel already had Haizum and Cheevers ready when they reached the next locke. They greeted the Senator and Cindy boarding the ship with _their _mounts, both relaxed-looking and cheerful after nearly seven hours together off the crowded barge.

"Watch your footing," the Senator warned good-naturedly. "I've never seen so much snow in one place."

"You've never seen snow, period," Cindy ribbed him. "We're from Texas, remember?"

Upstate New York got an unbelievable amount of snow coming off the Great Lakes this time of year. The snowpack was several feet thick, the endless trudge of horses pulling barges along the canal packing the horse-path down to ice. The only reason the canal wasn't frozen was because the canal authority flooded it with too much water to allow it to stay frozen.

Gabriel hooked their horses up to the tow-rope side-by-side. Haizum wasn't thrilled about being used as a barge-horse, but he was the most powerful mount they had, dwarfing Audrey's dainty Morgan. Kind of like Audrey standing next to Gabriel's enormous frame. Gabriel tugged at the horses lead rope to start the walking, holding out one hand for Audrey to take.

"At last," Audrey groused. "Time alone."

"I thought you _liked _being the center of attention," Gabriel teased.

"I _like _spending time with my husband," Audrey grumbled. "Between Lyubitshke's weird Romani purity rituals and the Hasidic women's bizarre prohibitions about genders spending time together, I feel like I'm going to scream."

"The Rabbi's not so bad," Gabriel said good-naturedly. "He's been much less holier-than-thou since I informed him the Father was the one who sent the heavenly host to whisper to Hitler and Stalin to wipe out his people. Not some mythological Satan."

"How'd he take it? Audrey asked.

"Remarkably well," Gabriel said cheerfully. "He of course blamed himself, assuming his own kind must have done something to earn the Father's disfavor, and prayed heavily on the matter."

"Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" Audrey asked.

"Huh?" Gabriel said.

"You've been in a good mood ever since we left New York," Audrey said. "First you couldn't stand the Rabbi, and now you're happy he's here."

Gabriel was silent for a moment. "I'm happy Semihaza has forgiven me," he said softly. "Forgiveness … it's not an emotion the Father is prone to feeling. I feel as if a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders."

"How come you didn't feel that way when Michael forgave you?" Audrey asked.

"I knew in my heart killing Michael was wrong," Gabriel said. "I questioned the Father, but I obeyed because that is what the Father told me to do. When I threw Semihaza and his offspring into the Keep, I truly believed what the Father was asking us to do was right."

"That doesn't make it any less heinous," Audrey said.

"No," Gabriel admitted. "It doesn't. But I never really even thought about it until Anu showed up in our bower and all of a sudden it was sitting in my face screaming at me that it had been wrong. Semihaza understood that … the programming."

"You've been talking to Non Gae?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. He looked down at the ground, the snow crunching beneath his boots. "You were right about her. She _does _understand what it's like to suddenly start questioning things you were raised to believe were the truth, and then you find out they're all lies."

They walked a ways in silence, the only sound the crunch of snow beneath their feet, the clop-clop of hooves on ice, and the cacophony of a barge full of too many people and horses being towed a thousand feet behind them on the canal.

"What would you like to name our baby?" Gabriel suddenly asked out of the blue.

"I'm afraid to think that far ahead," Audrey said, looking away from him so he wouldn't see the anguished expression on her face. "I haven't … I haven't given the matter any thought."

Gabriel was silent a few minutes longer. "I'd really like to know our child's name. Anu said Semihaza wasn't even _aware _his wife was pregnant with their seventeenth child when we threw him in the Keep. The Father kept the Fallen separate from each other and their offspring. 4,500 years later and he finds out he has another daughter."

Gabriel's voice was almost a whisper with those last few words. For all his talk of forgiveness, Gabriel was still coming to grips with the magnitude of deception he'd been raised with. Sisters who'd been murdered by the Father. Grigori they'd attempted to slaughter who were husbands and now hosts for those sisters. The question of which parent had been responsible for the killing the Grigori-angel hybrid offspring whose souls were MIA. And Anu's heartbreaking condition when they had first discovered the boy which, thankfully, appeared to be healing. How many _other _Nephilim children suffered from similar afflictions due to Gabriel and the other angels' blind obedience?

What Gabriel _didn't _say was they both knew he wasn't going to live to see their child be born. Although her nightly visions were beginning to shift in favor of at least an initial stalemate for the Savior, it would still come at the cost of Gabriel's life. The Grigori would _still _be a threat. Humanity would _still _fall if the Fallen, the Nephilim, and the undecided un-fallen brothers did not side with the Savior. No thread she followed in her vision to date could undo this fact and she was running out of threads. If one of the three remaining undiscovered disciples didn't decisively turn the tide, she was going to lose him and that would be that.

"Do you have a name in mind?" Audrey asked once she had composed herself so he wouldn't see her cry. He wasn't asking to make her sad. He was asking because he wished to carry the name with him into the Keep. His large hand firmly held her smaller one, ensuring she didn't slip on the ice as they walked.

"If it's a little girl," Gabriel said softly. "I would like you to name her Mary after the two Mary's. Mary of Nazareth and Mary Magdaline. They are the only other humans I ever felt any connection to before I met you."

"Okay," Audrey whispered, unable to choke out the words any louder or she'd start to bawl. Cheevers snorted softly behind her, nuzzling her as though asking what was wrong. "But if it's a boy, I'm going to name him after his father."

"I would prefer my name die with me," Gabriel said. "There's no honor attached to my name anymore. I am fallen."

"Bullshit!" Audrey yelled, anger rising in her voice. "The Father can go stick his sexually repressed ways up his fucking ass! If he had a fucking _clue _about what life is all about, the Mother wouldn't have left him."

The sharp crack of ice shattering all around them warned her she was allowing her emotions to take over. Audrey now had to be very careful to watch her anger. Anger was destructive. She could get pissy. She could grouse. But if she got truly angry she could inadvertently tap that wellspring of rage the Mother had never been able to heal. Only suppress.

"I'm not fallen because I fell in love with you," Gabriel said, squeezing her hand, remorse clouding his inhumanely beautiful ice-blue eyes. "I'm fallen because I allowed my emotions to become so deadened to what was going on around me that I helped the Father perpetuate injustice. Just as Lucifer's name has become synonymous with Satan, no matter what good I do, I'm always going to be known as the angel who tried to murder the Savior while he was a helpless infant."

So he _hadn't _forgiven himself. Audrey wouldn't argue with him. If she had a boy, she was going to name him Gabriel, and that would be that. Audrey simply nodded and gave him a noncommittal 'mmmm-hmmm' answer that he could misconstrue as agreement if he so chose.

"I don't know when the, um, when the situation is going to deteriorate," Gabriel continued. "From your visions, it doesn't sound like we have a lot more time. I'm afraid … well … there's something I want you to have. For our child."

Audrey stared in curiosity as Gabriel reached into the long over-drovers coat he had scrounged up for a winter jacket and pulled out a long, slender horn. _The _horn. The horn he had blown that terrible day to announce his coming to those in the diner when he had come for the Savior.

"That's…" Audrey said, wanting to recoil from the terrible instrument.

"It's the horn that summons the heavenly host to herd the souls of the dead to the Savior to be judged as worthy to enter the second kingdom," Gabriel said quietly. "Or to be cast into the void to be uncreated."

"I thought the damned would go to Sheol," Audrey said.

"Sheol was created as a holding area until the Savior was mature enough to judge souls the Father deemed unfit to enter the garden once he is old enough to inherit the second kingdom," Gabriel said. "The Savior needs this horn to free the souls of the dead and give them a second chance. Given what I know now, it would please me greatly if our child was able to complete the task I failed so miserably at."

"Can our child use this to someday free _you?"_ Audrey asked.

"No," Gabriel said. "The Keep existed before Sheol. It is not subject to the agreement between the Mother and the Father."

"This is a heavy responsibility for a child," Audrey said quietly.

"Would you trust it to anybody _but _our child?" Gabriel asked.

Audrey turned the idea over in her mind.

"No."


	116. Chapter 115

Chapter 115

"You need to make a decision, Rabbi," Gabriel said quietly to their newest disciple. "The Prophet has foreseen the battle is going to come before the birth of our child. The Savior is on the west coast and we still have three disciples to find. We need to cover ground a lot faster."

"But they're my family!" the Rabbi protested. "My friends. My synagogue. I can't just leave them behind!"

"We don't have horses for all these people," Gabriel said. "Once we get past Buffalo, we won't have boat transport, either. It's the middle of February and there's six feet of snow on the ground. You have elderly people and small children with you."

"Then we'll all just walk slower," the Rabbi said with a shrug.

"We need you," Gabriel said. "But if we don't make our way back to the Savior before this battle the Prophet foresees, this entire journey will have been in vain. The Savior will fall."

"He's not _my _savior," the Rabbi said, contempt lacing his voice. "_Our _messiah has yet to be born!"

"How do you _know _he's not your savior?" Gabriel asked, raising one eyebrow in question.

"The last time he was on Earth," the Rabbi said, his posture stiff, "he didn't fulfill the Messianic Prophecies. He's not of the line of David and Solomon, and there is _no _father-son-mother trinity in heaven."

"Wrong and wrong again," Gabriel said, flaring his wings as a reminder of just who he was. "Nearly everyone alive today bears at least _some _blood of David and Solomon, and the Mother is alive and well."

"But … our beliefs say…" the Rabbi hemmed.

Gabriel gave him a bemused expression.

"Our beliefs are propaganda?" the Rabbi asked.

Gabriel simply nodded.

"What if my family doesn't want to stay _here?"_ the Rabbi asked. "There are no practicing Hasidic Jews left alive in Rochester. Or Buffalo."

"You were the only Hasidic Jews left alive in New York City, too," Gabriel reminded him. "You're going to run into the same problem no matter _where _you go. If you wish to regroup, you're going to have to give other surviving Hasidic Jews a reason to come to _you_."

"Who will keep my flock together while I am gone?" the Rabbi asked.

"Your children are almost grown," Gabriel said. "Your eldest son and his wife take your beliefs very seriously and your people already look to them. They will take up the slack."

"But what about my wife?" the Rabbi said. "Man is incomplete without a good woman at his side."

"What does _she _want?" Gabriel asked.

"She wants to stay here," the Rabbi said, his appearance deflated. "Our youngest two children are too young to be left behind."

Aha! The crux of the matter. The Rabbi's wife was the one resisting his leaving. Not that Gabriel could _blame _her. Only death would cause _him _to leave his little Prophet behind.

"You could just bring them," Gabriel said. "They are teenagers. Old enough to ride and keep up with us. But I must warn you that I don't know where the Prophet's compass rose will lead us. This part of the country is recovering, but many of the places we've travelled through were dangerous."

"I will discuss the matter some more with my wife," the Rabbi said. "This is a decision we need to make together."

"Agreed," Gabriel said, reaching out to grasp the Rabbi by the shoulder and give him a reassuring squeeze, a gesture both Audrey and the Reverend had taught him gave comfort to the humans. "It _is _a decision you should make together. But as much as the Prophet is annoyed by your religious beliefs, the fact remains that humanity needs you."

"I hear her cry out every night," the Rabbi said with a shudder. "I don't understand all of the heavenly language she speaks in as you do, but I understand a little. She foresees your death."

"She has been forced to live my death every single night since she saved my life," Gabriel said resignedly. "Her will to keep me in this realm can only defy fate for so long. I have been blessed to live two years beyond when I was supposed to expire. I have earned her love and sired a child who I will not live to meet. Given how we met, I am blessed."

"You know the road we travel leads only to your death?" the Rabbi said, surprise showing in his face. "And yet you do not resist the will of god?"

"It's not so much _will," _Gabriel said. "More … inevitability. You saw what Anu looked like when he first came to us. That is what the Father would do to _her _and our _child. _The consequences of _not _sacrificing myself are too horrific."

"You sound like my grandfather," the Rabbi said with a grunt of approval. "First he survived Stalin's purges in the Ukraine. He fled to Poland, where he survived the Warsaw Ghetto. And then he survived the Treblinka concentration camp. He used to say that when it was time for him to die, he would die, and that would be that."

"Thank you," Gabriel said, acknowledging the compliment. Silence stretched out between them, the only sound the background chatter of the Reverend's brother and friends welcoming their strange little group to the city.

"You know," the Rabbi said, shooting him a wry grin. "Another one of our beliefs is that God is infallible. He's not _supposed_ to change his mind."

"If it's any consolation," Gabriel said. "He doesn't change it very often. He's like a freight train. Once you get him moving in a certain direction, it takes a lot to get him to shift tracks."

Silence stretched out between them some more. The Rabbi's wife called to him from the other room. He called back that he'd be there in a little while.

"She's an unlikely Prophet," the Rabbi finally said of Audrey. "Not at all what you would expect a Prophet to be like."

"She's _everything _a Prophet _should_ be," Gabriel said softly. "Her instincts remained true when the rest of us failed. Giving my life is a small price to pay for what she has given me in return."

The Rabbi's wife called once more. Although there was no Hasidic Jewish community in Rochester, there _were _a respectable number of survivors of Jewish descent and an active mainstream Jewish synagogue. The community had invited the Rabbi and his family to stay and help replenish their ranks, promising any of the numerous vacant houses. The small city was as 'unscathed' as cities got these days. Surrounded by farms and navigable waterways, towns and small farm-centric cities which had prospered during the colonial era were the first to recover for the same reasons they had prospered back then. Farmers needed someplace within a few hours travel to bring their crops to market and the existence of a reliable transportation system between towns encouraged trade.

"Look on the bright side," Gabriel said. "Of all the people in the world, the Savior chose _you _to be one of his disciples. He'd like your input into what the Second Kingdom will look like."

"So he wants a return to orthodox Judaism?" the Rabbi asked, his expression hopeful.

Gabriel gestured to the other disciples, who ambled around the school gymnasium where they had been welcomed, amiably chatting to each other and the residents who had turned out to greet them. Lena had changed into her favorite blue dress and she, Lyubitshke and the Reverend were warming up to provide impromptu entertainment. Gunn had found some biker ex-vets to bond with. The Senator and Cindy were chatting with the new mayor of the city while Mambo sat telling stories to some children, including Anu. Jose' was filming the entire fiasco live, showing everyone and anyone who asked how to create their own uplink. Audrey and Non Gae had folded some sheets of paper into fans and were teaching around a dozen women how to perform a swanlike kisaeng dance.

"You're looking at nine of the twelve disciples," Gabriel said. "What do _you _think he's looking for?"

The Rabbi looked at the others. Elvis-impersonating Christian minister and his Romani-gypsy young wife. Mormon drag queen. Ex-special forces biker. Manic-depressive-paranoid-schizophrenic-Hispanic gangbanger. Philandering politician. Voodoo queen. Prostitute. All being led by a Prophet with a sewer mouth and a fallen messenger of god.

"Variety," the Rabbi said finally.

"I would say 'inclusion' would be a more accurate term," Gabriel said, a slight smile wrinkling his brow. "The Father only allows those who met his narrow definition of perfection into _his _garden. Perfect roses, every soul. The Savior prefers wildflowers. Sturdy as hell and impossible to kill."

"What about you, Gabriel?" the Rabbi asked. "Will he forgive _you _for your mistake?"

"No," Gabriel said. "Every disciple he has chosen has tried to lead a good life with what little they were given or experienced some life-altering revelation which caused them to become a better person. What I have done is unforgiveable."

"Because you fell in love with his Prophet?" the Rabbi asked.

"Because I blindly followed an order to eliminate his mortal shell when he was vulnerable," Gabriel said. "It violated every notion of what the Savior believes to be good and fair in the world he's trying to create. I have proven I can't be trusted."

"He has indicated he is willing to forgive the _other _fallen," the Rabbi said. "Perhaps he will forgive you as well?"

"Anu's sire and grandsire fell long before the Savior came the first time around," Gabriel said. "What they did is _not_ in conflict with the ideals of the Savior. They fell in love with mortal women when the Father had no prohibition against it and refused to abandon their families when the Father ordered their return."

"Enoch said the Watchers were evil," the Rabbi said.

"You met Shemihaza," Gabriel said. "You are his direct descendent. Are you evil, Rabbi?"

"No," the Rabbi said. "I have always led the best life I could."

"Enoch had an agenda," Gabriel said. "He _was_ favored by the Father, but there is _no _angel Metatron who Enoch turned into after he died. Enoch is still … Enoch. The tales of Watchers are fairy tales told by his followers to increase their own importance."

"But they are the _original _Watchers," the Rabbi said. "Not a descendent like I am."

"There were a _few _troublemakers amongst their descendents," Gabriel said. "As there are in _every _group of people. But overall, their only sin is not saying 'how high' when the Father said to jump. Everything else … is propaganda. Just as calling someone of Jewish descent 'Shiloh' because they trade on the New York Stock Exchange is propaganda."

"I haven't demanded a pound of flesh yet," the Rabbi said with a grin.

"Harel!" the Rabbi's wife called. "Rabbi Goldstein has been kept waiting long enough!"

"It is time to go discuss things with my better half," the Rabbi said with resignation. "She's not going to be pleased."

"Shalom," Gabriel said. "You'll work it out."


	117. Chapter 116

Chapter 116

"Gabriel!" Audrey called, attempting to coax him out onto the dance floor. "Come dance with me."

Gabriel ambled out to where she stood boogying out on the dance floor, but froze when he realized this was a dance he had not learned to do.

"Um…"

"Just move like this!" Audrey said.

"This isn't the dance I learned, little Prophet," Gabriel said loudly enough for her to hear over the twang of the slightly out-of-tune band strumming a mixture of country-western, folk, and pop tunes while one of the Reverends nieces who couldn't have been any more than 16 belted out the words.

Western New York had been spared _one _curse the rest of the country suffered from. The Niagara hydroelectric power plant had escaped destruction. It couldn't replace nonexistent petroleum supplies to run internal combustion engines, but with less than 8% of the population still alive, the survivors had as much electricity as they needed for everyday things.

Or some not-so-everyday things. Such as tonight's party.

"Maybe I can get Lena to slow things down a little," Audrey shouted over the pop/hip-hop tune Gabriel was balking at. She frantically waved up onto the stage and gave Lena a 'cut' signal followed by a hand signal to slow things down. She was rewarded by Lena leaning into the band to shout something. As soon as the song ended, an old country slow tune came on.

"That's better," Gabriel said, pulling her into his dance space and carefully placing one hand around her waist, the other holding out her hand, ballroom dancing style. Gabriel would probably never be a 'natural' dancer. Not unless it was something athletic or martial like the paso doble the Romani had taught him. But he was trying very hard to please her. If a dance had very specific, logical steps, Gabriel would fly off to secretly practice it until he had mastered the steps perfectly. Precision. Like a fine Swiss clock.

"I like it when you dance with me," Audrey said, looking into his eyes and rewarding him with a smile. She slid her hand down off his shoulder to his arm, her small hand squeezing his meaty bicep as she shot up one eyebrow in a suggestive manner.

Gabriel's iris's widened black enough to almost obscure the unearthly blueness of his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled her scent. Arousal. In retrospect, she realized Gabriel had been sensing the subtle scent pheromones she emitted signaling her attraction to him long before she had ever acknowledged to herself that she _was _attracted to him. He'd been clueless as to what he was sensing, while she'd been in denial, but he'd responded to it nonetheless, some instinct inherited from the Mother, she supposed. From what Gabriel said, the Father had been like Jose', shunning physical contact because it overwhelmed his fragile psyche.

"The Prophet says dance," Gabriel leaned in to murmur in her ear, his voice rumbling with that sub-audible undertone that only an angel could achieve. "So I learn to dance."

"You're teasing me," Audrey said, giving the hand which held hers captive a quick squeeze. Gabriel knew it drove her wild when he used his 'voice' like that. Although the Father no longer spoke through him, Gabriel had learned a trick or two over the millennia about making himself heard.

Quick-quick slow … slow. Quick-quick slow … slow. Audrey silently counted the beat of the Texas two-step which was the closest she'd been able to teach him to an unstructured slow dance. Gabriel had readily learned to improvise in the only arena that truly mattered. Their marriage bed. Everything else was just gravy.

Audrey glanced over to see the Reverend twirling his lovely young wife around the dance floor in a cross between an intricate two-step and some kind of contra dance. All around them, the Reverends family did the same thing. It appeared the sing-dance-and-performance bug ran in his family. The young woman on stage belting out tunes was one of the Reverends nieces.

Not one of the Reverends family had said a peep about Lyubitshke being one-third his age. The young Romani woman deliberately dressed and acted in a more sophisticated manner to lessen the visual difference in their ages. She looked and acted eighteen or nineteen, while the Reverend always _had_ possessed a youthful streak. Aided by the 'apocalypse diet' of scant food and lots of walking, the Reverend had transformed himself since they first met from an Elvis-in-a-white-suit-in-his-middle-age Elvis impersonator to an Elvis-in-black-leather-Jailhouse-Rock Elvis impersonator.

"I see you found some attire more to your liking," Gabriel rumbled. "You've stopped tugging at your clothing and frowning."

"The Reverend's sister-in-law helped me locate some bigger clothing," Audrey said, patting the front of her dress with approval. "I still look fat, but at least I'm not dressed like a frump."

"You look beautiful," Gabriel said, pulling her against his chest and leaning down to nuzzle her neck behind her ear, his lips deliberately just barely touching the sensitive outer edge of her ear. He _was _teasing her. "Like ripe fruit waiting to be tasted."

To accentuate that point, he bent down a little further and nibbled at the nape of her neck, his nose gently nudging her hair out of the way so he could taste her flesh. As he did, she could feel the sharp 'spear' jut out between them signaling just what it was Gabriel had in mind for later tonight.

"You and your sense of taste!" Audrey laughed. "That's so gross!"

"It's unfortunate the ability to taste pheromones has been largely bred out of your species by the Father," Gabriel murmured, tasting her neck a second time, this time a bit higher up her neck, and then blowing on the damp spot to give her goose bumps. "It was not a trait he valued, but it is a sensation I truly enjoy."

Audrey shut her eyes, entrusting herself to his care as he whirled them around the dance floor, perfectly in tune with one another. The song lasted longer than usual, Lena signaling the band to add an extra refrain or two to prolong their dance. It wasn't often they could get Gabriel to cut loose and simply enjoy himself. When he did, they all conspired to prolong the moment.

All too soon the song ended and a different song came on, one with a strange wail. Gabriel herded Audrey off to one side to watch while the Rabbi sang an old Hasidic Jewish song. Both Hasidic and Reform Jewish men clapped and danced an almost Cossack-type dance. There were no Hasidic Jewish women in the room. Apparently it was forbidden for the genders to dance together in front of anyone except each other. The Jewish ladies had piled into the adjacent locker room for their own gathering, reform-Jew honoring their Hasidic-Jewish sisters' customs by 'hanging out' with them.

Audrey suppressed a twinge of annoyance at the orthodox Jewish customs. After two years of bashing Gabriel over his thick skull to get him to stop comparing everything to what the Father blah-blah-blah'd about in the old testament, the Rabbi and his family were actively stirring up trouble by encouraging Gabriel to _re-_adopt the customs she had finally convinced him he needed to ditch.

"When can we leave?" Audrey asked, deliberately rubbing up against his torso. "We haven't had enough time together two weeks."

"Now?" Gabriel asked hopefully, the edges of his eyes crinkling in mirth. "I've already selected tonight's bower."

It wasn't often she could get him to erupt into a full-blown smile, but Gabriel had become much more expressive since she had first met him. It was subtle. You had to know him to get a read on what he was usually feeling. But once Gabriel had decided he trusted you enough to let down his guard, you discovered he felt things exceptionally deeply. What she had once thought was thick-headed, unfeeling slowness was in reality a deep, bottomless ocean of emotion with powerful currents.

"One more dance?" Audrey asked, giving him her sweetest smile that she knew made his heart melt. "Maybe that tango you swear you haven't been sneaking off to perfect?"

"Do you think this band can play it in tune?" Gabriel asked. "And in the proper tempo?"

"Probably not," Audrey laughed. "They're pretty awful."

Not _that _awful. The Reverend's niece was actually pretty good. It was the rest of the band, largely high school kids and a few old geezers that had to be in their seventies or eighties, that was not to her pre-apocalypse standards.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Lena called over the loudspeaker. "And now our hosts brother, the Reverend, and his lovely wife Lyubitshke, will perform an old Elvis Presley duet."

"As if anybody is _surprised _by that!" Gunn shouted from across the room. Audrey noted that Gunn was surrounded not by one, but _three _giggling groupies. And also that Gabriel was actively pretending not to notice. Gabriel didn't want to _know _about Gunn's sexual conquests.

As soon as the music started, Gabriel's head cocked, catching the tune, and tugged _her _towards the dance floor for a change. Because he sang so rarely since he had fallen, Audrey often forgot her husband had been chosen to carry the word of the Father because he had the most beautiful voice in all of heaven. With that gift came the ability to recognize any tune by the second or third note. Including this one.

"Oh," Audrey said, the old Elvis tune finally registering as Gabriel pulled her in close for an unstructured slow dance. Unstructured. The way she had had absolutely no luck teaching him. He felt moved to do it on his own.

"Wise men say, only fools rush in," the Reverend sang. "But I can't help, falling in love with you."

"Shall I stay?" Lyubitshke alternated. "Would it be a sin? But I can't help, falling in love with you."

Audrey placed her ear against his chest, listening to the quiet rumble as Gabriel quietly hummed along to the tune as they swayed around the dance floor. She hadn't been aware he liked this song. She closed her eyes and trusted him to lead her, could feel his energy wrapping around hers the way it did when they made love. Those moments … the moments when it felt as though they had been created to be one soul … were getting longer and more powerful. She could no longer fathom what it meant to _not _have him existing within her own soul.

It was with some regret that she realized the song had ended more than a minute ago and moved on to some modern pop song. Gabriel had kept swaying with her around the gymnasium and humming, while she had kept her eyes shut, her ear pressed to his chest as he had continued humming, her awareness focused on what it felt like to be one heart, one consciousness, one soul with him.

"Let's go, my love," Gabriel murmured. She realized he had danced her right to the doors of the gym, ready to make their escape.

"Yes," Audrey agreed. "Let's go."

He took her into his strong arms and carried her off into the sky…


	118. Chapter 117

Chapter 117

"We should go around," Gabriel said. "I sense … Fallen."

"Perhaps we should try to meet up with them?" Audrey asked. "Make your peace with another brother? Things turned out well with Shemihaza."

Gabriel turned the matter over in his mind. "I sense Grigori as well. Two of them. Even _if _my brother is in the mood to talk, there's no guarantee he'll have them under control."

Another major city, another group of Fallen, Nephilim and Grigori who had taken up residence. Toronto. Canada. Decimated by the heavenly host the same as every other major city on the planet. Gabriel had not personally overseen the destruction of this city. As far as major metropolises went, Toronto's only 'sin' had been the large number of people who had taken up residence there, easy targets for mass extermination by those possessed by the heavenly host.

"Which brother do you sense?" Audrey asked, pushing back her hair from the biting wind tearing across the choppy waters of Lake Ontario. She shivered. Gabriel moved closer, flaring his wings to shield her as best he could.

Gabriel sniffed the air, nostrils flared even though they were still too far from the shore to get an accurate read on the lingering scent of brimstone carried by the Nephilim. Angels possessed more than just the regular five senses, especially to communicate their presence to one another. Some humans, he was discovering, also possessed this ability, though only a few had ever had reason to develop the talent. Somehow the Father's collar had enhanced his natural extrasensory perception, helping him to instantly match an unfamiliar sensation via some database with a name and history. Without it, Gabriel found himself instinctively falling back upon the five mortal senses to help him fill in the gaps with that sixth sense.

"Bezaliel, I think," Gabriel said. "Shadow of the Father. It's been a long time since I've been in the presence of _any _of the Fallen, but he was never my favorite brother. He used to torment me because I liked to sit at the Father's feet and watch him shape new life forms. His offspring were particularly rambunctious. They inherited his contempt of all things not related to _them_."

"We won't go out of our way to run into him, then," Audrey said, glancing at her hand. "But the compass rose is aimed just to the right of the space needle. We need to find a place to get ashore."

The CN Tower was, miraculously, still standing. Since Gabriel had not been specifically ordered to decimate the city, no angel had been sent to supervise the destruction of key assets. _How _the inhabitants of the city were killed off had been left largely to the discretion of the heavenly host, whose hatred of humanity and love of seizing _any _excuse to torment them gave the disembodied spirits motivation enough to do the job.

How had the heavenly host been created? Although Gabriel's memories of the time before were piecemeal and sparse, if he concentrated on a life form, he could usually get a vague recollection of sitting at the Father's feet while the Father had shaped the creature, muttering to himself about what traits he wished to imbue the creation with. Not so with the heavenly host! One day they had just appeared. Disembodied, jarring spirits who spouted hatred and madness much the way the Grigori did. Gabriel had only had 400 sisters and Lucifer had shaped 400 Grigori before the Father had stopped him. The heavenly host numbered in the millions. Whatever they were, they weren't female angels.

"The captain of the ship has informed us we'll have to shuttle over by smaller boat," Gunn said. "Toronto harbor is frozen solid. We're going to have a hard time getting the horses over to the shore."

The compass rose had suddenly shifted in Rochester, pointing due north. Curious, Audrey had walked the streets of the recovering small city to the shore of Lake Ontario, where a small runabout had just been pulling ashore to trade for supplies. An engine part on the large ship they rode now had suddenly snapped and forced them to drop anchor off Rochester. Serendipity. Crossing paths with a ship with an uplink to Savior Dot Gov and a crew who were huge fans of their mission had been fortuitous indeed.

Or the meddling of the Mother, the Father, or Michael…

"We might not need them," Audrey said. "Every time we've been led into a major metropolitan area to retrieve a disciple, we're usually in and out in a day or two."

Audrey searched her memory of last nights' visions for clues, and then looked down at her hand. As though in answer to her thoughts, a smaller arrow appeared just outside the compass rose pointing north-northwest. The opposite direction of the way the ship was headed. The crews' avid fandom had caused them to offer transport straight across the enormous lake instead of simply heading up the Saint Lawrence River, but they would not turn around and head in the opposite direction.

"We're going the opposite direction of this ship," Audrey informed them. "We need to figure out how to get the horses ashore."

"Why do they prefer the big cities?" the Rabbi asked. "The Fallen?"

Gabriel and Gunn glanced at each other, two former soldiers who had both had similar experiences waging urban combat.

"It's impossible to flush them out," Gunn said, drawing upon his combat experience. "Too many easily defensible positions. Too many places to hide. Too many civilians to use as human shields. The invading force has to go door to door. They usually end up shooting more of the local population than bad guys."

"It's why the Father simply ordered the destruction of any city that aroused his ire," Gabriel said. "He'd send one of us in a day in advance to warn those few inhabitants he favored, and then destroy the rest. Like Sodom and Gomorra."

"How many innocent people did he murder when he did that?" his little Prophet asked, fire in her eyes as her temper flared. "Women? Children? Little old ladies who never did the Father any harm?"

"Lots," Gabriel said softly, deliberately drooping his wings to communicate he did not wish to argue about an event he had no power to go back and change. "The Father has always judged the actions of man by the company he keeps. If he disfavors you, he simply wipes you and all of your offspring off the planet. That way, there's nobody left alive to mount a counter-offensive."

Gabriel had learned the hard way that arguing led nowhere. If it was something he felt strongly about, then he would argue, but usually it was better to simply avoid further discussion.

"He left alive the Nephilim," the Rabbi said. "Enoch wrote that they caused great havoc amongst the local populace before the Father sent the flood."

"We always thought it odd the Father treated Lucifer's offspring differently than humans," Gabriel said. "We always assumed he was unaware the Nephilim had inherited their sires ability to leap between the dimensions to access the gates of heaven and Sheol. Now … I suspect the reason he didn't touch them until after they attacked was because he feared the Mother would retaliate."

"So there really was a Sodom?"Lena asked. Lena, as a transvestite, would of course be most interested in the city which had become synonymous with her lifestyle.

"They were destroyed for their sexual depravity," the Rabbi said, cringing away from her. The Rabbi had not yet grown to accept the other disciples, so alien were their beliefs to his strict interpretation of the Old Testament. He was, however, attempting to be polite. An effort which occasionally slipped, such as now.

"They were destroyed because they were sexual predators," the Reverend chipped in, leaping to Lena's defense. "Same sex relations were the _least _of their sins. They've found archeological evidence that two of the five cities of the plain were destroyed at the same time because they banded together to rebel against the King of Elam.

Fire and brimstone," the Senator asked. "What was it? Earthquake? Volcano?"

"Asteroid exploding in the atmosphere upwind from it," Gabriel stated flatly. "3123 BC. The Father redirected an Aten-class asteroid that was in low-earth orbit to clip the Alps in Austria so it would explode in the atmosphere over the Mediterranean. He aimed the pyroclastic flow at cities which had displeased him in Levant, Sinai, and Lower Egypt, including Sodom and Gomorrah."

"The Father seems to have a penchance for asteroids," the Senator replied, visibly shuddering.

"Instant gratification," Gabriel stated flatly. "He just picks one and aims it at whatever displeases him. It's a lot less work than causing a buildup of pressure to get volcanic eruptions or earthquakes."

"Did you and your brothers aim?" the Rabbi asked, giving him an appraising look.

"Do I _look _like I'm capable of picking up and lobbing an asteroid the size of Manhattan at the Earth?" Gabriel asked, cocking one eyebrow in amusement. "That's the Thrones job. They're the ones tasked with overseeing astral movement. Angels are pretty far down the hierarchy of heaven. Little more than bug killers."

"Here we humans have been looking up to your kind for as long as humans have existed as demi-gods," Mambo De Vivre said, her dark features taking on that expression of infinite wisdom she donned so well, "and now that we've gotten to know a few of you, we learn you're not so very different than _we _are."

"Just longer lived," Lyubitshke said. "And stronger. With wings."

"And robbed of their ability to think and feel and choose their own fate," Audrey reminded them, giving him a pointed look. "Something I'm going to have a _chat _with the Savior about when we work our way back to him, if his mortal shell is old enough by then to hold a coherent conversation."

"Michael said the Savior can communicate now," Gabriel said, "but that he's still limited by the physical capabilities of a two-year-old brain. I don't know why he didn't just shape himself a ready-made shell like the Father does when he wants to manifest something down into the physical plain. It would have been a lot easier."

The Reverend placed a hand upon his shoulder. "What made the Savior such a powerful leader the last time he was here, even though his lifetime was painfully short, was the fact he was able to _understand _what it was like to be human. I think this is something you now understand?"

Gabriel shuddered with … emotion. Emotion he could not name but which he knew was truth. The past few months, the Reverend had been beginning to gain some of that same undertone of truth the Prophet possessed when she spoke with the Mother's voice. Only it _wasn't _the Mother's voice because it was their own. Little by little, the disciples were learning to harness whatever source of power the Mother used.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "The Savior accomplished more in the 42 years he was here the first time than the Father did in 74,000 years."

"I thought Jesus was 30 when he died?" the Rabbi asked.

"He was 42," Gabriel stated bluntly. "He was born while Herod was still king in 6 BC and was killed after John the Baptist in 35 AD. Your calendar is wrong."

"I don't think he's going by the name Jesus this time," Audrey said softly. "Charlie named the baby Bob. After Jeep's father. Bob helped us … get away."

Pure guilt tore through Gabriel's body at look on his wife's face and his own memory. Bob. The human male he had sliced through the belly with a razor-sharp feather without a second thought on his way to kill the Savior. The lighter engraved with the word 'Hope' as he had ignited the gas burner of the diner and incinerated both himself and the possessed so he could give the others a chance to escape.

"It's a fitting name," Gabriel said softly, meeting his wife's velvet-blue eyes, clouded over as they occasionally still did with the memory of how they had first met. He drooped his wings, knowing she understood this angelic gesture as being one of unworthiness to dwell in the presence of the Father. Or her. Or the disciples the Savior had chosen to implement his mission here on Earth. Although the others knew theoretically how he and the Prophet had first met, only the Reverend _really _knew what kind of mindless beast he had been when they had first met.

Bob. Synonymous with hope. Everything the Savior represented to these people.


	119. Chapter 118

Chapter 118

"Can vides [look]!" Anu called excitedly, suddenly interrupting their theological discussion. The young hybrid pointed to the CN Tower space needle. "Nephilim!" The boy was in the air before Gabriel could respond.

"Excrementum!" Gabriel swore in the ancient language. "Anu! Pronum [stop]!" In a heartbeat he was in the air racing after the impulsive young hybrid before the damned fool got himself killed. Anu was young, light, and fast as hell. Gabriel was huffing before he finally caught up with the boy a few thousand feet from the Toronto shore.

"You're going to get yourself killed!" Gabriel shouted, grabbing the boy by the scruff of the neck like a hawk plucking a songbird out of the air and forcing him to fly backwards by the beating of his larger, more powerful wings.

"I see my friend!" Anu shouted above the sound of rushing air, struggling to escape his grasp. "We used to play together in Sheol!"

"You have been redeemed!" Gabriel said. "There are Grigori in this city and they are aligned with them. Your friends sire might kill you for betraying your own kind."

"I did not betray them!" Anu shouted, tears coming to his eyes as the boy quivered with emotion. "I just…"

"You approached the Prophet of the Savior seeking absolution," Gabriel said, pulling the poor child into his arms, "and the Savior reached through her to grant it to you. Your grandsire is a wise man. He knew what he was doing when he asked me to bring you to him. You are not one of them anymore."

Anu sobbed in his arms, relying on Gabriel to keep them both aloft above the frigid lake.

"They are my family," Anu cried. "My friends. They didn't do anything wrong! Who's going to grant _them _absolution?"

"When you see the Savior," Gabriel said, "be sure to ask him that same question. He healed you for a reason. Perhaps you are meant to carry his Word to them once you are grown old enough and understand the message he wishes for you to carry?"

He _didn't _add that he wondered the same thing in regards to his _own _situation. He discarded the thought. Unlike Anu, Gabriel _deserved _the punishment the Father was going to inflict upon him. The best he could hope for was that, by trying to make amends, the Savior would extend whatever protection he was able to amass to include his little Prophet and their unborn child.

"Perhaps I can be his messenger?" Anu snuffled, wiping snot from his nose. "Like you were for the Father?"

"I am _nobody's _messenger now," Gabriel said softly, his own words causing the sorrow that never quite went away at the Father's abandonment to surface. "But perhaps that is how you can best serve the Savior."

Gabriel glanced up to see the group of Nephilim clustered on the roof of the pavilion of the space needle. High ground. The kind of perch his species would naturally prefer for a headquarters. Inside, Gabriel could sense the presence of his Fallen brother and knew Bezaliel could sense _him. _There were thousands of Nephilim in the city, most third and fourth-generation such as Anu and likely all direct descendents of Bezaliel. If there was one commandment the Fallen had embraced, it had been to be fruitful and multiply, producing as many offspring as their mortal wives could bear for them. An example the Father had always held up as defiance.

Now that Gabriel had offspring of his own in the works and understood how it occurred, he doubted defiance had had anything at all to do with the number of progeny the Fallen had produced. Human emotiveness was like a drug to love-starved angelic males, kept at bay now only by the collar. If his Fallen brothers and their hybrid offspring had found their wives even one-tenth as enticing as _he _found his little Prophet, it was no wonder they had produced such enormous families.

Gabriel landed with the young male on a deserted part of the ship and turned to him, fire burning in his veins that felt almost like holy fire.

"It is up to _you _to convince the Savior to find a way to help our species after he has defeated the Grigori!" Gabriel said to his young sidekick, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him for emphasis. "Do you understand? _You _must convince him the others are worthy of a second chance, the same as the humans!"

"Yes, Gabriel," Anu mumbled, looking down at his feet.

"But you aren't going to be able to _do _that if you get yourself killed pulling stupid stunts," Gabriel shouted, his anger nearly boiling over. "You have a chance the others were never given. Your grandsire knew that when he handed you over to me. Don't blow it!"

"Yes, Gabriel," Anu mumbled, tears streaming down his face.

Gabriel glanced over and noticed for the first time that his little Prophet had come over and was silently watching him ream out the young Nephilim. They were conversing in the ancient language of heaven out of necessity, so she couldn't understand his words. Anu's present grasp of English was extremely limited.

"Go below deck to your room," Gabriel said. "We'll call you when it's time to go ashore."

"Yes, Gabriel," the boy said, obediently escaping.

"You shouldn't be so hard on him," Audrey said. "He's just a boy."

"He's an _impulsive _boy who doesn't follow orders," Gabriel said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "He put us at risk."

"He's a _human _boy who just so happens to have been born with wings," Audrey said. "Remember that. He didn't do anything that any other 11-year-old boy wouldn't do if he suddenly spotted his friends."

"We weren't like that," Gabriel said defensively.

"How do you know that?" Audrey asked. "The bastard stole all memory of your childhood from you. For all you know, you very well may have played football and hide-and-seek the same as any human child. The similarities between our species are too numerous to be happenstance."

"I have no memory of playing football," Gabriel dodged, deliberately omitting that he remembered being upset his sister Armitea refused to play hide-and-seek with him anymore.

"Well you'd better get used to it," Audrey said, rubbing the small bump that was just beginning to 'show' in her abdomen. "You'd better get used to it _fast._ I got into all sorts of trouble when I was a kid."

Gabriel reached over and pulled her into his arms, burying his nose into her hair while he reached down to place his hand over hers while she reached through to touch their growing child.

"You're going to have to teach me," Gabriel said softly. "This is uncharted territory for me."

"What else is new?" Audrey said, a sweet smile lighting up her heart-shaped face, her cheeks pink from the cold of the Canadian winter.

Drink. His body had remembered how to breath, but other than that Audrey had been forced to teach him _everything _about existing in this realm, starting with needing to teach him how to drink. Time. They were running out of time. Neither of them could bear to speak the terrible truth which stretched between them, that nothing they had done so far had been able to alter the inevitability of his death. Somebody else was going to have to be the father for his child because the heavenly Father would make him sacrifice his own life to spare them from Sheol.

"Ahem…" Gunnlaeif coughed, pretending to be intently interested in the shoreline as he interrupted their tender moment. "The captain has just informed us they found someplace safe to put us ashore just east of the city."

"The horses?" Gabriel asked.

"It's going to take 5 or 6 trips," Gunn said, "but they think they can get _them _ashore as well. But we're going to need you and your young sidekick to help out with some sort of aerial harness support so none of them break a leg while we're getting them over the ice."

"Will do," Gabriel said, nodding at his friend. "Just tell me what to do."

Gunn had been trying to teach him how to think through his _own _strategies lately for some of the dicey scenarios they often found themselves walking into, but Gabriel still preferred to defer to Gunn's initial assessment of any given situation unless something flagged that was obviously beyond Gunn's knowledge. His little Prophet often got frustrated with what she referred to as blind obedience, but Gabriel was used to following a chain of command. It was more efficient to simply follow orders than to argue about every aspect of something as simple as taking a horse and getting it ashore.

If it mattered, _then _he would argue…


	120. Chapter 119

Chapter 119

'_We will murder –his- child just as –he- stood by and allowed them to murder –our- children!' Asmodeus's second-soul, Amitea, snarled through her scaly host just before he/she bit down upon the hand Audrey had offered in peace, signaling the other four Grigori to close in upon her._

'_Gabriel!" Audrey screamed, grabbing her swollen abdomen and trying to protect their child._

"Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Savior shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God," Gabriel murmured reassuringly in her ear as he shifted her in his embrace. "You must find another thread to follow."

_Gabriel landed in their midst, fighting to defend her with his life. Across the battlefield, the other disciples battled both human and inhuman opponents, some humans choosing to oppose the Savior in their midst and side with the Grigori. The Nephilim, twisted with sickness and hatred, egged them on. A few of them broke ranks with Lucifer and joined the battle –against- the Savior._

'_Lucifer!' Audrey screamed at the Fallen angel who stood off to one side, surrounded by his kin. 'You promised to remain neutral!'_

_Audrey saw tears in Lucifer's eyes as he herded his –own- offspring off to one side of the battlefield to keep them out of the fray. This was not Lucifer's doing. He was losing control. One of the Grigori snapped at one of Lucifer's grandchildren and only stopped because a second, larger Grigori nipped the rabid creature and redirected it to attack a group of humans instead. _

'_You must go with Uriel,' Gabriel said, kissing her goodbye. 'He will make sure you survive.'_

'_No!' Audrey screamed, fighting the second pair of arms that entrapped her and pulled her into the sky. 'Gabriel! Don't do this!' _

"I am still here, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured in her ear, caressing her so her body could register he was still with her. "I am still here."

_From the air, Audrey could see the disciples huddled around the Savior, protecting him, along with humans drawn to them. The Grigori threw themselves at the disciples, trying to break through to kill the son of the deities who had murdered their entire species. One by one the disciples began to fall, but held on._

_Gabriel fought five Grigori at once, incorporating –new- maneuvers learned from his time amongst humans into the standard ones taught by the Father. Strange … maneuvers. Where had Gabriel learned to fight like that?_

'_Let me go!' she screamed at Uriel, punching him in the chest. 'He has a chance!'_

'_He will –never- have a chance,' Uriel sneered. 'If by some miracle he survives this day, I am under orders to kill him myself so I can remove his blighted presence from your world.'_

'_Motherfucker!' Audrey screamed and punched him right in the face. Uriel didn't even flinch. He held her so she was forced her to watch Gabriel fall and be torn apart by the Grigori._

'_No!' Audrey howled in grief as Uriel dropped her to the ground at his side, leaving her to crawl though the gore to his side. 'Gabriel … don't leave me!"_

"I am still here, little Prophet," Gabriel whispered. "Even when I am gone, a piece of my soul will always reside within you."

'_Don't be sad, little Prophet,' Gabriel gasped in pain as his blood poured out onto the ground. 'You have brought me more joy than I ever could have imagined. The Father can't take that from me…'_

_The light faded from his eyes. She tried to grab onto him, to hold him here, to will him to stay with her defiance, but the Father took him from her, dissipating his mortal shell so that all she had left was the blood he had shed into the ground for her. She lay down on the Earth, keening, as she rubbed the bloody earth onto her own body, his blood all she and their unborn child had left of him._

_Behind her, the disciples fell, mighty Gunnlaeif smiting one last Grigori with his dying breath. At the last possible moment, Michael pulled the Savior to safety, denying humanity the hope he offered. Their only option was the Grigori who would eventually destroy them._

'_Gabriel…' she whispered. 'It wasn't enough…'_

"I am still here, my love," Gabriel whispered, shifting her position and nestling her into his wings. "We will find a way. I promise."

She realized he was crying, too. They were running out of time.

The now-familiar presence welled up inside her chest, filling her lungs with air to speak with Her voice.

"_The tenth disciple is the twelfth iman," _the Mother spoke through her.

"Mother?" Gabriel asked. "Please … why don't you just tell us what we need to do?"

Silence. Audrey moved her mouth, willing the Mother to tell them more, but the only sounds that came out were her own.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered. Her wrist hurt. The Grigori bite marks from the future would probably be adorning her wrist come morning.

"You punched me in the face, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured in her ear, tenderly settling her into his wings as he fluffed his feathers for warmth. There was a hint of bemusement in his voice as he whispered to her in the dark.

"Sorry," Audrey whispered. "I was punching your brother. Uriel."

"You might not want to do that in real life, little Prophet," Gabriel said, kissing her forehead. "I might get jealous. The first thing you did to _me _when we first met was punch me in the face. Uriel is not known for his sense of humor."

"I'm so tired," Audrey mumbled, he body sweaty and spent, wracked with chills from her vision. "I need to sleep."

"You'll forget everything if I let you do that," Gabriel said. "And then you'll be angry at me. I sensed another thread changed."

"You survived a little longer," Audrey said. "You had … moves. Like I've never seen before. Not like the moves you practice with Gunn. It enabled you to hold them off a little longer."

"We'll try to figure it out in the morning," Gabriel said. "Did anything else change?"

"Lucifer is losing control of the Grigori," Audrey said. "Some of the Nephilim are following them. Not him."

"That doesn't bode well," Gabriel rumbled in her ear. "Probably why the timeline has gotten so short."

"Let me sleep," Audrey whispered. "Please?"

"Sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured, nuzzling her neck behind her ear and tasting her delicate skin there. "Sleep with the knowledge you are safe in my arms."

He wasn't seeking sexual arousal when he kissed her and tasted her flesh after her visions. For reasons Audrey couldn't understand, Gabriel _needed _to taste whatever essence it was that lingered upon her skin. The same way he always needed to reassure himself with her scent. The dog she had once owned had been like that. When she was upset or angry or even happy, the big brute would sniff her and lick her hand, occasionally pinning some body part between his big meaty paws and licking some stray hand or knee for a lengthy period of time. Although Audrey had long since stopped thinking of her husband as a dog, he _did _have an awful lot of mannerisms in common with man's best friend.

She drifted off to sleep in his arms, safe, the only sound the beating of his heart.


	121. Chapter 120

Chapter 120

"Here," Audrey said, pointing to a nondescript concrete commercial building located somewhere east of downtown Toronto. "The compass rose says we must go in here."

"Doesn't look very promising, does it?" Lena asked, frowning with disapproval at the squat, ugly building. "What is this place?"

"Halal butcher shop," Gabriel stated flatly, pointing to a plain sign with crude Arabic letters painted on it. His nostrils flared and a slight expression of disgust marred his handsome face. "Still operating."

Audrey looked up and down the street. Toronto architecture had fared somewhat better than other large cities such as New York or Washington, but everywhere she looked burned out cars, shattered windows, and gutted buildings were the norm rather than the exception. Snow covered the bodies of the dead and two years of decomposition had rid the area of their stench, but Toronto was a dead zone just like every other large city they had entered. This area of the city, however, showed signs of habitation. Cars had been pushed to the side of the road to create a path wide enough for their horses to pass, human footprints as well as hoof prints dotted the snow, and Gabriel could sense humans lurking in the shadows, watching them.

"What's a halal butcher shop?" Lyubitshke asked. Her quarterhorse nickered nervously, spooking at something it smelled in the air. The other horses were spooky as well.

"Similar to a kosher butcher shop, my love," the Reverend said, affectionately pulling her into his side as he launched into one of his lectures about arcane religious knowledge. "Livestock must be ethically killed with a single cut of a very sharp knife, overseen by an imam invoking the name of Allah over the animal as it dies."

"Not similar to kosher," the Rabbi said haughtily. "Our practices are superior to theirs."

"The food of the People of the Book is lawful to you," the Reverend cited, "and yours lawful to them. Surah 5:5."

"That's _their _imams admitting our methods are superior to theirs," the Rabbi said. "Not the other way around. Halal accepts the mixing of milk and meat in the same cooking utensils, which we do not. And Muslims eat shellfish, which we find unclean."

"You know," Audrey said, deliberately baiting the Rabbi and giving him a wolfish smile as her annoyance rose in her veins. "What I could really go for right about now is a nice pulled pork sandwich and a lobster roll? Anybody else could go for one right about now?"

The other disciples shifted around uneasily on their mounts, wishing to stay out of the ongoing fray between Audrey and their latest disciple. Audrey _tried _to be polite to the Rabbi, but his old testamentary bullshit and holier-than-thou attitude bugged the ever-living fuck out of her and she just wanted to throttle the pompous religious leader and shake him until he woke up and smelled the apocalypse. Thank the Savior the Rabbi's equally holier-than-thou family had elected to stay behind in Rochester and set up a new Hasidic Jewish community there!

"Children!" Mambo De Vivre snapped. "We have a tenth disciple to find. Shall we go indoors?" As the oldest member of their group, Mambo was often able to instill order and settle the numerous petty disputes that often occurred whenever a group of disparate people with no common history were thrown together and forced to work together for a common cause.

"I'll guard the horses," Gunn offered. "Make sure nobody walks away with them."

"Or tries to turn _them _into horsemeat," Non Gae said, patting her mount, a temperamental purebred thoroughbred given to her by one of her former Pentagon 'clients' when they had left Washington. The mare was large and faster-than-hell, winner of numerous races before the apocalypse had rendered horseracing irrelevant. And also now pregnant, having come into heat while on the road. Pregnant by a certain exceedingly virile Spanish Norman stallion!

"Traitor," Audrey whispered to Haizum as she ceded Cheevers' reins to Gunn and the enormous black-brown Spanish-Norman stallion affectionately nuzzled her, looking for a treat. Gabriel gave her an inquiring look, having no idea about the direction of her thoughts. Audrey shot him an innocent smile. Cheevers was another male. It wasn't Haizum's fault he was nothing but a dumb animal ruled by instinct to impregnate the horse of a beautiful Korean courtesan.

"Anu … Donec lestus. Stay here," Gabriel said to the Nephilim boy in both the ancient tongue and English, something they had all agreed to start doing so the boy would learn their language faster. "Auxilium Gunn tendere equos … help Gunn watch the horses."

"Etiam … okay," Anu replied enthusiastically, leading the mixed-breed swaybacked pony they had scrounged up for the boy in Rochester over to grab Haizum's reins. The boy adored Gabriel's horse, always slipping it treats. Haizum quickly forgot about Audrey and began nuzzling Anu in her stead.

"Traitor," Audrey said again, laughing. She handed Anu her own horses' reins. Haizum tolerated Cheevers and Anu's old pony, but if you put him near any other horse that wasn't a female, especially if other mares were present, he would act like a typical stallion and begin fighting them. The stallion was a mount only Gabriel could truly handle.

"They smell the slaughterhouse," Gabriel said. "It's making the horses nervous."

"I don't see any sign of a stockyard," Audrey said, looking around. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear the faint sound of the occasional bleat of a sheep or goat, but not the sounds she associated with the enormous stockyards they had gone through in Texas.

"I believe that part of Halal is that animals must be raised on pasture and not see another animal be slain before them," the Reverend said. "Animals should be brought in to be slaughtered and processed immediately, not warehoused in factory farms. Halal certified meat is highly sought by the green movement."

"So Halal means to slaughter?" Lyubitshke asked.

"No," the Reverend said. "Halal refers to much more than how food is processed. More like Romaniya … Romani purity laws. One of your laws prohibits cruelty to animals, but includes other types of ritual cleanliness as well."

"Or kosher," the Rabbi said, not wishing to be left out. "How the animal is to be treated prior to and during slaughter is strictly regulated. We believe that suffering contaminates the meat."

Audrey ignored the conversation going on behind her and pushed through the front door of the butcher shop, which had a piece of plywood over the glass, but had an 'open' sign and was unlocked. A bell jingled. Three large glass cases surrounded the room with a respectable amount of meat displayed in them, preserved on piles of clean, white snow. The shop was lit by candle light and light from the top halves of boarded windows. So far they had seen no signs of electricity in the city.

"Hello?" Audrey asked, calling out to the back. The bleating of an animal was heard, and then silenced.

"The smell of death," Gabriel said, the reassuring rumble of his voice startling her as he assumed his customary position at her back. His nostrils were flared as he surveyed the scene for danger. "Goat, I think, by the scent. We will wait for him to finish. He will say prayers to Allah over the animal until it bleeds out."

Audrey shuddered. Until the apocalypse had forced her to broaden her culinary horizons, the only meat she had ever eaten had come from the supermarket neatly wrapped in cellophane packets. Her mother had handled all of the cooking. The closest she had ever come to touching uncooked meat was a package of cold cuts to make herself a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

A small bell sat on the countertop near the cash register with a sign that said 'ring bell for service.' Beneath the bell was a hand-written sign written in Arabic that she couldn't read. She pointed to the sign and asked Gabriel to translate.

"If butcher doesn't respond right away," Gabriel translated. "Please wait until butcher is finished serving prior customer."

"Serving," Audrey said with a whisper. "I think I'll pass, thank you very much."

"I believe it means helping a customer slaughter his own livestock," the Reverend said, coming in behind them with his wife in tow. "The Muslim Brotherhood actively recruited inside the High Desert State Prison where I had my ministry. Some of the brothers were legitimately Muslim and asked me to advocate for acceptably processed food on the prison menu. They have this holiday … Eid al-Adha … which every Muslim must participate in the sacrifice of a livestock animal once per year commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his favorite son."

"Isaac," the Rabbi said. "Founder of Judaism."

"The Muslims believe it was Ishmael who Abraham brought to the mountaintop," the Reverend said.

"They are wrong," the Rabbi said. "Ask Gabriel. He was the one who told Abraham to stop."

All eyes turned to Gabriel.

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked.

"Neither account is exactly true," Gabriel said, visibly looking uncomfortable. "This falls under the category of things you probably don't want to know."

"Truth is always good," a dark-skinned young man with a heavy Middle Eastern accent said from a doorway leading from the shop-room into the larger slaughterhouse. "Please enlighten us, Angel of the Lord Jibra'il."

The others backed away from the young Arabic man wearing a white apron covered with blood and carrying a long, sharp knife.

"It was Ishmael he tried to sacrifice," Gabriel said softly. "Not Isaac. Isaac hadn't been born yet."

"So our traditions are right?" the young man asked.

"No," Gabriel said. "Human sacrifice to curry favor with the gods was common back then. There's a reason the old testament says you shall not sacrifice your children to Moloch."

"But you heard Hagar's cries in the wilderness," the young man said. "You told her to return to Abraham when you established the well at Medina."

"It was a slow day in heaven that day," Gabriel said. "The Father wished to facilitate empire building and the desert was in the way. He sent me to unearth a spot with a natural subterranean water supply so trade routes could be established. Hagar just happened to be sitting in the spot where I was sent to build a well, weeping. She was obviously pregnant. A pregnant woman alone in the desert had no chance of survival. I told her to return to her husband. At least there, she would survive."

"But years later you stopped Abraham from sacrificing Ishmael?" the young man asked.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "I … I checked in on Hagar after that. Abraham found out Sarah was finally pregnant _before _he attempted to sacrifice Ishmael. When one of the villagers warned her Abraham had come for her son and headed towards the mountain where he had built an altar for sacrifice, Hagar knew what he was up to. She … called to me. I … intervened."

From the look on Gabriel's face, Audrey realized this was a part of the memory that he was just recalling now. As though he had forgotten there had once been _another _human who had aroused his compassion. Gabriel had complained he often felt as though someone had picked through his memories and put a blanket over them so he couldn't remember having any emotions.

"The Father always _did _like his sacrifices," Audrey sniped, contempt tingeing her voice. "It was the kind of thing that's right up his alley."

"The Father ignored child sacrifice when it was used to cull the weak from the strong," Gabriel said. "Parents would abandon a deformed child to die. But when Abraham tried to sacrifice his only then-born son, I convinced the Father it was poor animal husbandry to encourage nobles to sacrifice healthy children in the hopes of winning his favor. You're supposed to save seed from your _best _breeding stock, not sacrifice it before it can reproduce."

"Allah … breeds … us?" Muhammad asked, his face perplexed. The poor male had no idea about what had really happened during the apocalypse.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "Although not just for genetic characteristics. Abraham was a powerful sheikh with lots of political connections and no other heirs and Hagar was from a line of one of his prophets. Handing Abraham a ram and telling him _this _was what he was supposed to do set a precedent for the other sheiks."

"Satan sent the vision!" the Rabbi exclaimed.

"There is no Satan as you have personified it," Gabriel said. "Only fundamental forces of nature and self-delusion which must be overcome. Abraham's own ego gave him the idea. He was no more the kindly patriarch you make him out to be than the Father. Throughout his life he ruthlessly increased his land holdings and he believed Ishmael would curry the favor he needed to get more after his other attempts failed."

"Hagar was nothing but a slave," the Rabbi scoffed.

"Hagar was the daughter of the King of Maghreb," Gabriel stated flatly. "The north of Africa. The Egyptian Pharaoh conquered his lands, killed her father and took her prisoner as one of his concubines. When Abraham went to the Egyptian court seeking favor from the Pharaoh, he told the Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister, not his wife. Sarah was very beautiful and became one of the Pharaoh's favorite concubines. The Pharaoh rewarded Abraham by gifting him Hagar to be his wife and made him a very wealthy man. When the Pharaoh found out the truth, he ordered them to leave immediately."

"Sarah was Abraham's half-sister," the Reverend chipped in. "Daughter of his father but not his mother. Inability to conceive is a common problem with inbred populations."

"But … Sarah wasn't really …" the Rabbi said.

"Yes, she was," Gabriel said. "Fathering offspring with ones' own siblings or children was a common practice back then to ensure the continuity of one's land holdings. Abraham did it with his half-sister. And so did his nephew Lot with his two daughters. That's why the Father finally had to spell out which marriages caused inbreeding in the Book of Leveticus."

"That's … gross," Audrey said. "Incest, I mean. And … he slept with his sister and then handed her over to the Pharaoh?"

"Egypt wasn't the _only _time Abraham gave away his sister to win the favor of a king," Gabriel stated. "He did it again when they moved into Philistine territory. He gave her to King Abilimech to win his favor, only the king caught on and sent her packing."

"More old testament bullshit about men enslaving women and treating them like shit," Audrey snapped, redirecting the conversation into the _real _reason they were here. She turned to the young Muslim, whose voice rang loud and clear with the undertone she had learned was the gift of the Mother. "Hi! I'm Audrey. Audrey Anderson. Prophet of the Savior. This, as you already figured out for yourself, is Gabriel. And you would be?"

"Muhammad Al-Mahdi," the young man said. "Student. University of Toronto. Mineral engineering major. Or … at least I _was._ The apocalypse changed all of that."

"So you became a Halal butcher," the Reverend asked.

"I was a Halal butcher _before _I ever came here," Muhammad said. "I am Palestinian Bedouin. Raising livestock and processing them is a way of life for my people. The Israeli government … they kicked us off our land and built settlements on them. We settle where they tell us and try to raise our livestock there, but they keep bulldozing our houses and telling us to move on. No place for us to go."

"Terrorists!" the Rabbi spat. "All of them!"

"Rabbi!" Audrey warned. "If you don't shut your mouth, I'm going to have Gabriel physically remove you!"

Fire rose in the young man's eyes, his hand clenching the long butchers' knife he held, and then visibly forced himself to relax. The young man had a temper. He also had experience in controlling that temper. But Audrey doubted the young man would be able to hold his temper for long if the Rabbi kept spouting hatred.

"If you don't like it," Muhammad said, gesturing towards the door with the hand not holding the butcher knife and speaking in clipped syllables, "you're welcome to leave."

"Rabbi?" Audrey glowered, gesturing with her hand to the door. "Could you please go help Gunn see to the horses?"

The Rabbi skulked out of there, obviously displeased not only at being asked to leave, but also by the unflattering portrait Gabriel had just painted of _both _Islam's and Judaism's most revered founding father. Abraham … a greedy, incestuous predator who wasn't above killing his own children. Someone just like the Father. No _wonder _the Father had favored him. Gabriel had been right. Even _she _could have spent her life without that much truth.

"You were _here _when the heavenly host decimated Toronto?" Audrey asked.

"No," Muhammad said. "I was at the dormitory at the University where I was staying. This place was owned by a good man. Farid Abdel-Al Massri. An Egyptian. He hired me from Palestine, got me a visa to work in his butcher shop, and encouraged me to get into the university to study minerals engineering so I could get a good job at the shale-oil fields. He was the closest thing to family I had in this country."

"Where is he now?" Audrey asked gently, knowing already from the haunted look in the young man's eyes what the answer would be.

"I came to make sure he was okay and found he had killed both of his sons," Muhammad said. "He then went out into the street and murdered dozens of people with his butcher knife. It was … winter. I put them on ice until spring and then buried them as soon as the ground thawed. His wife … survived. She asked me to stay."

"You're still in business?" Audrey inquired. In front of each meat case was a listing of items that would be accepted in trade for each cut of meat. From the number of tracks they had seen in the snow leading to this place, it appeared Muhammad still had a respectable client base.

"Toronto has a large Muslim community," Muhammad said with a shrug. "People need to eat. How else am I going to survive? The university is closed."

"You did not seem surprised to see me here," Gabriel said, asking the question which had them all nervous. "Have you seen others of my kind?"

"Some have taken up residence in the mosque," Muhammad said. "But they are accursed creatures. Marked by leprosy. And full of hatred. Some have wings as you do, while others appear as we do but are much taller and stronger than a man."

"Nephilim," Audrey said. "Mortal offspring of fallen angels escaped from Sheol. The full-blooded angels are immune to putrefaction, but their incarceration causes radiation sickness.

"They are worse than the Al-Quaida recruiters!" Muhammad exclaimed. "Just because I helped my brother-in-law smuggle a few guns across the Negev desert to defend ourselves from the Israeli settlers trying to steal our land doesn't mean I am a terrorist!"

"What are they recruiting for?" Audrey asked.

"There is talk of a holy war against a false prophet claiming to be the messiah," Muhammad said. "An anti-messiah. They have promised all who follow them the keys to the gates of heaven. They are riling us up to wage jihad."

"You sound skeptical," Audrey asked.

"My family got their house bulldozed and we got kicked off our land because of the people my brother-in-law associated with," Muhammad said. "Everybody says Hamas is bad, but Hamas is just Hamas. Political organization trying to give voice to ordinary people. Some good. Some bad. After a while, you learn to recognize which political activists are just angry about being stepped on all the time and which ones are bad. My brother-in-law associated with the bad ones. _He _escaped and went to Afghanistan to fight Americans. Me … I come here. Want to get away from the insanity."

"You bear the name of the twelfth imam," the Reverend said.

"So does half of the male population of any Islamic country," Muhammad said wryly, absent-mindedly wiping his knife on his apron. "Everybody is Mahdi this or Muhammad that. Now … Jibra'il … _that's _a name to have! You gave the Quran to Muhammad! _Please _tell me _that's _not a fairy tale as well?"

Audrey noted the slight change in Gabriel's demeanor at the obvious tone of respect in the young man's voice. He hid it quickly, but she knew him well enough to know he missed the respect his presence had once inspired in humans, a respect that had been sorely missing since he had been cast down to Earth.

"No," Gabriel said. "That was real. Or at least parts of it. But not every part of what you are calling the Quran now is the book I gave to Muhammad. Some have added or subtracted from the book over the years to meet their own political agendas. The radical spin some put on it has nothing to do with what the Father intended. The Quran was meant to be like Leveticus. The Father wanted your numbers to increase, so he gave you the book so you would stop losing so many to preventable illness or stupid wars.

"And now the book is used as _justification _for war," the Reverend added. "Given my studies of how the Prophet Muhammad lived and how much he adored his first wife and youngest daughter, I always felt the book was being deliberately misinterpreted."

"Um … excuse me?" Muhammad said. "I … um … I was kind of in the middle of doing something rather unpleasant when you all walked in. I have to … um … finish and take a shower before I am fit to be in the presence of an Angel of the Lord."

"Go ahead," Audrey said, gesturing to the back room. "We will wait."


	122. Chapter 121

Chapter 121

"I go alone," Gabriel stated bluntly, hoping that just for once in her life the Prophet would listen to him instead of arguing.

"We go together," Audrey said. "You do not speak with the Mother's voice. Nor do you bear the tattoos."

Gabriel hated it when she was right. She was _usually _right. Most of the time. Not when she was being pig-headed and choosing to cut off her nose to spite her face, which she'd really grown out of since he'd first met her more than two years ago. Muhammad wished for them to accompany him to the local mosque and meet his imam, a man he described as a voice of reason amongst a sea of mixed voices. Some angry and prone to jihad. Others simply peaceful Muslims seeking to live their lives in peace.

"If anything were to ever happen to you," Gabriel said, pulling her in close. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself. After what happened in the Appalachian Mountains…"

"I won't take any unnecessary risks," Audrey promised. "You can whisk me out of there at the first sign of trouble."

"I wish to go, too," Anu said in the ancient language. "Perhaps if they see I am healing?"

Muhammad came out of the back room of the butcher shop, showered and neatly dressed, carrying a green garbage bag filled with a squishy substance. Gabriel sniffed and knew what was in the bag.

"An offering for Allah," Muhammad said with a shrug. "I can only eat so much and money is useless. If a person has nothing to trade, I take a portion of the animal I slaughter and donate it to the mosque to redistribute to the poor.

"Thank you for offering accommodations for our horses and travel companions," Audrey said. "We were worried about where to spend the night."

"College dormitories," Muhammad said. "Not an ideal living situation, but for some reason my dormitory was spared destruction. Most of the students who survived went home to their families. All that remain behind is a few foreign students with no families and no way to get home. Like me." The university was only a dozen blocks or so from the butcher shop.

"You're sure it's better to ride there?" Gabriel asked. "The mosque is only two blocks from here."

"The Angel Jibra'il is supposed to ride in on his magnificent white winged horse, Haizum, and kick dust into the mouth of the golden calf."

"Haizum is black," Gabriel stated. "And he doesn't have wings."

"You're already bigger than all those winged half breeds," Muhammad said, "no disrespect, Anu. Animals are terrified of them because they smell like sulfur and rotted meat. I've had to ask them not to come to my shop because unnecessarily frightening animals before slaughter violates Halal. They request their food through the Imam. Those of us who are descended from nomadic tribes of herders know to trust when an animal fears a person."

"The rest of our mounts are … um … not very impressive," Audrey said as they walked out the door of the butcher shop and waited while Muhammad locked up for the night and changed the sign to say 'closed.' The Prophet patted her trusty Morgan and then swung herself up onto his back. A pretty little horse halfway in height between a horse and a pony. The only thing he had in common with a magnificent Spanish Norman such as Haizum was his black-brown coloring.

"And some are … well …" Muhammad said, pointing to Anu's swaybacked, elderly pony, the only mount they had been able to scrounge up in short notice in Rochester. "At least it doesn't shy away from him."

Anu was healing amazingly quickly given how badly deteriorated his flesh had been, the lingering scent of gangrene finally gone and his skin turning from a grayish-blue cast to a healthy pink, but many of the wounds on his body had transformed from open sores to hideous scabs that caused the poor boy to itch like crazy. Only the wounds on his face and arm, where the Prophet had touched him and shed her tears, had disappeared. The rest were healing normally now that the Father's edict of eternal damnation had been superseded by the will of the Savior and would leave scars.

"Gabriel?" Anu asked, looking to his mentor to translate. Gabriel translated, nodded and then said something back to the boy in the ancient language.

"Anu says he is happy to have a horse at all," Gabriel said. "Domesticated horses were only just being introduced from the steppes of Asia when Anu last walked the Earth. Horses are slower than flying, so the others never sought them out."

"Horse … I like," Anu said, grinning from ear to ear at his use of the English language to communicate.

Mohammad didn't have a horse of his own, but it was obvious the moment he swung up onto the saddle of the horse Mambo De Vivre had loaned him that the young man had been born into the saddle. Bedouin. Desert dwellers who bred goats, sheep, camels and prize Arabian horses to survive one of the harshest environments on the planet. Mohammad wanted to walk, but Gabriel felt they should be ready to escape if attacked by the Nephilim. He'd been feeling their presence and smelling the scent of brimstone from the first moment they had stepped foot on the shore.

"The mosque looks like it took heavy damage," Gabriel said as they approached the building, built directly on what had once been a main road. The minaret was snapped off at the top like a twig. "How damaged was the inside?"

"Pretty heavy," Mohammad said. "A lot of Muslims, and even some of their non-Muslim friends, took refuge here for a while after the apocalypse. They cleaned up the place as best they could. Was a shame. They just added on to this place before the apocalypse hit."

"Where should we leave the horses?" Audrey asked. Snow covered the concrete parking lot, although it was obvious that many pairs of feet had walked her since the last snow. The building still saw heavy use.

"Some Muslims ride in from surrounding towns when they can," Mohammad said. "They tie them to the bike racks over here. See?" Fresh horse droppings littered the ground, although there did not appear to be an accumulation. Somebody tended the grounds and disposed of them periodically.

Gabriel sniffed the air. It reeked of brimstone. This building was _crawling _with Nephilim. He could sense his Fallen brother's presence, as well. But no Grigori. Whatever Bezaliel was up to, he had deliberately omitted including the Grigori. That was a hopeful sign.

Muhammad rang a bell by the front door. It opened, a 50-something male wearing a taqiyah (hat) and robe answered the door.

"The Imam is expecting you," the door man said. "In the main hall." He did not seem surprised to see Gabriel there.

Muhammad led them down to a large room, plainly decorated except for the green of the pillars and the bright red carpet that bore dark brown spots that were probably blood. The mosque had not been spared by the heavenly host. Only one of the first buildings the survivors had deemed important enough to salvage.

"Salam wa aleikum," Muhammad said respectfully, gesticulating with his hand over his head and his heart in the universal Muslim greeting of 'peace be with you.' "Gabriel … this is the Imam Haddad. Imam Haddad … the Prophet of the Savior and her protector, Jibra'il."

"Salam wa aleikum," Gabriel repeated in perfect Arabic, repeating the physical gesture of greeting and respect.

"Wa aleikum ah salam," the Imam said, peace also be with you, returning the gesture.

"From what I hear," a voice came from the shadows. "You are no longer fit to carry the Word of God."

"That is true," Gabriel said evenly, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring as his feathers raised in their hackles. "Bezaliel. It's been a long time."

Bezaliel sauntered out of the alcove where he'd been waiting, flanked on either side by several of his first-generation offspring. The first-generation had inherited some of their sires' physical immunity from the vapors of Sheol, more so than second-generation Nephilim such as Anu, but they, too, smelled of putrefaction and brimstone, sores dotting their bodies and faces. Bezaliel, on the other hand, was still every bit as beautiful as the day the Father had shaped him from the soil of Eden for the Mother to breathe life into. Out of the shadows stepped more Nephilim, not just winged third-generation such as Anu, but wingless fourth-generation progeny.

"Oh my god," Audrey gasped in horror as she caught sight of the rotted, gangrenous flesh of the generation born too distant from their heavenly sires to inherit much immunity from the radioactive vapors of the Keep. "They look like they just stepped out of a George Romero movie. How could the Father do this to living creatures?"

"She's a perceptive one, isn't she?" Bezaliel said, a sneer marring his beautiful features. He gestured to the children who flanked him on both sides. "My children stormed heaven trying to get me back. Brave kids. Every one of them. They pounded down the pearly gates and nearly made it into the inner sanctum before _this _asshole stopped them!"

Bezaliel gestured to Gabriel.

"I couldn't let you destroy heaven," Gabriel said.

"_Destroy_ heaven?" Bezaliel said. "Is _that _what he told you they were trying to do? Destroy heaven and you destroy the universe! Without heaven, the higher orders who govern stellar movement would have no place to dwell and the universe would fall apart. My kids aren't stupid! They just wanted to grab the old bastard and throw him into Sheol where he belonged so he got a taste of his own medicine!"

"Because of what they did," Gabriel said, anger rising in his belly, "millions of pure souls who had earned access to the Garden were cast into the void and destroyed. They were innocent, too!"

"Boo-hoo-hoo!" Bezaliel said. "Humans! Too blind and stupid to ask who was pulling the strings!"

"We're not here to rehash old wounds," Audrey said, trying to defuse the situation. "The Father has wronged humanity the same as he wronged your species, but there is a larger threat."

"You mean Asmodeus and his goons?" Bezaliel said, jauntily flicking his wrist into the air. "We can handle him."

"You _can't _handle them," the Prophet said. "The Mother has given me the gift of prophecy. Once they are done destroying the Father, they will destroy humans, and then they will destroy _you_."

"We are allied," Bezaliel said. "We are not like Lucifer who is too fearful to take a side. We are as anxious to rid this world of the influence of the Father as _they _are. Including any human who stands in our way."

"They are too filled with hatred to be rational," Audrey said. "Their hate is all-consuming. As soon as they destroy one target, they will destroy the next. The Father damaged them so badly that they are no longer sane. They are not the playmates and sisters you remember them to be!"

"And in your gut you already know this," Gabriel added. "Or you would have told them you were coming here."

Some of the Nephilim murmured, some in agreement, other opposed to what the Prophet was saying. So? There was dissent in Bezaliel's ranks?

"Look what you did to my _wife!" _Bezaliel snarled. He gestured into the shadows. Two of his offspring stepped over and half-carried a mangled, diseased creature that made one of the rotting corpses in a zombie apocalypse movie seem normal in comparison. Bezaliel's full-human wife, who had inherited _no _natural immunity to the vapors of Sheol whatsoever.

"Ohmigod!" Audrey said, retching. She spotted a trash can over to one side of the sanctuary and ran to it, just barely making it before she heaved the contents of her stomach.

"Audrey?" Anu said, rushing after her. "Avia mea id augue."

Gabriel was glad his little Prophet couldn't understand the words Anu had just said. He didn't think hearing Anu's acceptance that that was just what grandmothers looked like was going to help matters any.

"You want me to not kill you where you stand?" Bezaliel snarled. "Then you tell that wife of yours to heal _my _wife the way she did that boy!"


	123. Chapter 122

Chapter 122

As soon as she was finished puking her guts out, Audrey accepted the hand Anu offered and braced herself to tend to Bezaliel's human wife.

"Let me help you," Muhammad said, taking her other arm. "I would like to introduce you to Doctor Shahid Khan. He has been trying to make Taram-uram as comfortable as possible given her condition."

"Salam wa aleikum," Doctor Khan said, gesturing to his forehead, heart and lips. "Peace be with you."

"Um … salam wa .. allek … um … aleki-yum …" Audrey stammered, trying to pronounce the unfamiliar words.

The Pakistani doctor gave her an indulgent smile at the butcher-job of pronunciation that didn't reach all the way to his eyes. His eyes were on his patient, not Audrey or social niceties.

"Taram-uram," Audrey said. "That's her name?"

"Please," a Nephilim female said who had accompanied Bezaliel's wife with her two sons. "You must help my mother heal." The young woman bore scars and the lingering odor of brimstone, but was recognizably the offspring of Bezaliel. She spoke perfect English. Gabriel said the first-generation had inherited their parents' gift of tongues and other abilities. Audrey was staring at what _their _child would look like if it was a girl.

"I'm not sure how I healed Anu," Audrey said. "It wasn't like I said any magic words over him and he healed. I just … cried. And then we found out later his wounds were beginning to close up and finally heal. It wasn't instantaneous."

"Might I examine the young man to see what you did to him?" Doctor Khan asked?

"He's second-generation," Audrey said. "You'll need to have one of the first-generation translate."

One of the male Nephilim translated back-and-forth between the ancient language and the Pakistani language, obviously the doctor's native tongue. The doctor examined the wounds which had healed completely, the ones Audrey had touched, and the other wound she had not touched, and then listened to his heart, lungs, and other parts of his body. In the meantime, Audrey looked to her patient.

"What's _your _name," Audrey asked the Nephilim female.

"Ninkarrak," the female said. "Taram-uram is my mother."

"Taram-uram," Audrey said, addressing the rotted chunk of meat sitting before her which was somehow still alive. "I'm not a healer like the Messiah. Sometimes … sometimes the Mother speaks through me and twice I've been able to help somebody who was supposed to die long enough that they could heal on their own. I'm not … I'm not a healer like the Savior."

Ninkarrak translated. Audrey noted her third-generation winged offspring and some fourth-generation offspring as well milled about. The female Nephilim appeared no older than Audrey, but her third-generation children appeared older than her, while many of the fourth-generation were elderly. She could see proof of whatever gene the angels possessed that made them immortal diluting with each successive generation of cross-breeding with humanity. And yet … Shemihaza had told Gabriel that Lucifer had deliberately ordered it be so. The angels had ordered their children to give up immortality in order to lead human lives. Why? Was the right to have free will that important to them?

"Mater," Ninkarrak said in response to a string of unintelligible words which tumbled out of the females mouth. "You don't mean that."

Taram-uram angrily chastised her daughter and then ordered her to translate whatever it was she had said. Ninkarrak capitulated.

"She said she is tired," Ninkarrak translated. "She wishes to die and pass into the void for uncreation so the Father can't punish her anymore, but my father won't let her go. The heavenly Father won't let her go. Her body is too badly damaged to heal and even the promise of Eden is not enough to make her stay."

"The radiation damage isn't just on the surface," Doctor Khan said. "Her internal organs are in this condition too. The only reason she is still alive is because Allah did something so that her spirit could not leave this rotted shell."

"What about Anu?" Audrey said. "Why did _he _heal?"

"I cannot pretend to know the mind of the Messiah," Doctor Khan said. "But it appears the areas Anu said you touched when you wept healed very quickly, while the rest are healing at a faster-than-normal pace but still within the range of how a human might normally heal. Based on his rate of healing and general condition _now_, I can estimate his internal organs suffered _some _damage in Sheol, but not so badly they were incapable of functioning once the Savior removed whatever curse the Father put in place to keep his spirit in limbo. Based on my observations, I can surmise that Anu's general state of health was similar to _all _the third-generation offspring of the Fallen before she removed the curse."

"What are you saying?" Ninkarrak asked.

"I'm saying that if the Prophet does whatever she did to heal Anu to one of the fourth-generation Nephilim or your mother," Doctor Khan said. "It will kill them. Their bodies will not be strong enough to contain this life spark you told me about until they can heal themselves. They risk passing into this void you speak of, not heaven or hell."

Ninkarrak began to weep. Her brothers on either side of their mother also began to weep. Behind them, Gabriel and Beleziel's voices rose in anger as they argued about some stupid incident in the past which none of them had any power to change. Anger rose in her belly, tapping into the bottomless reservoir of anger of the Mother.

"Hey … assholes," Audrey snapped from across the room. "Both of you! I'm trying to concentrate here … so shut the fuck up and cut him a little slack!"

Audrey glanced back and noticed her 'patient' and the others looked at her in fear. Oh … that. She needed to keep her anger under control.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "It pisses me off when they argue about things that can't be changed."

Ninkarrak translated to her mother, who smiled. At least Audrey _thought _it was a smile. It was hard to tell, so decomposed was the flesh around her mouth.

"When Michael healed me," Audrey said, "he said that if Gabriel hadn't shielded me with his wings when we catapulted through the windshield, my body would have been too broken for him to put my soul back. I'm afraid that I agree with Doctor Khan's assessment of your mother. There appear to be limitations on how much a mortal, or even an immortal representative, can heal a damaged vessel. The _Father _can just shape an entirely new vessel for an existing soul, but the rest of us have limits. I have heard of the Savior and his disciples being able to heal others as Michael healed me and I healed Anu, but I don't know if the Savior inherited his sires' ability to shape matter from scratch. I won't lie to your mother and give her false hope."

Ninkarrak conversed with her mother for a few minutes, explaining the risks. Taram-uram finally reached out and touched Audrey on the arm and said something to her, her eyes meeting hers. It was all Audrey could do not to pull her arm back in revulsion as Ninkarrak translated.

"My mother says unending death in the void without hope of Eden or punishment of Sheol would be preferable to being forced to endure life in her current limbo," Ninkarrak sobbed. "But she fears what will happen if she dies. Our sire is filled with hatred, and so are many of my brothers and sisters. Before our sire casts himself into the void to end his pain, he will see to it that you and all of your species are killed along with the heavenly Father. You are _her _species too. She does not wish for that to happen."

Audrey nodded. The thread of her vision when she had followed the Grigori past the end of the universe showed the same thing. They would destroy until, with no further avenue available to aim their grief and rage, they would finally destroy themselves.

"What does she want me to do?" Audrey asked, speaking to Ninkarrak who could translate, but looking Taram-uram in her eyes. The only part of her the Father had been unable to defile. She waited while Ninkarrak translated back and forth.

"Mother asks for you to heal _me,"_ Ninkarrak said. "I was trained to give medical relief by the shaman of the village we were born in before the Father condemned us to Sheol. She hopes I will be able to tend to the others in turn. She said if you are unable to do that for me because I carry too much heavenly blood, then you should try to heal one of her grandchildren who have a chance of surviving the lifting of the curse. We will find a volunteer."

"I'm not sure I know how," Audrey said. "Anu was … an accident. No … that's not right. I _wished _for him to heal. But _he _also earnestly believed so strongly that the Savior _would _heal him that he defied his parents and snuck into our bower to see us. It was a two-way street."

Ninkarrak translated back and forth to her mother.

"Mother says that once upon a time she might have had such hope," Ninkarrak translated. "But 4,500 years in Sheol have beaten her down so badly that she doesn't know if she _has _an ounce of hope in her anymore. It is much the same with the rest of us. We _want _to believe in something. Our sire raised us to _honor _the heavenly Father and earnestly believe he would watch over us. He believed in the Father so strongly that he went willingly to the Keep, believing the Father would honor his word that he would spare us destruction as he had destroyed the Grigori."

"Why did you storm heaven to get him back?" Audrey asked, and then hastily added. "Not that I'm judging! I can't say given the same circumstances that _I _wouldn't have stormed heaven."

"The Father is sneaky," Ninkarrak said with scorn. "He cheats! He didn't send us right away to Sheol, but he altered the climate and diverted the rains for many years on end so that the Persian Sea where we lived gradually rose up and devoured our land. We had no choice but to spread out into neighboring lands, but there were already people living in those lands. We tried to trade fairly with them, but the Father sent the heavenly host to whisper to their leaders to destroy us, so we had no choice but to battle them. We had no place else to go!"

"Enoch," Audrey said. "Gabriel said the prophet had a political agenda against your kind."

"He was a Prophet of the Father," Ninkarrak said. "Like you are for the Savior and the Mother. We sent representatives to him, pleading with him to help us find a way to work it out. He seemed sympathetic to our plight, but then he came back and informed us the Father had said he would destroy all of us, our children, our grandchildren, until not one of our offspring was left alive."

"So Enoch himself wrote in his religious texts," Audrey said. She had asked the Mormons to help her dig up and read the Book of the Watchers while holed up in Salt Lake City. "He even used the same word … pleaded. You pleaded with him to intervene. So what happened after that?"

"We realized the Father had broken his covenant with us," Ninkarrak said. "We didn't understand then that there was also a Mother who was preventing him from just doing what he wanted. Only that we were slowly being destroyed. Our sire's sacrificed themselves for nothing!"

"So you decided to get back your sires?" Audrey guessed.

"Yes," Ninkarrak said, contempt lacing her voice. "The Father broke his covenant. He did it in slow motion and disguised what he was doing to hide it from the Mother, but he cheated. We decided enough was enough."

"If it's any consolation," Audrey said. "Knowing what I know now, I must say I _admire _what you did."

"We can hear your episodes of holy blasphemy when you rage against the Father," Ninkarrak said, a smile suddenly twitching up one corner of her mouth before disappearing. "I don't know by what agreement the Mother got the Father to allow you to dish out such abuse and enable all of us to hear it, but we have enjoyed listening to somebody finally tell him the words we wished _we _had said to him."

"So what are we going to do about your mother?" Audrey asked. "I refuse to do something that I know will probably kill her. As much as I would like to heal _you _first, I'm not sure your skepticism of the Savior's motives will allow me to do it. I have a feeling your sire is only going to allow me one chance to do this."

"You are correct in your appraisal of him," Ninkarrak said. "He loves my mother, but his hatred is so palpable it is like a serpent always forever gnawing at our guts. It consumes him. Many of my brothers and sisters share his hatred. They sought out the mosque in this city because there are many disaffected humans here who can be easily manipulated to serve the Grigori. I am amazed my sire has restrained himself so far. If my mother dies, he will destroy your world and everyone in it."

"I can't heal everyone," Audrey said, feeling suddenly small and helpless. "I'm not sure I can heal anyone at all. But your condition brings me sorrow. Perhaps if we attempt baptism on one who still has hope, over time they can inspire enough hope within your own family that eventually they can heal as well? Hope and faith seem to be a bigger part of the equation. I'm just the messenger."

Audrey glanced over to see that Anu was talking animatedly to a Nephilim boy of about the same age. The young. It was always easier to reach the young, although there was nothing young about the Nephilim who had been incarcerated in Sheol as children. They were thousands of years old. Nearly their entire existence had been one of suffering for something that wasn't even their sin.

"Anu?" Audrey asked. "Is that the friend you flew off to see yesterday?"

"See … friend … yes," Anu said, filling in the blanks and guessing at what portion of her question he couldn't directly understand. "Ningizzada. Want … " Anu couldn't think of the word, so he pointed to his cheek and arm, and then the still-healing wounds upon other portions of his body.

Ningizzadas' eyes were clouded with skepticism at Anu's claims, but beneath that, Audrey could also see the faint glimmer of hope. The boy _wanted _to believe the Savior could heal him. He just hadn't been as sheltered from ugly reality as much as Shemihaza's son had been able to shield _his_ children. Bezaliel's hatred polluted the boys hope. Would it work?

"Ningizzada is my son," Ninkarrak said softly. "His sire was killed by one of the tribes the Father sent to kill us long before he sent the great flood. He dwells now in Sheol, but he was already dead when he was interred there. He had no shell to bring back to this realm when the Grigori sprang us. He would have been a disembodied spirit who either had to cling to me as our aunts cling to their Grigori hosts, or pass into the void. He didn't wish for me to go insane, so he chose to stay in Sheol. I don't know if Ningizzada will be _able _to have faith in this Savior of yours."

"I can make no guarantees," Audrey said. "But I will try. Perhaps if you speak to him and Anu together, help them understand what it is we need them to do, that will increase our chances of success?"

"Yes," Ninkarrak said. "I will speak to them both."

"And I want to summons the Reverend," Audrey said. "And Mambo de Vivre. Perhaps we can work together to do this?"

Ninkarrak went to fetch her sire. As degraded as her physical condition was, it was obvious that it was Tarum-arum, not Belaziel, who called the shots with their brood. After Belaziel had sacrificed himself to appease the Father's anger, it had been Tarum-arum and the other wives who had been forced to carry on and raise their children. Just as _she _would someday be forced to carry on without Gabriel.

Tarum-arum was right … as much as she longed for the relief of everlasting death and uncreation in the void … her diseased, rotting shell was the only thing preventing her progeny from indulging their impulse to destroy the Earth.


	124. Chapter 123

Chapter 123

"You want me to not kill you where you stand?" Bezaliel snarled. "Then you tell that wife of yours to heal _my _wife the way she did that boy!"

"She doesn't know how she did it," Gabriel said. "She just … did. She thinks it wasn't her. Anu came to her asking if the Savior could heal him. Not her. She baptized him with her tears, but only the Savior could have removed the sentence of the Father of eternity in Sheol."

"We aren't part of their damned agreement!" Bezaliel snarled. "We're dogs, remember? Not even sentient creatures. Created to serve _him!"_

"That's not true," Gabriel said. "I remember. I remember things from the time before. The Mother and the Father created us together because the Mother needed children to love. We were created to love them. Not wage war on their behalf."

"Well I remember too," Bezaliel said. "My only memory of you from before is a fat little kiss-ass who used to follow the Father around like a stupid puppy and sit at his feet all day long waiting to be patted."

"And I remember _you _teasing me as such," Gabriel said quietly. "But I also remember you dancing in a circle around the Mother and falling to the ground in laughter while she tugged you all in close and tickled you until you shrieked peals of laughter. I remember you playing chess with Sonneillon and tromping through the underbrush with him. I remember our sisters."

"I have few memories of the time before," Bezaliel said, his anger suddenly evaporating. "Only fragments. And what has been told to me by the Grigori."

"Lucifer created them to be our playmates and to protect the Mother," Gabriel said. "Like dogs. But he made them smart. He made them enough like us that when our sisters grew old enough to desire mates and the Father refused to create them for them, they fell in love with the Grigori_._ But Lucifer didn't design them to carry two souls in one mortal shell. I don't remember how _that _happened. Only that the Father and the Mother both had something to do with it and then wiped it from our memories."

Gabriel glanced out of the corner of his eye. He noted that two of Bezaliel's offspring had carried their mother over to the Prophet and gently seated her down on the ground in front of her on an Islamic prayer carpet. Audrey was doing her best to pretend she wasn't sickened by what she saw and see if she could heal the poor woman. If she was to have any hope at all of tapping whatever reservoir of healing she possessed, it was up to Gabriel to ensure she wasn't distracted.

"Sonneillon said the Father just dissolved our sisters' mortal shells in a fit of anger," Bezaliel said. "Just like that. Poof. Gone. Just like any other creation he had ever created which displeased him."

"I … " Gabriel said. Defending the Father he was no longer sure of would do none of them any good. "My memories were stolen from me. There are aspects of the Father's behavior I've been forced to re-evaluate lately that I must admit are less than admirable."

"Is that your way of saying you _doubt_ him?" Bezaliel snarled.

"Hey … assholes," Audrey snapped from across the room. "Both of you! I'm trying to concentrate here … so shut the fuck up and cut him a little slack!"

Gabriel felt that subtle shudder in the room that indicated his wife was tapping more than just her own anger. He glanced at Bezaliel, wondering if the others felt it too. The Mother's anger. Riling his wife up so she tapped that endless reservoir of the Mother's rage was not a wise thing to do.

"She _is _mouthy, isn't she?" Bezaliel said, suddenly changing the subject. "You _do _realize that the heavens ring with her blasphemy when she cusses the old fool out? Every Fallen and second-generation Nephilim can hear her when she rages."

Aha! Bezaliel _had _felt it. Gabriel wondered how much the Fallen remembered about their Mother … and her destructive side.

"I wasn't aware of that," Gabriel said, following his brothers' lead in their effort to turn things down a notch or two. "Only that it echoes so loudly in the garden that it makes the gates ring. She wasn't pleased about getting saddled with me after the Father changed his mind, and even _less _pleased with the condition he left me in."

"She sure looks plenty pleased now," Bezaliel chuckled, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. "And carrying your child. I can smell the pregnancy hormones. Twenty-three offspring my wife bore me before the Father took me away from her!"

"Tell me what happened with our sisters?" Gabriel asked. "Please. My memories of them are fragmented."

"I have few memories of them at all," Bezaliel said, his voice laced with frustration as he twitched his wings. "I only know what the Grigori told me."

"It's more than what the Father or the Mother told me," Gabriel said. "Please. Continue."

"They said Sheol didn't exist back then," Bezaliel continued. "You lived. Then you died and passed into the void for uncreation. Our sisters' souls were gone before the Mother even knew what had happened. She didn't act as a gatekeeper back then to the void. She lived in the garden with _us_."

"So what happened?" Gabriel said. "How did the Grigori end up with two souls?"

"They said the Mother went bezerk with rage when she realized what he had done," Bezaliel said. "She tore apart heaven and nearly destroyed it. The Grigori seemed a bit dodgy on the details there. Not sure if they're lying, or if they just doesn't know all the details. But the crux of the matter is that the Mother got pissed off and started destroying the universe they had created together."

"She has alluded to thus herself," Gabriel said. "She told me she stays away because when she gets angry, she destroys."

"Then that's confirmation of that portion of their story that we haven't had before," Bezaliel said. "I can't remember her. I can't remember her at all."

"I only remember her because my wife carries her word into this world and it has forced some memories to the surface," Gabriel said. "I am an … afterthought. The only reason I am still alive and not in the Keep is because my wife refused to accept the Father's sacrifice of me."

"The Father got pissed off and lobbed an asteroid at Earth to wipe out the Grigori and their offspring to get back at _her,_" Bezaliel continued. "Only the Grigori and their half-angel offspring were just as capable of flitting between the dimensions as full-blooded angels, so they didn't die."

"There were rumors about the dinosaur killer really being sent to eliminate the Grigori's home," Gabriel said. "I wasn't aware the offspring were invulnerable, too, but it makes sense. Both of our species were created from the soil of Eden and breathed into life by the Mother. Please continue."

"The Grigori and their offspring stormed the gates of heaven and nearly destroyed the garden," Bezaliel said. "And us along with it. So the Father stuck weapons in our hands and ordered us to defend heaven. But we were no match for the Grigori. They started to kill _us._"

"I have memories of this," Gabriel said. "It's part of the time _after _we were made self-aware, but I have huge gaps in my memory. As though somebody went through them and cherry-picked out the damaging ones so we'd only remember we were supposed to hate the Grigori."

"This pissed off the Mother even more," Bezaliel said. "It was us, or the Grigori. So she destroyed the Grigori. It appears that while the Father can only dissipate that which he created directly, the Mother can dissipate anything she puts her mind to simply by thinking about it. The Grigori have no idea what happened next."

"The Mother dove into the void to retrieve the souls of her daughters like she did when she retrieved the soul of my wife," Gabriel guessed. "Only they were broken up and crushed from being in the void?"

"The Father refused to shape them new shells," Bezaliel said.

"Which is well within his power," Gabriel said. "He did it for Michael after I killed him when he was in mortal form."

"So that rumor is _true?"_ Bezaliel said. "Man … that's pretty cold."

"Agreed," Gabriel said, drooping his wings in shame. "Michael has forgiven me, but I have not forgiven myself for being so blind."

Silence passed between the brothers.

"If he simply dissolved our sisters," Gabriel said, "why didn't he do the same to the Grigori?"

"It appears the Father was unable to destroy the Grigori shells because Lucifer had made them, not the Father," Bezaliel said. "It makes sense. Whenever he sent us to punish or destroy one of his creations that had been in place for a few generations, he always sends a natural disaster or instigates one army to kill another. Not dissipate them. It appears his ability to dissolve matter is limited to what he shapes' with his own hands. Anything else he has to destroy using physical means."

"The Prophet said she has seen that all matter in the universe flows through the Mother from the void," Gabriel said. "She makes the matter available to the Father to shape, but has limited ability to shape matter on her own. Only to make it available and breathe the life spark into it once someone else has shaped it. She has the power of life and death, but not creation."

"Which would explain why she stuck our sisters' souls into the bodies of their Grigori husbands," Bezaliel said. "They were shaped by Lucifer from the soil of Eden, not the Father. But their time in the void together drove both souls insane."

"That would drive _me _insane," Gabriel said. "Don't get me wrong … I adore my wife … but if she was mad at the world all the time _and _inside my head, I think I'd be a little nuts, too."

"That's what we figure," Bezaliel said. Silence stretched between them.

"So the Grigori kept trying to kill us," Gabriel said. "I remember that. They were insane and wanted revenge for what was done to them. But we couldn't defeat them and the Mother refused to murder the shells carrying her own children, so finally the Father created the Keep to keep the Grigori husbands contained."

"I always wondered why the Father kept them in existence," Bezaliel said. "But I didn't remember. In that, I guess, I'm no better than you. How can you be made to forget you once had sisters? And a Mother?"

"I ask myself the same question every day," Gabriel said. "I feel bad for what happened to our sisters and the Grigori, but it was not our doing. Belzaliel … following them is a bad idea. They're not rational."

"I trust them more than I trust _you_!" Bezaliel snapped. "You threw my children into Sheol. _They _helped us escape from the Keep. And then they kept their word when they helped us go back and help our _children _escape."

"When I pass from this realm," Gabriel said softly, carefully moderating his voice so that he conveyed no sign of anger, "I'm headed to the Keep same as you were. It is what I deserve for all the harm I have wrought."

"Yes," Bezaliel snapped. "It is!"

Bezaliel clenched his fists, trying to keep his anger in check as he glowered at Gabriel. The only reason they were communicating, was because Bezaliel hoped the Prophet could help his poor, tortured wife and children. Gabriel would have done the same thing for _his _wife and children, Father-be-damned. If Audrey couldn't pull a rabbit out of a hat, Gabriel could tell that this conversation had gotten him nothing but knowledge.

"I don't blame you for not trusting me," Gabriel said, trying to buy the Prophet time to figure out what to do. "I wouldn'ttrust me. But the Prophet is trustworthy. The Savior is trustworthy."

"Then he can heal my wife!" Bezaliel snarled. "If he wants me to follow him, he will undo the damage the Father has done and make us whole!"

"I don't think he can extend his protection to _us," _Gabriel said. "The ones the Father shaped himself. My understanding of the agreement between the Mother and the Father is that the Savior is only to be given dominion over this Earth and all humans."

"Then I'm wasting my time!" Bezaliel snarled.

"How many grandchildren and great-grandchildren have you sired?" Gabriel asked, gesturing around the room to the hundreds of Nephilim who crowded around the room, as well as he could sense in the city. All Bezaliel's progeny. "I will not lie to you and promise something I do not absolutely know I can deliver. I don't know if he can heal you or your direct offspring. They were born with our abilities, so maybe, maybe not. But we have proof his grace can extend to include three-quarter humans such as Anu."

"Shemihaza has quietly been sending news of his grandson to the other Fallen," Bezaliel said. "The Grigori have marked him for death."

"Because they don't wish for you to know you have another option," Gabriel said. "I don't know whether he can wrest dominion from the Father over angels or half-angels who choose to follow him, because I have not seen evidence of this with my own eyes. But I can promise you that if you follow him and he is able to prevail, he will be able to protect your third-generation progeny and beyond from the Father."

"My grandchildren," Bezaliel said thoughtfully. He looked around at his fine sons standing at his back, his daughters off to the side. He had sired twenty-three total. And then he looked at the pathetic masses of grandchildren in a condition similar to Anu and great-grandchildren in a condition that was horrific. And his wife … who had inherited _no _immunity whatsoever from him.

"Father," one of the sons murmured. "Our mother. Our children. Even if he can't heal _us, _if he can offer proof…"

Bezaliel glanced at the other half-blood offspring. One by one, they nodded.

Because of the actions of the Father, the Savior wasn't going to get the benefit of simply telling his followers to have faith. If Audrey was going to help him, the Savior was going to have to reach _through _her and perform.

The Savior hadn't performed his first 'real' miracle until he'd become school-aged. His first few uses of power before then had been malevolent in nature, striking back at a friend who had thrown a rock at him and inadvertently turning him into a corpse, not healing him. The Savior had reversed his mistakes, undoing the harm he had caused in anger, but other than shaping playmates from the clay and breathing life into them as Gabriel had done, the Savior hadn't started performing _true _miracles until he was a few years older than he was now.*

The Fallen were asking an awful lot of a deity who was currently residing on the other side of the country whose consciousness was currently crammed into the limiting confines of a mortal two-year-old shell…

X X X X X X X X

*Miracles and malevolent-acts of young Jesus cited from the 'Infancy Gospel of Thomas'


	125. Chapter 124

Chapter 124

"Bezaliel," Audrey said, hoping to reason with the visibly hostile Fallen standing before her. "I'm going to see if I can repeat what I did to heal Anu for your grandson. But I'm going to be honest with you. I haven't lay eyes on the Savior since the day I brought him into this world. Our only direct contact through him has been through Michael. All I have is these tattoos … and this compass rose … and the visions granted by the Mother which led me to Mohammad and the other disciples."

"I can hear the Mother speak through your voice," Bezaliel said coldly. "Especially when you are angry. But I have no memory of her. If she _really _cared about us, she would have stopped the Father from throwing our offspring into Sheol."

"My ability to communicate with the Mother is imperfect," Audrey said. "I cannot give you a _reason _why she did not intervene. I am only human."

"You damned well _better _perform," Bezaliel snarled.

"Bezaliel!" Taram-uram snapped. The Sheol-diseased woman let loose a string of words that could only be construed as a wife reading her husband the riot act. Audrey glanced over to Gabriel and noticed him quickly hide his bemused expression beneath his favorite unreadable one.

"Father?" Ninkarrak added, one eyebrow raised, her voice low and strained. It was not a question. It was a warning. Her first test subject was going to be her son and, sire or no sire, she wasn't going to allow Bezaliel to mess things up.

Behind her, the two brothers who had helped her carry their mother over and overheard their conversation earlier stepped up next to their sister, showing their solidarity. _They _had offspring of their own they hoped could be healed. For the moment, anyways, hope trumped hatred.

"We will be grateful for all efforts you expend on Ningizzada's behalf," Bezaliel said, practically through clenched teeth. "No matter what the outcome, you have my word that you and your party will be granted safe passage out of this city."

Tarum-arum's assessment of her husband destroying the Earth should she die appeared to be an accurate one. The Fallen leader 'played nicely' with Gabriel for his wife and offspring's sake, a viscous dog reduced to crawling upon his belly, begging for a bone to feed his pups. If this didn't work, Audrey knew, they wouldn't ever get a second chance. Bezaliel, and the thousands of offspring who followed him, would continue recruiting disaffected humans to follow the Grigori. Even if she _was _able to heal the boy, there was no guarantee all of Bezaliel's family would back down. There was an awful lot riding on Audrey recreating a miracle she had only achieved once, totally by accident.

"Ningizzada," Tarum-arum called. She conversed with the boy for several moments, the boy reverently listening to her and nodding without interrupting.

"She urges him to accept service to the Savior in his heart," Gabriel translated, standing at her back as always.

As matriarch of the family who had _stayed _matriarch long after her husband had been taken from her, and then _stayed _matriarch even in Sheol when the Father had kept the Fallen separate from their families in the Keep, Audrey was realizing Tarum-arum carried great weight amongst her progeny. At last, she kissed the boy on the forehead. Audrey was amazed none of her progeny was repulsed enough by her sorry state to flinch. It had obviously taken a long time for her to deteriorate this far. Only Bezaliel appeared to be repulsed. After 4,500 years of being locked in the Keep, he had emerged to find his once-beautiful wife twisted and deformed.

It was a thread Audrey had never thought to follow in her visions. The matriarchs. Could they be the key? _A_ key? A feather on the scale, at least? At this point she was running out of threads and desperate enough to try _anything._

"We're ready," the Reverend said. "Mambo? Imam?"

The Reverend was wearing Lena's purple mohair scarf with the crucifix embroidered onto it and his black ministers outfit with the white collar, as well as a colorful silk robe the imam had loaned him and a beautifully decorated taqiyah hat. The Imam was similarly dressed in a robe and taqiyah. Mambo was wearing the white skirt, flowing white blouse, and white turban she always wore for vodoun ceremonies. All three deities had representatives presiding here today. The Reverend for the Savior. Mambo for the Mother. And the Imam for the Father.

All of the other Nephilim had been sent out of the building. It was hard enough concentrating without hundreds of hostile disbelievers making her jumpy. Mohammad had been asked to stay. For some reason, Audrey had the gut instinct he would be needed, if for no reason other than to interact with the Imam.

Mambo began to chant first in Hatian Creole, carefully kneeling upon the floor and carefully pinching cornmeal onto the rug to create the elaborate vodoun veve which would summons the loas of the Mother. Papa Legba and Simbi. Candles had been lit in each direction and veve already created representing the loas/saints which protected each direction. Including Michael.

"Papa Legba," Mambo chanted. "Ouvrie barrie pou nous passer." Papa Legba, open up the door and let us pass.

The Imam appeared to be visibly uncomfortable with the hybrid ceremony going on in his mosque, but these were strange times and nobody alive today _really _believed what was written in the old religious texts anymore about the Father's benevolence. The Father had lost, if not the respect, then at least the trust of his most devout followers, ones too pure for the heavenly host to possess despite carrying no voice of the Mother. Because this was the Imam's house of worship, they had all undergone the Islamic purity rituals requested by the Imam before beginning the ceremony.

All three modern versions of the religions believed allowing an innocent child to putrefy because of the sins of the mother and the grandfather was vehemently wrong. _That _was the grounds they had agreed to come together to petition the Father to release the child unto the Savior.

"Imam?" Audrey asked. They had agreed the representative of the Mother would go first, as the Mother was the one who appeared to be pulling the strings which had brought them all together, and then the Father, as he was the one holding the Nephilim children hostage, and then the Savior, as he was the one they were hoping would accept responsibility for another child. Or at least that was what they had told the Imam. The real reason was Audrey hoped the Mother would strong-arm the Father into releasing the boy from condemnation so he could heal, or at least put him on the spot.

"Allahu akbar," the Imam called the hauntingly beautiful Islamic call to prayer invoking the name of Allah, or God. "Ash-had al-la ilaha illa llah." The Imam continued the invocation until it was finished.

"Reverend?" Audrey asked.

The Reverend began the altered ceremony of baptism, the ritual the Father's own book said was the proper procedure to give stewardship of one's soul over to safekeeping by the Savior. It supposedly meant the chance to have an afterlife, not so much that anybody expected the Savior to just materialize down in their midst and cure all ills, but the Nephilim more than anybody knew what the consequences were of being barred from Eden. Barred from heaven. Barred from hell. Barred, even, from entering the void to be uncreated, nothing at all. Just … limbo. And suffering. At this point, _anything _was better than their current state of being.

"What do you both ask of the Church of the Reborn Savior?" the Reverend asked. Ninkarrak translated.

"Fides," Ningizzada said, his head bowed. Faith.

"What does what does faith offer you?" the Reverend asked. Again, Ninkarrak translated.

"Vitam aeternum," Ningizzada said. Life everlasting.

"If then you desire to enter into life, keep the commandments 'thou shalt love the Savior with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and thy whole mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,'" the Reverend said, making the sign of the cross three times on the boys' forehead. "Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito."

The Reverend hesitated. "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

"Amen," they all said together. Even the Nephilim.

They just stood there, waiting. Nothing happened.

"Please, Father," Belaziel said, tears flowing down his cheeks. "It was _my _disobedience which brought this down upon my wife and children. I tell you now what I told you then. I don't care what you do to me, but you must spare them."

Gabriel stepped up to his brother and put a hand upon his shoulder. Audrey now understood why Gabriel had held back so long from acting upon his feelings for her. She glanced at Tarum-arum, her still-moving, rotten flesh. Zombie. The living dead. Prevented from dying to punish her husband.

Nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

"Mother?" Audrey asked. "Are you going to allow this to just happen? Again?"

Nothing.

"Mother?" Audrey asked, this time allowing herself to dip into the reservoir of anger she often felt when she grew angry. The reservoir of unresolved rage over the fate of her children Audrey sometimes tapped into when she channeled holy blasphemy. The reservoir was closed to her. The Mother chose now, of all times, to _not _speak through her.

She felt the familiar wellspring suddenly rise up within her body. She opened her mouth, hoping, praying, the Mother would gift the people assembled here now enlightenment. Hope. Her lungs filled with air of their own volition as she waited for the mother's words.

"_Grigori!" _the Mother screamed through her vessel.

The sound of glass breaking as the Grigori smashed through the unboarded upper windows of the mosque shocked them all momentarily. Gabriel was the first to act, diving for the front door where he had left his mace, with Muhammad right behind him. The young butcher pulled two long butcher knives out of sheathes that kept the knives hidden beneath his coat.

Audrey screamed.

Bezaliel, his sons and his daughter quickly moved into position to protect their mother and grandson, as well as the Imam.

"I thought it was forbidden to carry weapons into a mosque," the Reverend asked, moving to stand with Muhammad at his back.

"The Imam granted me a special dispensation from Allah just for tonight," Muhammad said. "He's devout. Not stupid. He overheard some of the fourth-generation Nephilim speaking to some of the more radical members of our mosque about Bezaliel getting soft. He feared trouble."

More than two dozen Grigori landed and circled where they stood, snarling in rage. This was the first time Audrey had seen a _live _Grigori that was still conscious. Her heart filled with terror. Terror of her own life. Terror for _his _life. Was now the moment she would lose him?

"Get behind my brother with the others," Gabriel said. "He will protect you."

"Bullshit," Audrey said, pulling Gabriel's unearthly knife. "I'm not leaving you."

"You betray us, Bezaliel," one the Grigori snarled, pacing back and forth on four legs like a pacing tiger, his tail twitching in rage. "Consorting with this … filth."

Grigori. More like tiger-sized miniature dragons than dinosaurs, Audrey realized as she saw the way the Grigori moved in real life. Not lizard-like at all. Muscles rippled beneath their skin, like the muscles of a racehorse. Beautifully featured snouts. Strong jaws. Long, graceful necks leading to powerful chests. Leathery wings. Strong haunches. Perfect, graceful balance. Pack hunters. Intelligent as hell. Beautiful … and deadly. Audrey realized the Mother had stayed with her, enabling her to see the creatures through the Mother's eyes. The unbiased eyes that had been passed along to the daughters who had fallen in love with these creatures.

"I only wish to see my progeny heal," Bezaliel said. "I have done nothing to betray you_,_ Sonneillon. We are still allied against the capriciousness of the Father."

"Why should _you _be allowed grace when we shall not?" the lead Grigori, who Audrey assumed was Sonneillon, asked.

"The Savior offers grace to all who come to him with pure intent in their heart," Audrey said. "We are not enemies."

"Another Prophet," Sonneillon sneered. "Another puppet on a string dancing in the wind while two deities too stupid to get along put their children in the middle of their marital pissing contest."

"I don't disagree with you on that appraisal," Audrey said.

Sonneillon jerked his head and Audrey could almost see the second soul take control.

"Why do you rally forces against us, Prophet," the Grigori leaders second soul asked.

"I have foreseen that you intend to destroy heaven and kill the Father," Audrey said.

"What does it matter to you?" the Grigori second soul asked.

"Personally," Audrey said, "I wouldn't give a shit. Except that destroying heaven will destroy Earth as well. _That _I _do_ give a shit about."

"Then we shall smite you," the second soul said through the Grigori.

"Smite," Audrey laughed. "Your English is a little archaic, don't you think? Do you even have a name, sister-in-law."

"I am Isda," the second-soul said. "Your destroyer."

"Then you destroy yourself," Audrey said. "I have already followed the thread of my death. It leads to the destruction of all-that-is. Including _you._ When you have nothing left to destroy, you shall crawl to the Mother on your bellies and plead with her to give you access to the void so you can be uncreated as one soul."

The Grigori shuddered, and then began to argue with itself.

"She knows," the second-soul said.

"I won't let you go," the first soul said. "I don't want to stay without you. We will go together."

"We cannot go until we retrieve the souls of our children from the Father," the second-soul said. "And then we will go."

"But not before we have wreaked vengeance for what was done," the first-soul said.

All around her, Audrey heard Gabriel grunt and then cry out in pain as a Grigori broke through his defenses and landed a good claw-mark onto his flesh. Out of nowhere, Muhammad did some sort of airborne-windmill-thingy-with-knives that made her do a double-take. What the hell had _that _been? The Grigori the maneuver had been aimed at yowled in pain as the butcher sliced right through its skin and expertly cleaved flesh from bone. Whatever the move was, Gabriel had done it in last night's vision. Audrey made a mental note amongst the chaos to make sure Muhammad taught it to all of them.

"If you go," Audrey said, suddenly understanding what it was the Mother had been trying to ask her to do all along without tipping off the Father she wished it done. "The Mother will be too grief-stricken to maintain this universe any longer. She will destroy it. That would be bad. I rather like living."

"We won't leave without the souls of our children," the Grigori second-soul said.

"If we retrieve their souls," the Grigori first-soul said, then there is no reason for us to leave at all. Perhaps this Savior of hers can restore their shell?"

Thwack. Audrey turned to see Gabriel clobber another Grigori with his mace. The creature did an amazingly dog-like yelp of pain as it went flying. Gabriel was a match one-on-one for the Grigori due to his large size, but Belaziel and his offspring were having a harder time of it. They only had knives with them, not maces or swords. Belaziel's sons were smaller than he was. Not by much. But enough that it was an additional disadvantage. Another gene that had been diluted by cross-breeding with humanity.

"Where are their souls?" Audrey asked. "What can we do to help you retrieve them?"

"She wishes to help, my love," the Grigori male soul said.

"She lies," the Grigori female soul said. "She is powerless to help."

"I didn't say I had the power," Audrey said. "I asked what we can do to help?"

"Nothing!" the second-soul screamed in rage. "You can do _nothing _to help our children. She destroyed their shells and then she wasn't able to find all the pieces to put them back together again. They are shattered!"

"_He _uses them now!" the first-soul snarled. "He _uses_ them!"

"He _likes _them broken because they can't remember what he did to them that way!" the first-soul screamed.

Thunk! "Amen." Thunk! "Amen." The Reverend had run into the large commercial sized kitchen and come running out with two stainless steel frying pans. The Reverend and Mambo De Vivre were taking turns clonking any Grigori who got too close with the frying pans.

"Sonneillon, please!" Bezaliel shouted to the Grigori arguing with Audrey. "We are allies. We were only trying to help an innocent child heal."

Muhammad did that strange leapy-windmill-two-knives-thingy again and did some serious damage to another Grigori. The creature screeched in agony, holding the arm which the halal butcher had just nearly severed completely from the creatures shoulder. Gabriel clonked the creature instantly over the head, rendering it unconscious, and then swung at a second Grigori which went to snarl at him, rendering _that _one unconscious as well.

Bezaliel's two sons had retrieved their swords from wherever they had stashed them, but it was the Imam who turned the tide of the battle.

"In the name of Allah," the Imam said, aiming the AK-47 right at the Grigori leader, "I command you to leave this holy place." The Imam opened fire, blasting the Grigori who had not come prepared to battle against modern weaponry today.

"Retreat!" Sonneillon shrieked in his first-soul voice.

As quickly as it had started, it was over.

"Audrey," Gabriel said, pulling her into his arms and checking her over to make sure she was physically unharmed.

"I'm unharmed," Audrey said. "Mostly unharmed." She had scratches and a small bite mark on her arm. She had manifested them so many times in her dreams that she hadn't even thought to be frightened when the Grigori had finally bitten her for real.

"Mater?" Ninkarrak asked, her voice high and panicked. "_Mater!"_ From her high-pitched scream, it was obvious something was wrong.

"Dilectus?" Bezaliel asked, kneeling at her side. "Beloved? Please answer me. Taram-uram!"

The Nephilim frantically huddled around their mother, trying to shake her awake. Ninkarrak began to keen, a low-pitched, pitiful moan that rose in intensity the longer she wailed. Tears streamed down Bezaliel's face as he realized the wife he had given up eternity for was gone, dead, a single stray claw from an attacking Grigori being all that was needed to shatter the tenuous grasp her soul had on her decaying corpse to stay in this realm.

Audrey felt that familiar surge pour through her body as her lungs inflated of their own volition, her mouth moved on its own, as she formed the Mother's words.

"The Father and I have reached an agreement," the Mother spoke through Audrey, her tone mournful and sad. "It was her deepest wish to be freed of her mortal shell and end her suffering. As her grandson said the vows of baptism, she whispered them in her heart. Azrael managed to capture her soul before it reached the void. The Father has changed his mind. He has granted her entrance into the garden."

The Nephilim wailed harder, but Bezaliel hardest of all. "Thank you, Mother. Will I be allowed to join her?"

"No," the Mother said through Audrey. "Your only path to salvation lies with the Savior." Audrey felt the Mother's energy slowly seep out of her body. The Mother was gone.

Bezaliel gathered what was left of his wife into his arms and leaped into the air, his anguished cry the last they heard of him. His sons and Ninkarrak followed, leaving the shell-shocked young Ningizzada weeping with strangers.

It was the Reverend who noticed the boys wounds had completely healed. The Savior had accepted his offer of service.


	126. Chapter 125

_**Note:**__** My continuing thanks to all the wonderful readers who have read and reviewed this work d'art so far. I try to respond to all reviews and private messages, although sometimes I catch myself lapping up the attention like some pathetic hungry dog instead of buckling down and writing like I –should- be doing, so if I don't get back to you right away, know that it's because the Muse has kicked me in the pants and shouted in my ear to get back to work!**_

_**My special thanks to those of you who keep pointing out little plot holes in the web, forgotten breadcrumbs, and ideas. I think you'll find some familiar topics of conversation in the coming chapters. Thanks for reading everyone!**_

Chapter 125

"Bezaliel?" Gabriel asked, waiting behind the doors to the observatory for his brother to respond.

"It's been three days," the Imam said in his lightly accented English. "We must perform the funerary rituals and bury her."

For the last three days, Bezaliel had locked himself into the observation room of the CN Tower with his wife's body and refused all efforts to get him to respond. Within a short period of time, the Nephilim had ingratiated themselves with surviving Toronto society, both positive and negative elements. Especially the unusually large Muslim population who had been such devout followers of Islam that the heavenly host had not dared touch them. Bezaliel had made … friends.

"Bezaliel," Gabriel called. "Please. I understand how you must feel. But your children _need _you!"

Silence. If not for the sixth sense that enabled Gabriel to feel his brothers' presence and know he still lived, he would have thought Bezaliel had willed himself to die of a broken heart or cast his soul into the void.

Bezaliel's children were similarly incapacitated. In his absence, Tarum-arum had become the steel blade around which each successive generation of iron had been forged. 4,500 years clustered together in Sheol with only their matriarch holding them together had resulted in an unusually tightly-knit extended family numbering in the thousands. A family that was now falling into factions. Some were angry that their long-absent sire had undertaken an action which had deprived them of their matriarch, no matter what condition her mortal shell had been in. Others were hopeful that they, too, could be healed as had happened with Ningizzada. Or have their suffering alleviated if their bodies were too deteriorated to heal and enter the garden.

"It is a man's duty to lead his family," the Imam said. "His clan is beginning to fracture into competing factions. He must set aside his grief and lead his family."

"He gave up heaven for her," Gabriel said, choking up with emotion. "He willingly gave himself over to the Father to try to spare her the fate she got. Even when the Father reneged, for 4,500 years, the only thing keeping him sane was knowing his wife still existed just on the other side of the wall even though he knew she suffered. He had no idea _how _much she suffered until he stormed Sheol to get her back and saw her condition. Sheol was meant to inter the souls of the dead, not living tissue. And now … she's gone."

"He knew when he married her that she was mortal," the Imam said gently. "This would have happened eventually anyways. We are not like you. We live. We die. Only Allah knows what fate befalls you afterwards."

"As will happen with my little Prophet," Gabriel said, his voice nearly a whisper. "When the final battle comes with the Grigori, I shall give my life to protect the Savior so she will avoid Taram-uram's fate."

"Bezaliel and I spoke many times of his loss of faith in the Father," the Imam said. "I always thought it curious one so aggrieved by the heavenly Father would seek out advice from an Imam of Allah as to how to lead his family. It was as though he was torn by his hatred of the Father for what he did to his family, and yet he wanted somebody to tell him it was okay to still love him. Taram-uram and his offspring could never understand this impulse."

"They never got to know the Father the way that _we _did," Gabriel said. "The Prophet does not understand, either. The Father asked me to do something horrific and I obeyed, and then he _punished_ me for obeying by offering me up as a sacrifice to the Mother so she wouldn't destroy his worlds. In retrospect, I know I should have done as Michael did and refused, but I had the past example of what had happened to my brothers. Disobedience was unthinkable."

"The Prophet was raised Catholic," the Imam said. "Her faith has always centered around the religion of the Savior, which preaches compassion and forgiveness. Islam has always worshipped Allah. Allah has always been an unforgiving god to those who do not obey him. It is as though Christians _cite _the Old Testament in their religious ceremonies, but they never actually _think _about what it says."

"The Rabbi accepted the apocalypse as inevitable," Gabriel said. "He blames humanity for bringing it down upon themselves and asks what he can do to thank the Father for sparing him."

"Our view is somewhere in the middle," the Imam said. "As you may have noticed amongst my flock, we have certain … elements. Radicals. Foreigners who come to this new land not to integrate into it and improve it by spreading Allah's word, but by destroying it and her neighbor to the south. The newcomers speak of jihad, but they do not truly understand what jihad means. The highest form of jihad is jihad of one's own actions, one's own thoughts and behaviors when surrounded by gentiles who do not understand our ways. The truest form of jihad is not to terrorize your neighbors in the name of Allah, but to turn your neighbors towards Allah by your good example."

"If Belaziel does not come out of that room and lead his family," Gabriel said, "I fear those factions of his family who are attracted to your followers who preach jihad will assume control of his clan. They will allow the Grigori to wield them as a weapon against the Father and their fellow humans."

"I am leader of a house divided amongst itself," the Iman said. "As is Belaziel. And _all _the Fallen, I suspect. Until all Muslims, and all of humanity, can unite and speak with one voice about what _they _want their future to look like, we will continue to tear each other apart into smaller and smaller pieces until we are too shattered to exist. Like the Grigori."

"Like the Grigori," Gabriel agreed.

The Prophets revelation that the heavenly host were the shattered soul-fragments of the Grigori-Angel children after being cast into the void had been truly horrifying. Especially to Gabriel, who had led the host into battle countless times and watched them decimate whatever the Father aimed them at. The Father had always seemed conflicted about the host. Usually treating them with contempt, calling them disembodied spirits and belittling their role as the tormentors of mankind. Other times, he called them a kind of angel and chastised the brothers for viewing the disembodied spirits with contempt.

The Grigori's rage suddenly seemed to make … sense…

And so did the heavenly hosts instinctive zeal in tormenting humans. Humans. The race the Father had shaped to inherit the Earth instead of shaping new shells for _them_…

"Humanity has suffered enough," the Imam said. "If there is to be jihad, it must be a jihad of the spirit, to examine ourselves and decide what Islam should look like in light of what has happened. The Prophet Muhammad preached jihad would defeat the enemies of Allah, but Muhammad also preached that to be like Allah was to be merciful. What the Father did to us … to Belaziel … to his family? That was _not _merciful. He went too far. Even for Muslims who _expect _an angry god."

"You never _did _say," Gabriel asked. "Where did you get the machine gun?"

"As Muhammad told you when the Grigori crashed the party," the Imam said, a wry grin spreading across his dark features, "I am devout Muslim. Not stupid. Not all radicals agree with Grigori that Savior and fellow humans are the proper target of jihad. In Pakistani village where I was raised before coming to Canada, every man is expected to know how to use an AK-47. I keep … just in case."

Gabriel nodded. Subconsciously he reached to verify his mace was still securely strapped to his back, its spikes sheathed so it simply looked like an iron bar with a rounded tip. The impulse of any combat veteran who had ever seen battle. Always keep a weapon within easy reach even if you didn't expect to need it. Just in case…

"Where did Muhammad learn those … moves?" Gabriel asked. "I've never seen anybody kill so efficiently, and I've existed for a very long time. If those Grigori hadn't been condemned to eternal suffering, they would be dead right now."

"Muhammad's mother was Negev Bedouin," the Imam said. "For as long as man has existed in the Middle East, the Bedouin have wandered the desert by horseback and camel, fighting to survive. As soon as a Bedouin can walk, they are expected to help herd their clans' flocks and protect them from predators, both human and animal. His father was fellahin, settled. But his mother was very strong-willed. Made sure Muhammad learned Bedouin ways."

"I am familiar with their tribe," Gabriel said. "As soon as a Bedouin male can walk, a knife is put into his hand so he can defend the flock."

"The same skills that make him a good halal butcher," the Imam said, "make him a good fighter. He can kill and dismember flesh with a single cut of a blade."

Gabriel shuddered. The young Muslim male and newest disciple was soft spoken, respectful and controlled. Unlike many Muslim males, who believed women were property to be controlled, the young man had been heavily influenced by his mother. The legendary Bedouin were considered 'aristocracy' amongst settled Muslims and almost never married outside the tribe. Muhammad's father would have viewed his Bedouin bride with the same awe that Gabriel held his wife.

The Imam knocked on the door one more time. "Bezaliel. We are your friends. Let us support you in your time of grief."

They thought the response would be the same as the last two days. Nothing. But finally they heard movement on the other side of the door. The sound of barricades being pulled away from the door. The stench of decayed flesh greeted their nostrils as soon as Bezaliel opened the door. Bezaliel stood there, swaying, little more than a zombie himself in his grief.

"Bezaliel?" Gabriel said. "Your children need to say goodbye, too. Let your friends prepare her mortal shell for burial so your family can say goodbye."

"He tortured her," Bezaliel whispered, his voice hoarse from keening. "Why did he have to torture her? Her only sin was loving _me."_

"She resides in the garden now," Gabriel said. "She is at peace."

"He will make her forget me," Bezaliel said. "To make her forget her pain, he will make her forget the ones she has left behind. I don't know which she feared more. Sheol? Or losing all memory of why she had been interred there in the first place."

Gabriel noted the feathers laying under Taram-urum's body and glanced at his brothers wings. Plucked. To lay her to rest, Bezaliel had plucked the feathers from his wings and encircled her corpse with them. The imprint of his body lay next to his wife's corpse. For three days Bezaliel had lain with her, trying to will his spirit to leave his body so he could join her. He had left the windows open, depending upon the frigid Canadian winter to keep her body refrigerated, but three days post-mortem even Bezaliel could no longer deny that she was gone.

"I face the same fate, brother," Gabriel said gently. "I would rather my wife forget me than suffer because we cannot be together. Only the thought that the Father is giving me a pathway that results in her not suffering for this brief time we have stolen together helps me go on. Soon enough, it will be _me _feeling your pain, and _me _suffering in the Keep to protect my wife and child."

"You have 23 fine children," the Imam reminded him. "276 grandchildren and 3,312 great-grandchildren who are still here. Their matriarch has just died. They need you to be their father."

"Father," Belaziel spat half-heartedly. "What do I know about being a father? Our Father, who art in heaven? A vindictive, homicidal maniac?"

"It is up to _you _to create your _own _image of what that means," Gabriel said. "You have been given a second chance to be the patriarch who was taken from them."

"I sired them," Bezaliel said, gesturing into the air with frustration. "And then I was gone for most of their existence. I'm like a unicorn to them. The mythological sire some of them have never even known. _She _was the one who held it all together while I was gone. She was the mother I'd always wished I'd had. Is it any _wonder _I refused to leave her when the Father snapped his fingers?"

"No," Gabriel said uncomfortably. "He stole our memories from us of our own Mother and deadened our emotions so we wouldn't remember, but he couldn't remove the yearning to be loved from our souls. Half of the angels wanted to follow your example. It's why he dealt with you so harshly. I wish I'd known then what I know now. It would have tipped the scales in your favor."

"_Nothing _would have tipped the scales in our favor," Bezaliel shouted. "Don't you understand? The Father is incapable of love! He despises it! He views it as a silly weakness we inherited from our accursed Mother who he drove away!"

Gabriel remembered the Father's overwhelming sadness. The sadness the Father did everything and anything to avoid feeling. It had always been Gabriel sitting at the Father's feet as a child. It had been Gabriel standing behind him, watching the Father's back, as an adult. While the others had always only seen the side of the Father he _wished _to have them see, Gabriel had seen more. Although he hadn't understood _what _the Father was grieving for, he had recognized that the Father _was _grieving. For as long as he had memories, Gabriel had always tried to take it upon himself to do whatever he could to alleviate the Father's suffering.

"That is what he would like us to believe," Gabriel finally said, choosing his words carefully. "But I was always _there._ I suspect he hoped that by eliminating all reminders of what it was he had lost, he wouldn't have to feel the pain."

"And he's been punishing the rest of _us _because of it ever since!" Bezaliel snapped. He sat down at the edge of the bed he had set up in the room when he had first retrieved his wife from Sheol and settled in this city. The bed with her empty shell laying on it, cradled in his feathers.

"Yes," Gabriel said simply. Bezaliel was trying to put into words a frustration Gabriel had been unable to put into words himself. Gabriel had no words to comfort him. All he could do is do what he always did to reassure those he loved that he was there for them. Just be there for them and watch their backs when they were weak.

"Bezaliel," the Imam said, pulling up a chair and taking his hand. "You and your family have become an important part of this community. You have friends here. Let us help your family through your grief. We are here for you."

Bezaliel stared down at the floor. The Father had cast him down from heaven and he hadn't broken. The Father had locked him in the Keep for 4,500 years and he hadn't broken. The Father had thrown his entire family in Sheol, and he hadn't broken. He'd escaped, only to find his family had been twisted by radiation and sickness, and he hadn't broken. Now … Bezaliel was broken. Without her, he did not wish to exist. Only his inability to figure out a way to throw himself into the void kept him here.

Hope. That elusive emotion Gabriel had not understood when he had asked Jeep on the cliff why he continued to fight when he knew there was no hope. Taram-uram had been Bezaliel's hope. Now, she was gone. It was up to Gabriel to help his brother find a _new _hope to sustain him.

"Ninkarrak wishes to prepare her mother's body for burial," Gabriel said, placing his hand upon his brothers' shoulder. "Please. She is gone. Taram-uram would wish for her mortal shell to be given the proper funerary rituals."

Bezaliel sighed. "Ninkarrak is a good girl. Tell her she may take her mother's body and dispose of it as she sees fit. I lost Taram-uram the day the Father threw me into the Keep. The hard woman I came back to bore little resemblance to the tender woman I left behind."

The Imam called into a walkie-talkie he had with him. Within moments, several of Bezaliel's sons flew in and gently retrieved their mother's body, wrapping her in a white cotton shroud before flying her corpse to the mosque to begin the Muslim funerary rituals of washing, wrapping, and prayer. The faith Taram-uram had been born into had been extinct for thousands of years and the Father they had all grown up praying to had betrayed them. They all knew they were just going through the motions for their sire's sake.

One of the grown grandchildren who had helped storm heaven to get their grandsire back carefully gathered up the feathers their grand-sire had plucked from his own wings and placed them into a bag.

"Granmater always told us the thing she missed most after the Father took you was falling asleep wrapped in your wings," the Nephilim grandchild said to his grandsire. "We will place these in her shroud so she can sleep safely in your wings for all eternity."

Bezaliel lost it, weeping great shuddering sobs until he was so exhausted that all he could do was shudder. He curled up into the spot where they had just removed his wife's body, looking very much like a plucked chicken with all but the hard, long primary feathers torn out of his wings. Gabriel, unsure what to do, held his position at his brother's back and did not speak, his presence the only support he knew how to give him.

"Go now, please," Bezaliel whispered. "I wish to be alone."

Gabriel touched him upon the shoulder, and then gave him his wish.


	127. Chapter 126

_Note:_ _My thanks to CanYouHoldBalloons for some great fanart of this chapter. For those who have read the story so far, Azrael, the Angel of Death, has fallen in love with a former military trauma nurse who can will patients to defeat him, but he can never touch her because his touch brings death. CanYouHoldBallons has come up with a possible solution. I highly recommend after reading this chapter that you visit her fanart site (replace the [dot] with [.]) and drop her a review at:_

_chyou__ [dot] deviantart [dot] com/gallery/#/d3l7q5q_

Chapter 126

"Azrael?" Audrey asked, instinctively cringing at the sudden appearance of the beautiful ebony-skinned, ebony-winged Angel of Death into the room.

"Just once," Azrael sighed, his dark eyes glittering with reproach, "I would like people's first reaction upon seeing me not to be to run away."

"Sorry," Audrey said. "I'm getting better at it. I've stopped diving under the sofa and screaming for Gabriel."

Audrey could tell by the slight twitch of one side of the Angel of Death's lips that he found her joke to be at least remotely amusing. Like all purebred angels, Azrael had been raised to be emotionally self-controlled, but the lack of the Father's control collar meant it was possible to break through that conditioning on occasion and get him to crack a smile.

"So … what brings you to icy Toronto in the dead of winter?" Audrey asked. "Going to retrieve some souls buried in an avalanche and decided to pop in and say hello?" Snow. It had been snowing nonstop ever since the night Taram-uram had died, as if the Father wished to cleanse the evidence of his wrongdoing.

"The Mother has asked me to convey an offer to the mother of the child the Savior healed," Azrael said. "Ninkarruk is a natural healer, but she has never been trained to strengthen the life force and accelerate healing the way the full-blooded angels were trained to do. Ann would like to see if she can train Ninkarruk to do what she does."

"I thought the Father took away the holy fire he used to perform miraculous healings from the Nephilim," Audrey asked.

"As he did with Gabriel," Azrael said. "And yet Gabriel was able to heal you. And you, him. Twice. As well as Shemihaza's son. Ann has had some success teaching purebred humans to enhance the body's natural strength. A half-angel apprentice would be a valuable addition to her work."

Audrey smiled. The look of pride on Azrael's face as he described Ann spoke volumes about how proud he was of her work. Ann defeated death on a daily basis, saving patients no other doctor could save. The Pentagon had created an ambulance network to transport critically injured patients to her clinic, as well as searched for suitable apprentices who appeared to have some natural ability to help others heal. Ann didn't save them all. But she saved far more than could be explained by medical skill alone, and her abilities were growing by the day. When Ann _couldn't _save them, Azrael personally ensured their souls safely made it into the garden.

"What about her children," Audrey asked. "Most of them are grown, but two of them are still at an age where they need their mother."

"She may bring them," Azrael said, "or leave them with relatives, as she sees fit. But the boy who the Savior healed must go with _you_. The Grigori have issued a death sentence for him."

"Ninkarruk will be saddened by that," Audrey said. "But it was what she expected when we agreed to try to heal him in the first place. If one as powerful as Shemihaza felt he couldn't protect his grandson, then it's no wonder Ninkarruk fears for his safety."

Azrael shifted position, looking uncomfortable. Audrey knew that look, first from Michael, then Gabriel, and now from Azrael, to recognize when an angel with divided loyalties was struggling with how much to tell somebody about something they needed to know. Audrey was also by now experienced at wheedling it out of them.

"The Father refuses to free Ninkarruk from condemnation because she stormed heaven to get her sire back?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Azrael said, looking even _more _uncomfortable.

"What about the grown grandchildren?" Audrey asked. "Some of them were old enough to participate even though they can't transport themselves between the dimensions."

"Any who participated in actions either directly against the Father," Azrael said, "or against the forces the Father sent to exterminate them on Earth, are barred from the garden. The Savior has not yet matured enough to create his own garden. Until he does, if they die, it's either return to Sheol, or be cast into the void for uncreation."

"So what you're telling me is that if we baptize them and then they die," Audrey said, "it's Sheol or the void."

"Yes," Azrael said. "The Father has demanded they only be allowed entrance to the void, but the Mother disagrees, so the default location to inter their souls is Sheol until the two deities can agree on it. She has asked me to assign death-spirits to oversee any who are baptized to make sure their spirits don't inadvertently go into the void. The Father refuses to cooperate and warn me."

"Are you going to have enough manpower to do that?" Audrey asked.

"Since the apocalypse," Azrael said, "I've got death-spirits sitting around on their haunches playing cribbage. Not enough humans to reap. Getting them out of the gateway to the void will be good for them. Morale's been pretty low since the apocalypse. Billions of souls were cast into the void because they couldn't reap them fast enough. The Father … upset them. Too much death. Even for a death-spirit."

"Where do the death-spirits come from?" Audrey asked.

"The Mother," Azrael said. "She can breathe the life spark into any matter. Even a speck of dust. Death spirits don't need much of a corporeal form to perform their job. Unlike life forms, which need a well-defined mortal shell."

"Why doesn't she shape her own life forms, then?" Audrey asked. "I mean … then she could help the Grigori children."

"She has no talent for it," Azrael said. "The nature of the void is chaos. Her natural form has no shape, so she has trouble giving shape to matter. There's a reason your culture always depicts ghosts as a blurry blob. That's all she was able to do for the soul-fragments of the heavenly host."

"And the Father has no talent for breathing the life spark into matter," Audrey guessed. "Even though once he has it, he can build intricate, beautiful things around it."

"The Father's natural form is solid," Azrael said. "Like a rock. The life spark is extremely elusive. You have to coax it into matter and convince it to inhabit that form, not capture and imprison it. The harder he tries to force his creations to come to life, the worse he fails. He cannot grasp that the life spark is not something to be controlled."

"That's probably why she originally paired up with the Father," Audrey said. "They complement each others' weaknesses."

The wheels in Audrey's mind churned with this new information. Nephilim. She wished to turn the Nephilim to serve the Savior so Gabriel might live. How could she use everything they had learned in the last few days to that end? But before she went back and reported to the others, she wanted to be absolutely she only promised things she could deliver.

"So basically if they get baptized," Audrey clarified, "they're back to square one. Sheol. Or the nothing. But no worse off than they already were."

"Not square one," Azrael said. "The Father's curse keeps their soul in their flesh, no matter how badly they are injured. It's a kind of hellish immortality. Eternal limbo. Some of the Nephilim are pretty sick. If they get baptized, the same thing will happen to _them _as happened to their matriarch."

"So don't baptize anyone who's really sick or directly defied the Father," Audrey said. "Right."

Azrael shifted positions again, really uncomfortable this time.

"Out with it," Audrey said, suppressing the urge to reach out and touch the angel whose very touch meant death. Now that she knew the beautiful, deadly angel, it was difficult to restrain her urge to reach out and touch him. The poor thing yearned for physical contact so badly his body visibly ached with the need, even tiny gestures of quasi-contact being cherished. How terrible! To crave love and yet never be able to be touched! Was this what it was like for the Mother now? Audrey didn't dare give him the hug she knew he obviously needed, so she gave him the next best thing. She looked him in the eye and gave him a smile. Azrael's apprehensions melted.

"The Grigori leaders are furious," Azrael said. "They have issued a death sentence for any hybrid who dares seek baptism. They can smell it when a Nephilim no longer reeks of putrefaction and brimstone."

"The Nephilim outnumber them like, what?" Audrey asked. "How many thousands to one? I think they'll take their chances."

"You saw Bezaliel when you first came here," Azrael said. "Angry. Only his wife kept his hatred in check. Not all matriarchs are as magnanimous as Taram-uram was. They hate the Father and anyone who's associated with him as much as their husbands do."

"I can't say I blame them," Audrey said. "I'll pass along the warning."

Azrael prepared to go, to leap 'between' in a flash of light.

"Audrey?" he asked, turning at the last moment.

"Yes, Azreal?" Audrey replied.

"Tell Ninkarruk that it would not displease Ann if she happened to bring along a few fourth-generation Nephilim too sick to survive baptism," Azrael said. "She doesn't know if there's anything that can be done for them, but she's willing to try. If anyone can defeat the Father's death sentence…"

"It will be Ann," Audrey finished. "I'll tell her."

Azrael disappeared in a flash of light. Audrey went to discuss the invitation with Ninkarruk.


	128. Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Audrey glanced up at where Gabriel had positioned himself at Bezaliel's back, doing his best to walk that fine line between having his brother's back and being invisible so he didn't exacerbate a potentially explosive situation. Bezaliel's very _plucked _back. Audrey had been horrified when she had seen how the grieving widower had mutilated his own wings until Gabriel had told her _why._ Taram-uram had only been in the ground a few days and Bezaliel was barely holding _himself _together, much less his clan.

"What proof do we have if we agree to serve this Savior of hers that he will be able to save us?" one of the Nephilim asked. Fourth-generation. Without wings. Condition … potentially survivable.

"Prophet?" Bezaliel asked after translating the question.

"Doctor Khan has determined that were your body to take its natural course," Audrey said, looking at a list of all of Bezaliel's progeny and the known risk-factors of choosing to be baptized now, versus waiting, "that you would likely survive, but suffer from lifelong heart, kidney, and liver problems. With proper treatment and dialysis, he estimates a lifespan of 12 years before nature would take its course."

One of Bezaliel's sons translated what Audrey said for those not born with the gift of tongues to understand. Gabriel watched the hostility level in the room rise as the translation was finished.

"So you're telling me to get baptized and then the clock starts ticking?" the wingless male asked. Bezaliel's son translated.

"I'm telling you that there are risks you need to consider before you make a choice," Audrey said. "Only _you _can make that choice. You also need to weigh what deeds you have done in your lifetime that might bar you from the Father's garden."

She waited while her words were translated into the ancient language. She made a mental note that it was time to learn to actually _speak _the language she spoke when she cried out during her visions in the night.

"I slaughtered those little Elamite bastards the Father sent after us," the wingless male said, shaking his fist at some past enemy and earning a murmur of approval from his kin. "Same as the rest of us. According to what you told us, that means we'll be barred from the garden."

Bezaliel's son translated.

"Yes," Audrey said. "That is what I have been led to believe. Unless and until the Savior prevails and does whatever it is he needs to do to transition Earth into this Second Kingdom the Mother and Father have agreed he shall inherit, you risk re-interment in Sheol when you die."

Bezaliel's son translated her words. Accurately, Gabriel was glad to hear. What the Prophet was telling them was difficult enough for them to hear without her words being botched by a butcher-job of a translation.

"What about me?" an elderly man asked. Great-grandson of Bezelial's oldest child. Fourth-generation wingless male. Little inherited immunity to the vapors of Sheol.

"Shallurum," Audrey said as soon as the translation was finished. "Doctor Khan estimates you have no chance of surviving more than a few days past baptism. I'm very sorry."

"My wife and children were killed in the flood," Shallurum said, his expression resigned as he digested the translation of the bad news. "My children were fifth-generation. They must have gained access to the garden because I never found them in Sheol. But the Father interred my wife there for loving _me._ I only came back because my wife begged me to find out the fate of our children. She had no body to bring back with her, so she was forced to stay behind."

"You participated in the Elamite war," several of the man's cousins said. "You will be sent back to Sheol!"

"Yah yah yah," the elderly man said. "Sheol's not so bad when you're not burdened by a body that can get sick. It's so crowded with souls down there right now that the heavenly host have little time to torment everyone. They come. They rant about the same old sins. Blah blah blah. Same old sins. Reminds me of my old human mother-in-law. You just say yah yah yah and ignore them after a while. They get ticked off and leave you alone once they realize they can't get to you no more."

The Nephilim burst out laughing, cousins next to the old man slapping him in the back while another translated. Audrey laughed too. She filed the old man's survival technique away in the back of her mind for future reference.

Audrey remembered the look on Charlie's face when the old woman had come into the diner and told her that her baby was going to burn in hell. Charlie. Unwed mother. It had upset her, but she had heard it so many times before that she had simply handed the old woman her check and told her to fuck off. Defiance. If you were strong, after a while you learned to tune out the voices that tried to shame you into doing what they wanted and told them to fuck off. Probably why so many survivors of the apocalypse were social misfits. The host hadn't been able to gain control because their potential vessels had heard it all and slammed shut whatever mechanism they needed to gain possession.

What mechanism? The Vodoun sought possession by helpful loas. Was the mechanism the same? Or at least similar? Could humans be trained to resist the heavenly host the way Ann was training humans to wield the ability to fortify the life spark? Perhaps Mambo would know? Another question, filed into the back of her mind for future research.

"Why are you supporting these … traitors?" a third-generation winged female shouted. "Gabriel is the one who stopped us at the gate! And now he comes crawling to us begging _us _to help _him _because now he's woken up and smelled the coffee, too! Well screw him! The last thing we want to do is follow _him!"_

"You don't understand what it was like growing up under the yoke of the Father," Bezaliel said, his voice so thin and weary that it made Audrey want to cry. "The Father sent us here as a punishment. We didn't like humans. We thought they were beneath us. We did everything we could to hasten their downfall so he would stop playing around with them and pay attention to _us _for a change. Then … we actually had to live _amongst _humankind and we realized something had been missing from our lives. We found … love."

Bezaliel straightened up, his voice growing stronger as he remembered _why _he had chosen to defy the Father all those years ago.

"Taram-arum, your gran-mater," Bezaliel said, "was the most beautiful, kind, loving creation I had ever met. Fourteen billion years in heaven, and what we had been looking for was right underneath our feet the whole time. We Fallen swore an oath when we took human women to be our wives that if we ever had children by them, that we wouldn't be the kind of distant, unknowable father that _our _Father had been. That we would _be _there for our children and participate in their lives. Not just lock ourselves away in our workshop for millennia on end."

Gabriel placed a hand on his brothers' shoulder, lending him his quiet strength the way he often did for Audrey. She was proud of him. He had grown so much since she had first met him.

"The heavenly Father thought we were just … appendages," Bezaliel continued. "Useful creations to do his bidding. Never once did he ever tell any of us that he loved us. And then we came here. To the world he had created with the Mother. And it was wonderful. _You _were all wonderful. We were so … happy. Our wives were happy. And then we had children and it was even more wonderful and happy. We watched you grow up and have children of your own, and we were happier still."

Audrey waited for her translator to catch up with the content murmur which went through the room. It was an 'aw' moment.

"And then one day the Father decided it was time for us to return to heaven," Bezaliel said. "So we could fight another one of his stupid wars for him. We were _tired _of fighting. We were tired of getting our physical forms torn to pieces and then waiting for the Father to piece our shells back together again so we could fight another day. We were tired of being told it was not okay to love, to laugh, to feel, to sit down on the dirt and play in the mud with our children. We were tired of being told that everything and everyone in the universe was more important than what _we _needed. So we said 'no.' No. Very politely, we told him we refused to abandon our families."

Audrey glanced to the balcony of the mosque where Jose' was taping this gathering of one clan of descendants of the Fallen and the Nephilim discussing why they had defied the Father. Jose' had agreed they would edit the footage so no potentially damaging information was released, a necessity since only Gabriel spoke the ancient language fluently. She was glad he was getting all of this. For 4,500 years, Enoch's version of the tale of the Fallen had dominated the general psyche of humanity. No matter which side of the balance a Nephilim came down upon, it was about time humanity understood _why _they were making the choices they did. With understanding came … a potential for peace.

"The rest," Bezaliel said. "You all know. First he took me, promising if I went without a fight he would spare my wife and offspring. And then … he reneged. Sneakily. By flooding the alluvial plain where we had built our cities so we had no choice but to spread out into the surrounding area where we were vulnerable. By sending the heavenly host to rile up the Elamites and Aratta to repeatedly attack us. And then … when you finally said enough is enough and stormed heaven to make him stop … he sent the flood. He killed any of our descendants who weren't lucky enough to have inherited my wings or superhuman strength, and then he gathered up the rest of you and threw you into Sheol so that he could punish _me!_ What kind of Father does that to his own children?"

Bezaliel broke down and wept. His first-generation children huddled around him, the ones who had stormed heaven to get him back, while his second- and third-generation children, many of whom hadn't been born until _after _he'd been taken, milled about uncomfortably at seeing their grand patriarch weep. As the translated finished the translation, Audrey felt the urge to weep, as well. The Fallen had _tried _to do the right thing, and the Father had sabotaged them because he just couldn't deal with the fact, even _after _he'd imprisoned the Fallen in the Keep, that his sons loved somebody else more than they loved _him._

"You still haven't answered the question of why in Sheol we should follow the wife of the one who stopped us at the gate and prevented us from freeing you, grandsire!" one of the third-generation Nephilim shouted.

"Gabriel was the one who escorted me to the Keep after the Father gave his judgment," Bezaliel said. "As a test of his obedience. I could see it broke his heart to do it, but obedience was the only thing the Father had ever allowed. We didn't remember it then, because the Father wiped the memory from our consciousness, but always lurking in our subconscious was the memory of what the Father did to our sisters. The Father wronged the Grigori even more than they wronged _us._ And even though the Father tried to wipe all memory of them from our minds so that he could force us to fight against them, he was never able to wipe the memory of them from our _souls._ Gabriel did what he needed to do to survive. Just as –_I-_ did what I thought I needed to do when I went willingly to the Keep in the hopes that all of _you _would survive."

"So are we just supposed to turn around and stab the ones who freed us from Sheol in the back and betray them?" one of Bezaliel's first-generation sons asked him. "First they are our allies? And now we should betray them?"

"No," Bezaliel said. "Lucifer ordered us to stay out of it and let the Savior work out his own problems for a reason. The souls of my sisters reside within the Grigori. Before the Father wronged them, the Grigori themselves were our boyhood playmates and friends. If we choose to follow the Savior, the Savior must understand that it is with the condition that he do whatever he can to help our Grigori allies find their children and restore their mortal shells as best he can. Until that time, although we will support him in our hearts, we will not take arms against our Grigori allies."

Audrey winced as soon as the translation was completed. She'd been hoping for … more. Although, given the ugly history lesson the Grigori dual-soul Sonneilon and Isda had told her, Audrey was beginning to strongly suspect that that was what the Mother desired _her _to advocate for as well.

Oh well. It wasn't like she had an abundance of threads left to follow in her visions. Ten disciples down. Two to go. Every single night the Savior was plucked from this world, but it happened long after Gabriel had been killed. Every single thread she tampered with in the real world and changed resulted in the likelihood of the Savior prevailing increasing. By the time she had gathered all twelve disciples, she was beginning to hope it was quite possible the Savior would prevail. But Gabriel. He _had _no hope. The Father had condemned him to die the night he had thrown him off a cliff as his scapegoat and nothing Audrey had been able to do so far had altered that outcome one bit.

Audrey left the gathering, letting them argue about it. Before she went and promised these people, who had been betrayed so deeply that it was a wonder they'd ever be able to trust _anybody,_ anything, she wanted to get a straight answer from the horses' mouth.

Walking out into the frigid Toronto winter, big fluffy snowflakes plopping down from the sky like angel wings, she opened her mouth and screamed his name.

"Michael!"


	129. Chapter 128

_Note:__ Many of my wonderful reviewers have been asking questions about how, exactly, the Grigori ended up with two souls, why they also blame the Mother, and why the Nephilim are so reluctant to abandon them even though they realize the Grigori are unstable. I've dropped a gazillion breadcrumbs throughout the book (some as far back as Texas). In the next two chapters, to answer the questions, the breadcrumbs dropped to date will be picked up and explained._

_Thanks to everyone who reads and drops me a line! Reader support is like oxygen! (That … and my wonderful grown step-daughter who took my 3 youngest off my hands this long holiday weekend and enabled me to color my hair, shampoo the carpets, and pound out 11 chapters)…_

_I hope this answers everybody's questions._

_X_

Chapter 128

"Audrey," Michael called as he materialized in a flash of blinding white light, wings flared, expression unreadable as most angels were whenever they went into a situation they were unfamiliar with.

"Thank you for coming, Michael," Audrey greeted him. "I take it you're aware what's going on inside the mosque right now?"

"You're trying to turn the Nephilim to serve the Savior," Michael said, his posture the stiff, formal stance of a professional soldier, "and you've run into a snag."

"I don't want to promise something the Savior isn't willing to deliver," Audrey said. "They've been betrayed enough already. If they even get so much as an inkling that anything we say isn't on the up-and-up, we're going to lose them as an entire species."

"You know this gets into that magical little area where I serve two masters," Michael said softly, the muscle twitching in his strong jaw that Audrey had learned to associate with being torn between competing duties. "Neither one of them well."

"I know," Audrey said. "The Father has already made his position clear. The Fallen stay condemned. The first-generation Nephilim who stormed heaven stay condemned. The third and fourth-generation Nephilim who were involved in any way with defending themselves against the human armies the Father sent to exterminate them stay condemned. Did I miss anything?"

"They stay condemned if they committed any of the other normal sins humanity commits and gets condemned for," Michael said. "The Father got really strict after the Great Flood. Even minor infractions were cause for condemnation in hell. Even if they only made a mistake once. Even … children."

"That sucks," Audrey said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering in the cold. "Is there anybody who _might _gain access to the garden?"

"Ask Gabriel," Michael said. "He no longer has access to the hive mind to know all the sins the Father has logged against a person, but he, better than any angel in heaven, knows how strict the Father's mandate was back then. He was usually the one the Father sent to spell it out."

"The old testament always creeped me out," Audrey said. "So if you forget to go to church just once on Sunday, you burn in hell?"

"Not anymore," Michael said, his stance relaxing somewhat. "That was part of the bargain the Savior made with the Father when he sacrificed himself on the cross. Confession. The ability to pledge your soul to the Savior and express remorse for your mistakes, to make amends."

"So why won't that help the Nephilim?" Audrey asked, frustrated as hell. "Why can't they just confess their sins and be forgiven?"

"The Nephilim were sentenced _before _the Savior walked the Earth the first time around," Michael said. "Res judicata. The Father refused to grant retroactive grace to any soul he'd already passed judgment on. He felt it would cause people to call into question his judgment. Any soul who earned interment in Sheol or the Keep _prior _to that time stays there until the Savior is mature enough to create his _own _kingdom to handle the souls that serve him."

"Gabriel's horn," Audrey said. "The horn the Savior needs to open the gates of Sheol once he's ready to pass judgment."

"The Father is angry Gabriel gave it to you to give your child," Michael said. "He wants it back."

"Then why didn't he just take it when he threw Gabriel off a cliff?" Audrey asked.

"Oversight," Michael said. "The Father was in such a hurry to appease the Mother by apologizing that he forgot about the horn. I knew he still had it on him, but without direct orders…"

The look on Michael's face said he knew damned well the Father had overlooked something he'd be wanting back and had deliberately refused to take the initiative and take it from him. The _same_ way he'd refused to carry out the execution order to smite Gabriel with his sword _before _the Father threw him off the cliff.

"Why doesn't he just take it now?" Audrey asked.

"Whatever gets tossed off the cliff with the scapegoat," Michael said, the slightest hint of a smirk twitching up one corner of his mouth before he hid the errant emotion. "_Stays _with the scapegoat. It's part of the peace offering."

Audrey's mind wandered back to the part of Leveticus that spoke of decorating the sin offering with ribbons and bells and flowers. It made sense. The Father had overlooked the horn and now the Mother wasn't going to let him have it back.

"There's not a lot of time with what's going on inside with the Nephilim," Audrey said, "so I'll cut right to the chase. But first I need to know how much you know. Yes or no. Were you aware the Grigori carried the souls of your sisters?"

"Yes," Michael said, his expression troubled. "Although I only found out when you did. The Savior told me a few weeks ago when Shemihaza's grandson was healed."

"Great," Audrey said. "So the Savior is playing games as well."

"He's two years old and we tried to kill him," Michael said, his posture defensive as annoyance rose in his unearthly blue eyes. "I think we should cut him a little slack."

Okay … so Michael felt it had been justified for the Savior to withhold this information. From how upset Gabriel had been when the Mother had allowed the two-souled Grigori at the Pentagon to pass into the void, even though he couldn't remember _why _he was so upset, Audrey had to agree with Michael's assessment. Had Michael cried? She'd only ever seen tears in his eyes once. The day he'd begged her to pick his broken brother off the bottom of the cliff and have mercy.

"Next question," Audrey said. "The heavenly host. Were you aware they are what is left of the shattered souls of your sisters' half-Grigori offspring?"

Audrey could tell by the horrified expression on Michael's normally unreadable face that the answer was 'no.'

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Audrey said, reaching out to touch his forearm and give him a reassuring squeeze. She gave him an apologetic smile, more a grimace, for plowing through such painful information, but she needed answers. "Next question. The Savior seems willing to recruit Nephilim to his ranks, yes or no?"

"What is this?" Michael asked, his expression stiff and defensive. "Cross examination for a bad court room drama?" Audrey could tell by the way he stood slightly sideways that Michael wished to escape this line of questioning.

"The very worst courtroom drama," Audrey said. "You and your brothers lives. It appears a crime was committed against the Grigori. They are victims of the Father's vile temper. Just like us. Just like the Nephilim. You are the highest ranking general in the Father's armies. You are also assigned to protect the Savior until his mortal shell matures enough that he can protect himself. That places you in the unenviable position of serving two masters at once. You are both a perpetrator, and also a victim."

"You have hit the nail on the head with the hammer, Miss Anderson," Michael said, his expression serious. "As always. And to think I nearly allowed you to die when you foolishly ran out to that van at the diner to save Kyle and what you didn't realize was no longer a child."

"You didn't," Audrey said. "You came and saved me."

"Only because Charlie threatened to do it herself if I didn't act," Michael said, his expression remorseful. "The Father wrote off every single person in that diner as a sinner, unworthy of second thought. Even Jeep. Even Percy. And yet every one of you sacrificed yourself to save another except for your mother. Strangers. You were all strangers to each other. You came together to defend the Savior not because you believed he was who I said he was, but because he was a helpless child. My only regret is that the others mortal shells were too badly damaged for me to restore."

Audrey digested what Michael had just said.

"If people like Ann can learn to fortify the life-spark and help the body heal the way you do," Audrey asked. "Can they heal the mortal shells of the Nephilim?"

"It depends upon how badly damaged they are," Michael said. "You healed Anu with your intent once the Savior reached through you to accept his offer of service. It was a joint effort. The child was seriously damaged, but not so damaged that he couldn't heal once the sentence of eternal condemnation was lifted from his soul. You healed the two most visible wounds. He is probably healing the rest on his own purely by faith. He was too young to participate in the wars in heaven. Whether or not he enters heaven or Sheol when he finally passes is entirely dependent upon his _own _actions now. Not the curse of the Father."

"Can Ann heal the Nephilim who _don't _take the vow of service?" Audrey asked. "For example … I've got an old man in there who won't live more than three days if he takes the vow of service. It's been three-and-a-half weeks with Anu and some of his sores are still closing up. It was the same with Gabriel. Took him months to heal enough to even walk straight."

"Gabriel had never been mortal before," Michael said. "I had. He was supposed to die. The Father sucked every ounce of life force he could out of him so it would happen quickly. The Father's idea of mercy, I guess. I don't know _how_ you saved him, honestly. When I asked you to help him, the most I hoped for was to give him a dignified death with somebody at his side. At least then he'd finally understand _why _your species deserved another chance while he cooled his heels in the Keep waiting for the Father to realize he can't run heaven without him."

"He can't?" Audrey asked. "What's wrong with heaven?"

"It's a mess up there right now," Michael said. "Why do you think he offered him grace when he'd been shot in Santa Fe? The Father is in the same sorry state about _Gabriel's _loss as he was about the _Mother's _loss all those years ago."

"Sorry and wants him back?" Audrey asked apprehensively.

"Pissed off as hell and cutting off his nose to spite his face," Michael said.

The words were amusing, but the expression on Michael's face was anything _but _amusing. He was dead serious. Audrey avoided laughing.

"What about badly damaged Nephilim," Audrey asked. "Like Belaziel's wife? Can we do anything for _them?_"

"She was far too damaged for you to heal," Michael said. "Doctor Khan's assessment of her condition was an accurate one. She would have needed her soul transplanted into a new shell."

"Could the Savior have saved her if he'd healed her personally?" Audrey asked.

"Right now," Michael said. "I'm not sure. If he wasn't limited by his immature mortal shell, I'd say yes. I'd seen him do it with animals when he was on the Earth before. But he was older. Maybe … seven or eight years old? Taram-uram was in horrible condition. Even if the Savior heals them in person at the age he is right now, someone like Taram-uram might be better off waiting until he matures before attempting to lift the curse of eternal suffering."

"Who healed Ningizzada?" Audrey asked.

"The Father," Michael said. "The Father can almost instantly reshape even the most badly damaged shell and rebuild it around a soul from scratch."

"The Father healed him?" Audrey asked. "Why?"

"I'm not sure what motivated him to do it," Michael said. "A peace offering to the Mother? Belaziel's plea to punish _him _and not his children moved him to mercy? Remorse that Taram-uram did the unexpected and took the pledge of service even though she knew it would result in her death? Or just plain old acknowledgement that he made a series of really bad mistakes that are coming back to haunt him and he's going to be out of a universe to rule if the Grigori do as the Mother foresees they're going to do."

"Can't he see this already?" Audrey asked.

"The Father does not have the gift of prophecy," Michael said. "He can compute mathematically through eternity the working of a galaxy full of stars, down to the tiniest nano-particle. But when it comes to the actions of living creatures, especially sentient ones, he's the most shortsighted creature I ever met."

"Everything I've seen so far agrees with you," Audrey said.

"The Father can look back in time to see a person's sins because the past is fixed, but he cannot project forward into the future to see potential outcomes because the future is not set. It's too fluid for him to wrap his brain around. Like the life spark itself."

"And the Mother?" Audrey asked.

"I have almost no memory of her other than shaping a dragonfly for her in the garden," Michael said. "Anything I tell you about her is simply conjecture and second-hand information."

Silence stretched between them as Audrey digested the information and computed what else she needed to know.

"Most Nephilim appear at least open to the idea of following the Savior," Audrey said. "But not if it means betraying the Grigori who freed them. They sympathize with the Grigori's anger and wish to help them retrieve their children's souls. The male I spoke to gave an indication that shaping new mortal shells for their children's souls might appease them."

"I will have to check with him on that one," Michael said. "Could you please wait a few minutes?"

Without waiting to hear an answer, Michael leaped into the air and was instantly gone in a blinding flash of white light.


	130. Chapter 129

_Note:__ For those of you who like illustrations to go with your story, CanYouHoldBalloons has sketched a wonderful illustration to go with this chapter at:_

_hyou [dot] deviantart [dot] com/gallery/#/d3lbim6_

_My favorite book is my illustrated Shakespeare "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with its beautiful sketched and watercolor illustrations by Sir Arthur Rackham. They don't illustrate classic stories anymore. A pity. I think a good story benefits from the talents of a good illustrator. I highly recommend you go over and check it out and maybe leave her some feedback for her kind addition to my little story (okay … maybe not LITTLE … this story is as big as meathead Gabriel with his mace)._

_Thanks, everybody, who keeps reading and reviewing!_

X

Chapter 129

"I will have to check with him on that one," Michael said. "Could you please wait a few minutes?"

Without waiting to hear an answer, Michael leaped into the air and was instantly gone in a blinding flash of white light. Audrey waited, wrapping her arms around herself to fend off the cold. She'd foolishly come outside with only her sweater on and the large, fluffy snowflakes had stuck to it, making her resemble more an abominable snowperson than a human female. Just as she was about to dive inside to thaw her frozen hands and feet, Michael reappeared.

"All who truly desire in their hearts the salvation represented by the Savior are welcome in his kingdom," Michael said, his expression one of mixed emotions. "The Grigori sires will be an easy task for him to save. Their creator is Lucifer, not the Father, and it was the Mother herself who breathed the life spark into them. So long as there is no disagreement between the Mother and Lucifer, he can grant them ready access into his kingdom. They are immortal. As we are. The Father has no power over them."

"Great!" Audrey said. "I'll tell the others."

"It's not that simple," Michael said, the mixed emotions becoming more readable as his eyes glistened with tears that he refused to allow to fall. "My sisters. The Mother and the Father are in disagreement about their souls. They have been sentenced to the Keep and the Father will not budge on that position. Unless and until the Savior grows powerful enough to shape his own heaven, he can offer them no quarter. It's the same deal the Father offered the Grigori sires when the Mother retrieved them both from the void. She placed my sisters' souls into their husbands' bodies so they could exist in this realm if they ever got out of the Keep. The Grigori sires _chose _to stay in the Keep with their mates rather than leave them."

"Ohmigod," Audrey whispered. "You mean … they didn't … have … to _be_ … there?"

"No," Michael said softly, his voice choking up with emotion. "I didn't know." He turned suddenly, away from her, so she wouldn't see him cry, inhaling the frigid Canadian air while he regained his composure. "That's how they finally escaped. One of the female angels' souls is still interred in the Keep. Alone."

"Can the Savior free those interred into the Keep?" Audrey asked, hoping against hope that the answer was yes. Michael seemed to know the motivation behind her question, because his eyes filled with compassion.

"The Savior has no dominion over the Keep," Michael said, reaching out to touch the side of her face in pity. "It is separate from and predates the agreement between the Mother and the Father regarding the Savior. My sister sacrificed herself so she could send her mate out of the Keep to break the Fallen loose so they, in turn, could free the others. If you get out on your own, you've got a chance. But if you are trapped there, the Savior can't help you. It would violate whatever agreement he, the Mother, and the Father have between them about stewardship of this world."

"All this time we have branded them as monsters," Audrey said, her shoulders sagging. "And we found out they aren't so very different from _us._ Maybe _better _than us. They were interred 64,000 years ago? That's a long time to stand by your man. Or woman. Whatever. You know what I mean." Her voice trailed off. She was babbling and it wasn't helping. Only making her feel _worse._ Only making _him _feel worse. How would Gabriel feel when she told _him_? Gabriel knew. He had told her thus, but she had refused to listen, assuming he was just being pessimistic.

Silence stretched between them. Michael, so strong. Shaped to be beautiful in a way that Gabriel had not. His wings shuddered with the emotion he was trying very hard to keep from registering on his face. He was her brother-in-law now. The best friend her husband had ever had. Audrey reached out to touch his face.

"We will fix this thing the Father has done," Audrey said. "We will. We will do it together."

Defiance. But not the jagged, fist-shaking defiance of before. This was the defiance the Rabbi spoke of. To quietly shield yourself from what is going on around you in the larger world and only tackling what you _could _control. What happened to your family and those you loved. She would give Michael hope. Give Gabriel hope. Break through their belief that, just because they had always been told there was no escape from the Keep except the Father's rarely-given grace, that it couldn't be done. Defiance. Humans had been defying the Father since the day Eve took a bite out of the apple.

"If the Grigori and the Fallen can escape the Keep," Audrey said, "then it can be done again. We will fix this thing the Father has done. If I have to batter down the gates of Sheol myself. I swear it on my own soul!" Defiance flowed through her veins like electricity, giving her strength. Not the strength of anger, but of conviction. Michael had given her information she hadn't known before. Somehow … she would use it. She would not let the Father do to Gabriel what he had done to the others.

Michael nodded, finally allowing the dam to break. Hope. He took her in his arms and buried his face into her hair, sobbing as he allowed the emotion to finally release. Archangel Michael. Chief General of the heavenly Father. Protector of the weak. Sobbing like a little boy in her arms as it was _she _who gave _him _strength for a change.

"We will fix this thing, Michael," Audrey said. "All of us. Everybody gets saved. Tell that to the Savior. We do what we can to save them all. Even the ones who have been broken into a million pieces."

"We must save them from each other," Michael hiccoughed, pulling away and composing himself. "Gabriel is right. We must make them stop hurting each other and start talking."

"The Savior and the Grigori?" Audrey asked.

"The Mother and the Father," Michael said, hastily wiping the tears from his face and attempting to pretend they weren't there. "You see Gabriel. No matter what the Father has done, he still loves the Father with all of his heart. As do I. As do we all. But Gabriel especially. Gabriel always loved the Father most of all. Unless you want to see your husband's heart break into a million pieces, you must stop speaking of how you're going to punish the Father for what he has done and find a way to forgive him. We must find a way to get the Father and the Mother to reconcile."

"Gabriel always thought that might be what you were trying to do when you went running to Azrael to beg the Mother to spare him," Audrey said. "Trying to force them to talk."

Michael raised one eyebrow, a guilty expression on his face, before he began to pace. "Mary Magdaline was the one who told me about the wagers between the two deities. If I'd had any idea the two of you were capable of falling in love with each other, I would have suggested a better wager. Honestly … I was just happy when you started treating him like a dog. It's what he's used to."

"What about the Grigori offspring?" Audrey asked. "Can the Savior do anything for _them?"_

"The Savior is not certain how much he will be able to help the Grigori offspring," Michael said. "Before you can pledge service and accept salvation, you have to understand the concept of right from wrong. Although the heavenly host has memorized the list of what the Father considers to be sin, most of them are too fragmented to actually understand what that _means._ If the Savior shapes shells for them without finding enough pieces for them to heal their shattered psyche's, they will wreak havoc upon the Earth. They will be … demons. He will be forced to destroy them all over again."

"That sucks," Audrey said, her face serious. "Is there any way to fix that?"

"The Savior said there were nearly 325,000 Grigori offspring when the Mother destroyed them in a fit of anger and cast their souls into the void," Michael said. "He used the anology of taking 325,000 glass goblets, putting them in a burlap sack, and then smashing them all to pieces with a baseball bat. That's what's left of the Grigori children. Pieces. He said the Mother has spent the past 64,000 years going repeatedly into the void, hunting for lost pieces, and trying to piece something back together, but all she gets is angry, shattered fragments that just want to destroy anything they are aimed at. Without a shell, it's a hopeless task. Even _with _a mortal shell … she's not sure how complete they will ever be. She broke them really badly. It's why … it's why she stays away from heaven. She's ashamed of what she did."

"Did what?" Audrey asked. "First you say the Father destroyed your sisters, but then you say the Mother destroyed their children. Why? It just doesn't seem like her."

"Understand that what I am telling you is the Mother's own explanation of what happened that she told the Savior," Michael said. "I have no memory of it. Nor does he. She was pregnant with him at the time. Not born yet. Because she was in semi-corporeal form and not guarding the gates to the void, no one was there to capture my sisters' souls when the Father destroyed them in a fit of anger. I suspect the two of them had taken a little time away from heaven to indulge in some mortal pleasure together to conceive the Savior … what you humans call a romantic getaway … and left my sisters in charge. When they got back, the sisters announced they had married their Grigori lovers, begat offspring, and seized control of the Earth to be their new home. The Father went … ballistic. With a single thought, he simply dissolved the mortal shells he had created for them and cast their souls into the void for uncreation."

"That … sucks," Audrey whispered. "How could he do that to his own children?"

"Only the _Mother _has ever viewed us as her children," Michael said softly. "He shapes matter so easily … it means little to him. He shaped us to satiate _her_ constant need for physical affection, not be _his _children. She _intended _for us to be her children when she breathed the life spark into us. To the Father, we are just like any other creation he ever created. Stars. Planets. Ants. Dirt. We're there to do a job. If something outlives its usefulness, then he simply gets rid of it."

"So what happened next?" Audrey asked.

"Remember this information is second-hand what the Mother told the Savior told me," Michael said. "We haven't heard the Father's side. But … the Mother's version doesn't seem to be too self-serving. I suspect it is reasonably close to the truth."

"Go one," Audrey asked.

"The Father was unable to simply dissolve the mortal shells of either the Grigori husbands _or _their offspring," Michael said. Lucifer made the husbands, and the offspring were begat normally. The Father can only dissolve matter if he shapes it himself. When two creatures come together in holy union and begat life naturally, it falls outside of his jurisdiction. He has to destroy them the old fashioned way. By killing them by hand. It appears to be the same with creatures the cherubim created. That's why he was so angry I created a dragonfly, but didn't dissolve it. He couldn't. All he could do was squash it like a bug."

"So he sent an asteroid to destroy Earth," Audrey guessed. "Thinking it would kill them?"

"It didn't," Michael said. "The offspring were not half-heavenly in origin like the Nephilim are. Both parents were shaped from the soil of Eden and created to exist in the garden. Only they had different Fathers. The Grigori-Angel children were pure divinity. They simply jumped 'between' the dimensions and landed at heavens' gate. And wanted revenge."

"Can't say I blame them," Audrey said. "Can you?"

"According to the Mother," Michael said, "the Father was forced to stick weapons in our hands and ordered us to go fend them off. Before then, it had always been the _Grigori's _job to defend heaven against the Father's enemies. It's why our sisters found them so irresistible. The Grigori were their protectors."

"Sonneillon said it was the _Mother _who destroyed them and their offspring," Audrey said. "Not the Father. And that she wasn't able to find all the pieces afterwards."

"The Grigori killed my brothers faster than the Father could shape new shells for us," Michael said. "Some of us passed into the void before the Mother could capture us. She had just lost her daughters. And now she was losing her sons, too. She … lost it. It was us, who were still alive, or the husbands and children of the daughters she had already lost. She chose us."

"How terrible," Audrey said. "To be forced to choose amongst your children."

"She had been away when our sisters birthed them," Michael said. "She never got to know them. Whereas she spent the 14 billion years _prior _to that with us."

"She instinctively protected what she knew," Audrey said. "Not the alien-looking grandchildren who were _also _her progeny."

"Which is why she is now so filled with remorse," Michael said. "When the Mother becomes angry, she cannot help but destroy. The chaos of the void is her natural state. The legend of Dark Kali destroying the demons her husband was unable to defeat and then dancing upon her husbands' corpse is true. After she was done destroying the Grigori, she was so angry at the Father for what he had done that she dismembered his semi-corporeal shell. If she hadn't gone into labor at that moment and birthed the Savior, she would have dragged him into the void behind her and all the universe would have been destroyed."

"If she destroyed the Grigori," Audrey asked, "then how are they here?"

"As soon as she calmed down," Michael said, "she was horrified at what she had done. She sat the Savior at the gates of the void with Simbi to babysit him and dove in to retrieve what had been destroyed. The Grigori husbands had been shaped by Lucifer, her son, who had at least some understanding of the void. Their shells and souls were still intact, although they were angry as hell and psychologically damaged. Then she found my sisters' souls, but they had been heavily damaged. The Father refused to shape new shells for them. She did the best she could with what she had. She put the souls in with the husbands so at least they could continue to exist."

"And the heavenly host," Audrey asked. "How did _that_ happen?"

"The Father was angry at her for dismembering him," Michael said. "I guess you can't kill a god by damaging his mortal shell. Only destroy the shell. He just made himself a new one. He refused to help her."

"So she grafted each soul onto whatever material she could shape into a … blob," Audrey said.

"Blob?" Michael asked.

"That's how Azrael describes the Mother's ability to shape matter," Audrey said. "Not very … sophisticated."

"That's an understatement," Michael scoffed. "For as far back as I can remember, the Father has sent us into battle with the heavenly host as our attack dogs and I have never seen one more corporeal than a glop of mud. It's their ability to possess others and torment their minds until they feel compelled to act against their wishes which makes them useful to the Father."

"So how'd they end up with the Father?" Audrey asked.

"The Mother only destroys when she is really angry," Michael said. "When he seized control of them and put them to work, she didn't complain. I suspect she hoped someday he would find them useful enough to shape new mortal shells for them. But he never has. He taunts her with them."

"Why does he feel the need to taunt her?" Audrey asked.

"Because she refuses to return to him," Michael said. "She told the Savior that until the Father learns to be less controlling and more loving, she refuses to even speak to him. It drives him … nuts. He can't stand the thought of something he can't control."

"Guessed that much already," Audrey said. "Founding father of the controlling asshole club."

Michael's face alternated between anger and a smile. Holy blasphemy. She spoke the truth, but that part of him that loved the Father and had been taught not to question him did not want to hear it. The side that sought the truth finally won over.

"He's gotten better over the years," Michael said. "He's just … inconsistent. One minute he's permissive. And then the next … he's back to the way he was. It's like … he knows where it is he's supposed to go … but he thinks it's stupid so he keeps resisting. But then the Mother slams him and won't speak to him … so he misses her … so he tries to shape up … but he still doesn't understand why his way isn't the right way … so he backslides again. I've had no contact with the Mother, but after Mary Magdaline tipped me off what was _really _going on, I started paying attention to his mood swings. It's why I understood he didn't _really _want to destroy humanity. Just find a way to hang on to the only tool he still has to control her. The Savior. Once the Savior has inherited his kingdom, the wager is over. The Mother doesn't ever have to have anything to do with the Father ever again."

"The cycle of a batterer," Audrey said, looking down at the ground. "Before I met Gabriel … I had this boyfriend. Ex-Marine. Had a thing for guns. Psycho as hell. My parents hated him, but I kept going back to him because … I don't know why I kept going back. I couldn't talk to my parents about it. I just … my best friend finally dragged me to the local battered women's program and made me talk to one of the counselors there. Never told my mother. Went a few times to the focus groups. Realized I'd rather rot in hell than ever put up with the kind of shit ever again. Sick thing is … the more I kept telling him to go to hell afterwards and avoiding him. The more he wanted me back. He'd promise he'd change, so I'd see him. Not get back together, mind you. Just … go out on a date for a movie or something. The first thing he'd do is try to get me to stay with him and I said no. You've got to prove to me you've straightened out your act. He promised he had … but his behavior said otherwise. After a while, I just learned to avoid him completely. He did a 10-month tour of duty in Iraq. Think he had PTSD or something and that was why he was so fucked up. But … it wasn't _my _problem."

"Is that why you held off Gabriel so long after you realized you felt something for him?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," Audrey said softly, her mouth twitching slightly into a sad smile. "He _did _kill me, after all."

"I'm glad things went the way they did," Michael said. "I mean … not the killing part. What happened afterwards. Gabriel was always most like the Father in a lot of ways. He needed to be brought down a peg or two. Or five hundred thousand. You taught him the lesson the Father never seemed to have learned. Love must be earned. Not demanded. To keep it … it needs to be nurtured. It's not a wager you can win and then just put up on a shelf without dusting it once in a while."

They stood awkwardly a moment. Archangel. And human. Friends.

"What would the Savior like for me to tell the Nephilim?" Audrey finally asked, shivering with the cold. "I need to give them an honest answer they can wrap their heads around so they know what they're risking if they choose to follow him."

"You have your answer," Michael said. "They are going to have to decide for themselves on a case-by-case basis. We can help guide them, but until the Savior has matured and grown powerful enough to assume leadership, they're taking a big risk of going back to wherever it was they just came from, only without their mortal shells this time. Either way, they're screwed."

"So it's status-quo screwed?" Audrey asked. "Or pie-in-the-sky by-and-by screwed?"

"Essentially," Michael said softly. "It's not for lack of _wanting _to help them on the part of the Savior. Very _few _of them have done anything the Savior would find unforgiveable. It's just … the Father really made things difficult for everybody."

"Personally," Audrey said. "I'd tell the Father to fuck off and go with the path of hope. At least then I'd have something to live for!"

"And that is why _you _were chosen to be the Mother's vessel in this world," Michael said. "And not some holy man in a cave. For all your flaws, when push comes to shove, your instincts are always right."

They paused there a moment, Audrey shivering in the snow. Michael impervious cold because he was filled with holy fire.

"Thanks for coming, Michael," Audrey said. "I'll go tell them the news."


	131. Chapter 130

_Note__: My gratitude to all the readers and reviewers who've given me feedback and encouragement so far. Reviews are like oxygen for a writer! My thanks! _

_For those who just checked back for this chapter update, CanYouHoldBalloons has done some great fan-art based on Chapter 126 and also a picture of Gabriel at deviant art. I hope you go pay her a visit. The link to the Azrael cartoon is posted on Chapter 126. The link to the Gabriel artwork is (replace [dot] with [.])_

_Chyou [dot] deviantart [dot] com/gallery/#/d3l7oda_

X

Chapter 130

"This is disgusting!" Lena groused.

"T-t-t-totally wrong, d-d-dude," Jose' stuttered. So wrong, in fact, that the young Hispanic disciple was enthusiastically filming the entire lesson with his webcam.

"It's part of life," Mambo De Vivre said with her usual pragmatism. "Get used to it."

"It's something I'd really rather not ever have to think about," the Senator said, grimacing with revulsion.

"City boy!" Cindy scoffed. "Get your butt over there and start stabbing!"

"I think I'm going to convert to vegetarianism," Lena said.

Audrey stood with the other disciples, watching with macabre curiosity as Gabriel, Gunn, their newest disciple Muhammad, and the Rabbi, of all people, vigorously took turns stabbing, slicing, hacking to shit and dismembering the carcasses of sheep, goats, and a cow Muhammad had made them all help him ritualistically slaughter earlier in the name of Allah. Because of the use they were putting the carcasses to now, the meat from them would no longer be considered halal. Suitable for consumption by devout Muslims. The Imam had requested donations of animals ready for slaughter from the surrounding community. The meat would be distributed back into Toronto's surviving non-Muslim community as a goodwill offering once they were done using the carcasses the meat had once been attached to as a learning tool.

The Imam was pleased. Conversion to Islam of Canadians of English and French origin was at an all-time high. It was a strange little blend of faith the Islamic community now practiced. Contrary to popular misconception, Islam had always recognized the Savior as a Prophet and incorporated many of his teachings. Not in a 'Jesus is Lord' kind of way the way Christians did. But more in a "Jesus is a Prophet, like Muhammad, who taught the word of Allah to the Gentiles' kind of way.

Like the Rabbi, the Islamic community felt they were still waiting for their Messiah to come and save _them._ They were not hostile to the notion of the Savior being _the _Messiah. Just waiting for proof. Proof in the form of their congregation member, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who had just happened to be named after the mythical Twelfth Imam who was supposed to battle at the Messiah's side, to go now to the Savior and verify that he was _'the one.'_

The fact the Toronto mosque was crawling with angels, including the highest Archangel of the Quran, even if now fallen, was going a long way towards alleviating the Imam's skepticism about false prophets.

"Don't chop at it like a tree!" Muhammad chastised the Rabbi. "You must sever the limb at the joint with a single cut of your blade. Like this!" Muhammad effortlessly cleaved the leg of a goat off at the shoulder with a neat slice of his knife.

"Kosher is superior to halal!" the Rabbi scoffed. "Our meat is cleaner than yours!"

"Only in the way it is cooked afterwards," Muhammad chastised him. "Your _skills_ as a butcher are definitely inferior to mine. Most of the animals you slaughtered by your own hand would not pass halal standards. Had I not cold-stunned them first by electricity, the animals would have suffered greatly from your efforts."

Cold-stunning was a non-fatal jolt of electricity through the brain of an animal about to be slaughtered so it would be unconscious. It was a compromise between the Muslim community, whose religious beliefs forbade the eating of 'carrion' or animals who had died by a means other than bloodletting, and their non-Muslim neighbors, who were revolted by the thought of an animal not being totally 'put to sleep' a fatal jolt of electricity before butchering.

Of course … most consumers of meat products were of the opinion of the Senator. They only focused on how the animal was treated by the large commercial slaughterhouses during the actual incident of slaughter, not how the animals were treated beforehand or both Judaism's and Islam's prohibitions against the animals seeing another animal be slaughtered before them or even to see the knife which would be their undoing.

Both religions would frown upon the use the disciples were putting the 'meat' to before final distribution right now…

The Rabbi was mollified by Muhammad's dim view of his 'kosher butchery' skills. His Hasidic brethren had been forced to make some unpalatable compromises in the end, eating food out of cans that was not kosher. With no livestock available in Manhattan and competition getting fierce for what food resources were left after two years of scavenging, the Rabbi had confessed that his people would have soon been faced with the choice to chance moving to a more rural location, or start ritualistically sacrificing rats to Yahweh for consumption. The Rabbi was _determined _to learn the proper way to feed his followers once he finally returned to them.

Even if it was from his historical adversary…

"People!" Audrey snapped from where she stood on the sidelines. "Stop sniping at each other. Both of you come from a country the size of Connecticut! The rest of us find your petty disputes to be boring and a waste of our time! So shut up and start dismembering your enemies!"

Gabriel shot her an inscrutable look that, had she not known him so well, she would have thought was annoyance. Only the slight uptick of one side of his lips and the 'chuckle' of his wings tipped her off that he found her comment to be highly amusing. For the past two weeks, they had all been forced to listen to Muhammad and the Rabbi snipe at one another about the subtle differences in nearly identical religious beliefs.

"Yaaah!" Gunnlaeif shouted as he leaped in the air with his machete and thwacked at the torso of the butchered cow hanging from chains from the ceiling of the butchery. The machete sank into the ribcage and got stuck.

"No, no, no!" Muhammad shouted. "The Grigori are hardened fighters! They are not going to let you get close enough to strike at their vital organs like that. And look! Now you have lost your weapon! They are pack hunters. As soon as you sink your blade in one Grigori, his brother will kill you!"

"He's right, Gunn," Gabriel said softly. "It's been a long time since I was forced to fight one, but they fight like a pack of wolves. Even angels are no match for them without the holy fire the Father uses to harden our feathers and make us strong."

"But this guy is one hurting puppy right now," Gunn said with a grin, his bearded face splattered with gore from the carcasses he had been vigorously hacking at all day.

"I have studied the Grigori form for nearly two years now when they have come to parley with the Nephilim!" Muhammad snapped. "Belaziel has ordered his kin that they will only fight to defend themselves! You want to mutilate his limbs so he cannot strike back at you, not kill him, unless you absolutely have no choice."

"That's useless," the Rabbi scoffed. "They'll think we've gone soft if we let any live!"

"An injured Grigori will be a drain of resources upon the entire pack," Gunn said thoughtfully. "Classic non-traditional warfare. Weaken your enemy by slowing him down to care for his own injured. Okay. Maim, mutilate and mayhem! Not kill."

"Mayhem?" Lena asked Audrey from where they stood safely out of weapons range. "As in … riots?"

"Mayhem means injuring a person or property so they are incapacitated, or maimed," the Senator said. "Mayhem. Maimed. Got it? Same Latin root."

"Oh," Lena said, grinning "And her I thought all this time the word referred to the mess left over after a really big party."

"Must have been one hell of a party," the Senator said.

"I've been to one of Lena's parties," Audrey said. "Mayhem is an accurate term for what you have to clean up the next morning."

"That move he does appears to be familiar," Non Gae said in her lightly accented English as she pointed to a maneuver Muhammad was demonstrating where he swung two butcher knives at once and then did that windmill-thingy he did where he sliced in with both knives. "I learn something similar to it, but not to act as butcher. Kisaeng do dance like it. Geommo. Two-swords dance." Non Gae did a graceful series of maneuvers with a couple of empty cardboard paper towel rolls in her hands that appeared remarkably similar to the maneuver Muhammad was demonstrating at the moment.

"I saw some of the girls at the … um … uh … _school,_" Audrey said, stammering as she searched for a kinder word than _brothel _to call the place where the North Korean courtesan had … um … _worked _… prior to their recruiting her. "One of your assistants was teaching the others to dance with these little brass sticks with rings on the end."

"Geommo originally done with real swords," Non Gae said. "Japanese prohibit real swords during dance after several kisaeng kill Japanese invading generals. My namesake, original Non Gae, get close to head honcho, kill. But Japanese like dance. So allow with short sticks with rings instead of swords. Prohibit men from learning to fight or use weapons. Only kisaeng remember old forms of Korean two-sword fighting."

"Show me?" Muhammad asked, coming over to where Audrey was spectating the polite young Muslims' gruesome lessons on how to dismember your enemies with a single cut of your blade. "I watch a Haidong Gumdo competition on YouTube before the apocalypse. Two sword fighting. Hear Koreans revive martial art form from moves preserved in old geisha dance."

"Yes," Non Gae said. "Kisaeng preserve many aspects of Korean culture otherwise lost. Dress used for dance similar to military uniforms used during Joseong Dynasty."

"Now I've heard it all," Lyubitshke said. "A dance that kills."

"I've _tried _one of those gypsy dances of yours!" the Senator said. "They _do_ kill. Your _back!"_ For emphasis, the Senator hunched over and held his back as though in pain, doing his best 'morning after' impersonation of his posture after pulling an all-night party trying to keep up with the younger Romani men.

The disciples all laughed. Audrey noticed Gabriel's curious glance. He had set aside his mace and was using an ordinary butcher knife like Muhammad used to replicate the young man's moves. Engrossed, as usual, in perfecting his skills as a human … um … angelic weapon. Audrey shuddered at the intense, single-minded expression on his face as he turned back to his 'lesson.' She usually managed to push out of her mind just who and what her husband was and how they had met, but times like today inevitably dug up old memories of fear and horror at her first glimpse of the Left Hand of God. God's enforcer.

"Fan dance also have military applications," Non Gae said, distracting Audrey's ruminations. "Originally use steel fan. Get close to enemy general. Slice throat. After I sent to USA, Kim Jong-Il make school in Pyongyang to teach kisaeng to do both. Train kisaeng to be assassin. I gone by then. No learn. But moves the same."

Non Gae pantomimed the graceful, swanlike moves of the fan dance she had taught them earlier using a folded piece of paper. Suddenly, like lightning, her wrist flicked the paper fan across Muhammad's throat. Had it been made of metal, it would have severed his windpipe as neatly as the halal butcher severed the carotid arteries of the livestock he slaughtered for consumption daily.

Audrey stared at the graceful moves. Whatever the strange combination of maneuvers were that she now saw Gabriel do when he fought the Grigori each night in her vision, it kept him alive a few minutes longer than his regular battle skills. She had seen countless kung fu movies. Although there was a martial arts aspect to what Gabriel did that bought him time, it was more than that. It was as if in the vision he became more … graceful. Like a ballet dancer or something. A lightness to the way he moved that made the weaponry truly unanticipated.

"Muhammad," Audrey ordered. "I want you to teach Non Gae to adapt her two-swords dance to real swords. Or whatever we can scrounge up to approximate swords. And then teach her to hack off whatever snout or claw they throw at her. It's about time we started looking at all the funny little skills we've picked up over the years that may not be readily apparent as defensive maneuvers and see what we can do to adapt them to defend ourselves."

"Non-traditional warfare," Muhammed said. "Way of the Bedouin when taking on superior forces. Hit them when they don't expect it. Turn _everything _into a weapon." Their newest disciple urged Non Gae to select blades from the large assortment of butcher knives, fillet knives, and meat cleavers he kept perpetually sharpened and led her over to a sheep carcass for her to practice hacking to shit with the two long butcher knives she had picked.

"Ooooh," the Reverend said, just coming in from a meeting he had been having with Belaziel and the Imam and watching Non Gae gracefully whirl in a ballet-like circle of flying deadly steel. "Impressive. In a Gothic, horror movie kind of way."

Audrey looked at the Reverend, her dark blue eyes almost black with worry as she nervously nibbled on her lower lip, her arms wrapped around herself as though cold. Last night's vision had been particularly bad. As though the Mother had _wanted _her to see every bite and tear the Grigori made to tear her husband apart before he died. _Wanted _her to see every mistake the disciples made as they defended themselves against the Grigori which led to their being killed. Audrey knew the Mother meant well, trying to give her a chance to guide them how to correct deficits in their training, but it was horrific to watch her husband and friends have their throats slashed, intestines torn out of their bellies, and limbs gnawed off.

They were too clumsy. Too slow. Too hesitant to use what they knew and use it to kill. There was a reason Gabriel and Gunn were the last to fall. They were professional soldiers. Accustomed to killing when the need arose. The relative ease with which they had traveled since the Appalachian mountain's had made the rest of them soft. The Mother was telling them to toughen up.

"Gabriel," Audrey said, announcing her approach before she stepped forward, a lesson she had learned the hard way when he was engrossed in practice. "Honey?"

"Yes, little Prophet," Gabriel asked, breathing heavily from exertion, a light sweat glistening upon his beautiful, broad forehead and high cheekbones. His irises were wide with bloodlust, much the way they became wide when he was sexually aroused. Audrey had discovered one form of heightened emotion easily transitioned into the other. With _both _of them.

"When you're done here," Audrey said. "We're all going to learn that dance Non Gae knows. The two-sword dance. If the Grigori have natural weapons at the end of each limb, then we need to learn to double our effectiveness as well."

Gabriel looked skeptical, his wings twitching with annoyance. Audrey gave him her most stubborn gaze in return, staring him down. Gabriel's breathing hastened, his broad chest rising and falling as bloodlust transformed into true lust at the challenge in her eyes. They would have great sex later.

"Okay, people!" Audrey snapped. "No prima dona's allowed here anymore. The Grigori are furious large numbers of Nephilim are taking vows of service to the Savior. We've become even _bigger _targets than we already were. They're bigger, stronger, and faster than we are. If you get cornered, you need to know how to hit them back."

The other disciples murmured nervously. Being the target of demons of legend hadn't been what some of them had signed up for. There had been four attacks in three days on Nephilim travelling alone within the city, one of them serious. The Grigori didn't seem to care that the Nephilim who the Reverend baptized also conditioned that vow upon the understanding they would not betray the Grigori who had freed them from Shoel unless it was to defend their own lives. The Nephilim far outnumbered the 200 Grigori, but their angelic genes had been diluted with each succeeding generation and many of the third- and fourth-generation were in poor physical condition from their interment in Sheol. Bezaliel had ordered his offspring to travel in minimum groups of three adults at all times.

"Reverend?" Audrey asked. "How did your meeting with Bezaliel and the Imam go?"

"There's a supply train that's getting diesel fuel someplace along the route that travels the Rail Canada line first north around Lake Huron, and then west," the Reverend said. "They're not sure how far the line is actually operating or how often, but they've heard as far as Winnipeg. They'll escort us to board the train and provide additional security as far as Barrie. We'll see then if the compass rose still wants us to continue on the train, or board a ship across Lake Huron."

"When's the next supply train due?" Audrey asked.

"Tomorrow," the Reverend said. "He thinks. It's never exact. It comes every two or three weeks."

"It will have to do," Audrey said, absent-mindedly reaching down to place a hand over her growing abdomen. She was definitely showing now. Almost five months pregnant. "We've lost too much time here. We're running out of time."

The Reverend reached out to squeeze her shoulder, his eyes sympathetic. Audrey had discussed the visions with him, her apprehension about how long it had taken them to get to this end of the country. For two years and three months they had wandered the country on their strange little mission to help the Savior. Last they knew, the Savior was on the West Coast and they were _here _in Toronto. There were still two disciples to find.

"Please convey to Belaziel and the Imam our gratitude," Audrey said. "We'll be ready to go."

Five months pregnant. In the vision, she was about the same size Charlie had been when the apocalypse had come. Eight months or so, perhaps. Possibly close to nine. They had three, four months tops to travel the country, find two missing disciples, and bring them to the Savior to do whatever it was he needed them to do for him. Time. Time was now the enemy.

She glanced at Gabriel, his intense concentration as he picked up a second knife and practiced wielding it in his non-dominant hand at the same time as he wielded the knife in his dominant one. Non Gae both gave him pointers of how to coordinate the movement to be natural, while Muhammad gave him pointers about where to aim both weapons simultaneously to land a devastating limb-cleaving blow.

She was almost out of time…


	132. Chapter 131

_Note__: For those who like illustrations to go with their story, CanYouHoldBalloons has posted two more fantastic sketches to go with this story of the Archangel Michael. If you're just popping back for an update hot off the presses, the link to the first one is back at Chapter 129. The other is of young Michael as a cherub with his dragonfly at:_

_chyou [dot] deviantart [dot] com/gallery/#/d3lbja3_

_Thanks, everybody, who keeps reading and reviewing! The grown step-daughter has (sob) gone off to visit other friends, so I've had to slow down my pace and do frivolous things such as feed my kids! That Muse! Such a slave-driver!_

X

Chapter 131

"_You must all defend heaven!" the Father shouted. "Here." _

_The Father tore out a sapling from the soil of Eden and quickly reshaped the knarly root-junction into a mace. He stuck it into Gabriel's hand. It was so heavy, he could barely lift it. Around him, the Seraphim and the Thrones cried, wringing their hands. Down the line of cherubs the Father went, grabbing at the nearest object and reshaping it into a weapon. Michael … a sword. Uriel … a spear. Raphael … a staff. Azrael … a scythe. Lucifer … a ray of pure light. Shemihaza … another sword. Bezaliel … a cutlass. Whatever weapon the Father could shape was being handed to the brothers._

"_Where's the Mother?" Gabriel asked, panic-stricken at the loud wailing of the other creatures of heaven. "Where are our sisters?"_

_His sisters. The Father had asked Gabriel to let him know if anything went wrong while he and the Mother were gone, not trusting his sisters to be level-headed. Too much like the Mother, the Father had commented. When they disappeared for a hundred years, Gabriel became frightened. He sent a message via the dove the Father left for such purposes that their sisters were missing and he was afraid. The Father had come back alone and, in a fit of rage, disappeared. Now … a loud gong was ringing. The gong of danger. Never, in all the time Gabriel had ever existed, had anyone ever needed to ring that gong._

"_Do as you're told!" the Father screamed, slapping Gabriel twice across the face. "Get a grip on yourself! -Someone- needs to defend heaven, and the others are necessary for proper stellar movement. You are the most expendable."_

"_B-b-but…" Gabriel stammered._

"_Do as you're told!" the Father shouted. "Or I will undo –you- the way I undid your confounded sisters. USELESS creations! I should have KNOWN better than to create creatures just for your idiot Mother to toy with! LOOK at what they have DONE!"_

"_M-m-mother…" Gabriel cried, tears streaming down his face as he sobbed in fear. "Where's the Mother?"_

_Many times the Father had become angry at the Cherubs, screaming at the Mother and smashing the Cherubs creations, but this was the first time anyone had ever struck him before. The mace the Father had given him was so big it went from the ground up to his chest. The weapon for a very large man, not a chubby little cherub who had barely reached puberty and not yet begun his growth spurt like the others had already done._

"_Gabriel," Lucifer whispered. "Don't anger him. Do as you're told!"_

"_I'm scared," Gabriel cried, hot tears running down his cheeks. Although he was the biggest and heaviest of all the cherubs, he was also the least mature, having been shaped last. "What did he do to our sisters?"_

"_You tattled on them," Uriel sneered, giving him a shove. "Little kiss ass! Serves you right! He's gone and dissipated them!"_

"_D-d-d-dissipated?" Gabriel stammered between hic-coughs._

"_He uncreated them!" Uriel snapped. "As in … dead. Real dead! He cast them into the void! And if you don't stop sniveling and crying for Mommy, he's going to do the same to YOU!"_

"_Lucifer!" the Father screamed. "Since you created these things, you're going to lead the charge against them."_

_Lucifer visibly gulped. Lucifer had gone into his growth spurt within the past million years ago and had shot up, but he was still a gawky, gangly adolescent. He picked up his shaft of light and gestured to the others._

"_C'mon…" he said. "It's time to grow up and be angels."_

"_Right behind you, brother," Shemihaza said. He was one of the –oldest- of the male cherubs. An angel, really. More filled out than the others. More deliberate and mature. "I've got your back."_

"_Mother? Mother?" Gabriel cried. He was terrified. His heart was racing so fast in his chest he thought it was going to leap out of his chest. He couldn't breathe. He fell over, in a near faint._

"_Father?" Simbi asked, materializing next to him. "I sensed you were in distress."_

"_Where's the Mother?" Gabriel cried. "Something is wrong! I've never seen the Father so furious!"_

_Simbi regarded the chaos going on around him with his intelligent, golden serpentine eyes. Simbi wasn't the only animal familiar shaped by the cherubs who had sensed their creator's distress and appeared. Michael's dragonfly. Azrael's nightingale. Raphael's hummingbird. One by one the cherubs playmates felt their terror and appeared. It was more the behavior of the animals that –didn't- find their creatresses that tipped Simbi off the nature of the problem. Amitea's unicorn. Lucia's gorgon. Eloa's griffin. The creatures ran back and forth at the edge of the garden, as far from the Father as possible, eyes wide with terror._

"_Where are your sisters?" Simbi asked._

"_I don't know!" Gabriel babbled incoherently through his tears. "I sent the Father a message like he asked telling him they've been gone a long time and he came back and then he got really mad and he went away and then he came back again and now the bell is ringing and he's really furious and he said we've got to fight demons or we're all going to die and heaven will fall and I don't know where the Mother is and … SIMBI!" Gabriel began to wail in terror._

"_The Father left her on the seed planet," Simbi said. "She's … um … she's in no condition to travel right now. But I'll go alert her there's trouble."_

_In a flash, Simbi was gone._

_The Father shoved Gabriel and the others out of the garden and towards the main gates of heaven. The gates none of the Cherubs except for his sisters had ever passed through. Outside, there was shouting and snarling._

_The Father shoved them out into the dust and slammed the gate shut behind them. The brothers huddled together in terror, their backs pressed against the iron bars of the gates of heaven. They had never been trained to fight. _

_Thousands of some kind of strange creature Gabriel had never seen before snarled at them, their eyes glowing with fury. Creatures that looked like … them. Only not them. Humanoid bodies, but fangs instead of teeth. Leathery wings with a sharp pointy bone protruding from the knee joint like a claw. Clawed hands and feet. Golden eyes like Simbi or the Grigori. And larger. Definitely larger than an angel, though not so large as a Grigori. _

_What the hell –were- those things? Gabriel had watched nearly every single creature the Father had ever shaped for the Mother to breath into existence and he had never seen anything like them. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of them. As far as he could see, the heavens writhed with creatures trying to breach the walls and get into the garden. Gabriel hyperventilated with an emotion he had never felt before in his life. Terror._

_Asmodeus stepped forward out of the churning tide of terrifying creatures and stepped towards the cherubs. Oh. There was no problem. Asmodeus and the other Grigori were here to protect them. Their Grigori protectors stood between the cherubs and the writhing see of hatred which threatened to consume heaven. All was well…_

"_Asmodeus," Gabriel greeted with a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness you've come!"_

"_You killed our mates!" Asmodeus screamed, combined anguish and hatred making his large, muscular body shake with rage as he bellowed the charge._

_Before Gabriel could utter another word, Asmodeus launched himself at Gabriel and tore out his throat. Disbelief momentarily delayed the pain. Asmodeus? Why would Asmodeus want to hurt him? Asmodeus was his friend. _

_It hurt! It hurt! It hurt so bad! Gabriel shuddered with agony and tried to scream as Asmodeus tore out his intestines with his claws, and then was still. The last thing Gabriel remembered before his life spark left the shell the Father had shaped for it was the sea of strange writhing creatures surge forward and begin to do the same to his brothers…_

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted. "Wake up! You're having a nightmare!"

_He screamed in pain as he woke up back in the garden, the Father screaming at him to get to work and shoving a –new- mace into his hand. His shell was larger now. The mace didn't seem so large. Not so heavy. His wings were … stiffer. The feathers were sharp. Anger. He could feel the Father's anger surging though his veins and deaden his emotions. Give him strength. Make him look at the situation with dispassion and contempt. Holy fire._

_Was this what it felt like to be the Father?_

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted, attempting to shake him awake. "Wake up!"

"_Get back in there and fight, you coward!" the Father screamed. "The next time you screw up like that, I'm just going to let your life spark go into the void!"_

_The void. The place the Father used to terrify naughty Cherubs when they displeased him. The place where even the dead died. The place Uriel said the Father had just sent his sisters. Before he could even speak and ask the Father 'why?' the Father shoved him out the gates of heaven once more. To fight. To fight the Grigori who, until they had disappeared along with his sisters one hundred years ago, had always been his friends._

_He didn't understand…_

_Another Grigori launched himself at Gabriel. It didn't seem so big this time. This time, Gabriel had enough common sense not to let himself be killed. Lifting the mace, he swung it with all his might and knocked the Grigori across the battlefield._

"Ow!" Audrey screamed. "Gabriel! Wake up! You just hit me!"

Gabriel shouted as he grabbed the Grigori by its long neck and began to strangle the life out of it, smashing at it with his mace. This Grigori didn't act like the others. It was crying. Why was the Grigori crying?

"Gabriel!" Audrey choked out. "Please. Stop. You're hurting me…"

Audrey? What was Audrey doing in the battle? And why was she sobbing? He realized he couldn't see because he had his eyes tightly screwed shut, trying to shut out the memory of the war. The Grigori and their half-angel offspring had stormed the gates of heaven seeking revenge. They'd breached the gates and nearly destroyed the garden.

"Audrey?" Gabriel asked, his heart racing as he gasped for breath as though he had just flown a marathon. He realized he had his wife by the throat. As soon as he released his grip, Audrey skittered away from him like a terrified rabbit.

"Y-y-you h-h-hurt me!" Audrey cried, her beautiful velvet-blue eyes wide with terror and tears as she pressed her back to the wall of the train clickety-clacking along on the tracks out of Toronto towards Winnipeg. At the other end of the rail car, the horses nickered and nervously stomped their feet, Haizum whinnying loudly and kicking at the side of the rail car with both hind legs.

"Little Prophet?" Gabriel asked, reaching out to take her into her arms and comfort her. She screamed and put her hands over her head, sobbing in terror. He hadn't seen her this afraid since … since …

Since the night he had smashed down the door of the Paradise Diner and out of the corner of his eye noticed a young woman in a too-short skirt screeching in terror as he single-mindedly swung his mace at the middle-aged man who had leaped to catch the newborn Savior in midair before the infant had hit the floor.

"No!" Audrey screamed as he reached for her again, cowering against the wall with her hands above her head. She was afraid of him. She was his wife, the love of his life, mother of his yet-unborn child, the woman he had given up heaven for, and something he had done had made her afraid of him.

"W-w-what happened," Gabriel stammered, looking around to see who had hurt her. Nobody else was there. There was nobody standing behind him. She wasn't cringing at an enemy crashing their sleeping quarters for the night on the train. She was cringing in terror at _him._ He had woken up to find he had his hands around her throat.

"Y-y-you hurt m-m-meee…" Audrey sobbed, her arms wrapped around herself as she shuddered with tears. She yelped and moved further away from him, into the corner, as far away as she could get from him without opening a hole in the wall and crawling through it.

Gabriel sat with his back against the opposite wall of the rail car, feeling the vibration move through his body from the clack-clack-clack of the rail car as he tried to figure out what to do. Slowly, the bloodlust which had raged through his body in the dream dissipated, his breathing returning to normal. Audrey sat curled in a fetal position, crying, but would scream every time he got close. She didn't want him anywhere near him.

When he had torn the roof off the police car, she had been fearless. Defiant. Determined to not let him have his intended quarry. Now she was … broken. She had trusted he had changed, and something he had done during a nightmare had hurt her so badly she was too terrified to even let him near her. Much less comfort her.

Trust. It had taken him almost two-and-a-half years to earn her trust, and with a single act he had just shattered it.

"I'm going to go get the Reverend and Lena," Gabriel said, trying to make his voice as reassuring and low as he possibly could. Audrey yelped as he lurched to his feet, flapping his wings slightly to catch his balance on the swaying train. The nightmare had left him … disoriented. He had started the nightmare with one body and ended it in a second body.

Audrey didn't answer him as he backed slowly out of the rail car, opening the door to leap between the cars and make his way up a dozen cars or so to get to the passenger car where the others slept. The last thing he heard as he shut the door behind him was the sound of his little Prophet's wail as she let loose and cried.

"Reverend," Gabriel said, gently shaking the Reverend awake where he lay curled up around his wife. Quasi-wife. Wife who wasn't a wife in the biblical sense because they still hadn't consummated their relationship yet. Just as _he _and the Prophet had curled up platonically before they had finally chosen to take their relationship to the next level. "Reverend … I need you."

The Reverend groaned and gently extricated himself from Lyubitshke, whispering sweet nothings into her ear that he would be back soon. While the Reverend grabbed his shoes and sweater, Gabriel did the same with Lena, gently shook her awake.

"What's wrong?" Lena asked.

Gabriel looked first at the Reverend, who was now as fully awake as someone shaken awake before dawn _could _be awake, and then Lena, Audrey's best gal-pal. Best gay guy transvestite drag queen gal-pal.

"I had a nightmare … dream … more a memory," Gabriel said, his expression serious. "Of the war against the Grigori when they stormed heaven to wreak revenge upon the Father."

"That bad, huh?" Lena asked.

"I hurt Audrey," Gabriel whispered, his voice breaking with tears. "She was in my arms when I dreamed. I don't know what I did to her, but she screams every time I move near her. Please. Lena. Could you please go back and make sure she's okay?"

Lena opened her mouth as though to speak, took one look at the tears streaming down his face, and thought better of it. Grabbing her shoes and sweater, she nodded and headed back to the rail car with the horses where Gabriel had set up their bower for the trip so Audrey's nightly vision wouldn't terrorize the others.

He wished he hadn't, now. Perhaps the others could have pulled him away from her before he had done whatever it was he had done to make her so afraid of him.

Placing his head down into his hands, he began to weep.

"Tell me what happened," the Reverend asked, his voice reassuring and strong. The voice of a trained minister.

Gabriel told him the hideous memory which had finally surfaced about the day the Grigori and their offspring had turned against the Father and stormed heaven….


	133. Chapter 132

Chapter 132

"Little Prophet?" Gabriel said, his words a plea as he stood swaying in the entrance to the linkage between the rail cars, waiting for her to bid him to enter.

Lena squeezed her hand. "You don't have to talk to him if you don't want to," Lena said. "He can come back later."

"It's okay," Audrey said. "I have … we need to talk about what happened." She rubbed her bruised abdomen where Gabriel had hit her as he had flailed about speaking in the ancient language during his nightmare. A memory. Gabriel had told Lena he had dreamed a memory of the day the Grigori offspring had stormed heaven, but Lena didn't know any of the details. Only that Gabriel had nearly strangled the life out of her with one large hand while he had repeatedly hit her with the second before she had finally made him wake up.

Lena reached out to gently touch the gentle swell of her abdomen. The place Gabriel had punched. Their baby. Audrey had felt cramps earlier, but they had quickly subsided. There was no bleeding. He hadn't punched her that hard. It was more the fact she had been awoken from a sound sleep only to have him hit her when she tried to wake him that had her freaked out.

Lena squeezed past Gabriel, her posture stiff and angry and her eyes daggers as she glared at him for what he had done.

"Thank you, Lena," Gabriel whispered, his voice shuddering with emotion. "You're a good friend."

Lena's stance softened. Gabriel had been having a nightmare. He hadn't meant to hurt her. His eyes were red and puffy, as though he had been crying. His wings were drooped so low they dragged onto the icy linkage between the cars. Humble wings, Audrey called the posture. It was a rare day in heaven when an angel dragged their wings upon the ground. Lena reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

"Physically she's going to be okay," Lena said. "Emotionally…"

Lena didn't finish the sentence. Audrey looked up to meet Lena's eyes. Her female impersonating best friend had a haunted look in her eyes. The same haunted look she always got when she spoke of how she had lost the love of her life, her same-sex husband, to the heavenly host the night of the apocalypse. Lena knew what it felt like when somebody you loved suddenly became possessed by demons sent by the Father. Only in this case, the 'demon' was Gabriel's own past.

Lena squeezed around him on the narrow walkway between cars and disappeared into the next car. Gabriel stood there, unmoving in the doorway, waiting for her to grant him permission to enter.

"Enter," Audrey said formally. She pointed to a spot on the opposite wall of the rail car. Gabriel knew she was freaked out. He tucked his wings in as tight to his back as he could and slithered along the wall, crouching down once he got there so that he didn't tower over her.

"I'm so sorry…" Gabriel whispered. "I didn't realize what I was doing."

"You hurt me," Audrey said, the tears starting all over again. She gasped for breath, willing herself to remain calm. Although in her head she knew Gabriel had been having a nightmare and hadn't meant to hurt her, in her gut she was terrified of him.

Fresh tears streamed down Gabriel's face as well. How readily angels wept when they felt grief! They felt it, so they wept, and then they were done with it. None of that macho bullshit, pretending their hearts hadn't just been ripped out of their chests. They never flinched when they were physically hurt. They never made any indication when they were afraid. But when they felt grief, they showed it.

"Gunn called it a flashback," Gabriel said, curling up as tightly into the space he inhabited as possible to make himself small. "He used to have them all the time after Vietnam. It felt like I was really living back in that moment. The Father just … he just stuck a mace in my hand and told me to go fight Grigori and their offspring. I'd never fought before in my life. I … died."

"You're alive," Audrey said.

"I've given my life countless times for the Father in battle," Gabriel said. "The Father just summons our soul back to the garden, repairs our shell and sends us on our way. But that was my … first. My first time dying. He gave me a completely new shell. More like the one you see now. The old one was … immature. I was not yet finished growing when it happened."

"You hurt me," Audrey said. "You punched me … here." She pointed to her abdomen where their child was growing. "And you had me by the throat. I was so scared. I couldn't breathe."

Gabriel winced, tugging himself into a tight ball, if it was _possible _for a seven-foot tall, 350-pound, 25-foot wingspan angel to curl up into a tight _anything._ Gabriel was … huge. A giant to Audrey's petite, still slender frame despite her pregnancy. Had he not been so broken when the Father had cast him off the cliff as a sacrifice, Audrey probably _never _would have dared approach him. For any reason. Ever. Even if he _hadn't _tried to kill her. Even if he'd come down from heaven bearing flowers, candy, rainbows and unicorns the first time she'd ever laid eyes upon him instead of trying to kill her, the Left Hand of God had been built, or as Gabriel was only now remembering, _rebuilt_, to instill terror in all he approached.

It had taken him so long to earn her trust. To prove to her he had changed. Although in her head she understood this had been some type of post-traumatic stress disorder flashback, she was afraid of him now. Her head told her Gabriel had been trapped in a nightmare where a creature was attacking him and Audrey had tried to shake him awake. She hadn't expected he might lash out at her in his sleep or she would have been more careful to leap out of his way. But her heart kept crying to her '_he hurt me_!'

"If you want me to leave," Gabriel whispered. "I'll go. I can … I can fly alongside the train the rest of the way and sleep in the engine until we get to Winnepeg. The exercise will be good for me."

"What about my visions," Audrey said, a feeling of panic at the thought of weathering her visions without him conflicting with the feeling of fear she felt right now of being near him.

"I can … maybe Lena can stay with you and she'll call me if it gets bad," Gabriel said. His lips formed the words, but the look on his face said otherwise. Audrey could tell he wanted to reach out and take her into his arms so he could reassure himself she was okay that his entire body shuddered with the need. But he kept it tightly leashed. The _same _way he had kept his emotions tightly leashed when it had begun to dawn on him he was in love with her.

Gabriel. An attack dog she could no longer trust because he had inadvertently bitten his owner.

Gabriel wasn't the only one who needed to reach out and physically reassure himself she was okay. Before he had hurt her, Audrey had heard the terror in his voice. The voice of a small boy, not a grown man. He'd screamed in agony. She'd heard him gurgle as though he was dying, and then lay unbreathing for a few seconds. For a moment, she had feared he had dropped dead in his sleep so still was he. And then suddenly he had awoken and it was as though she were laying in the arms of a totally different person.

Holy fire. She had felt the holy fire surge through his veins. Not remembered holy fire. _Real _holy fire. The same holy fire Michael had been filled with when she had held him outside of the Toronto mosque while he wept. The holy fire that dulled his feelings and made him impervious to pain. Whatever the Father had done to Gabriel to make him vulnerable when he had cast him down from the cliff as his peace-offering to the Mother, it must be reversible. Either that, or holy fire was Gabriel's natural nature and what she loved now was just another shell shaped by the Father in the heat of the moment. Changed. His shell had reshaped itself as he had gotten to know her into a shape she was capable of loving. Younger. Softer. Which shell was closer to the _real _Gabriel? Was he even real? Or, as Gabriel had just remembered, was _this _form closer to his natural form as originally shaped, the harder form with the razor-sharp feathers the one the Father had given him to fight the Grigori the first time he had been killed.

"He just put weapons in our hands and shoved us out the gate," Gabriel said softly, his eyes haunted. "None of us had ever so much as picked up a weapon before, much less done battle. He locked the gate behind us. He said _we _had to do it because we were the only creatures in the garden who were expendable. Up until that time, it had always been the Grigori who patrolled the Father's creations and instilled order."

"Where was the Mother while all this was happening?" Audrey asked.

"They had both been away for a few hundred years," Gabriel said. "The Mother talked the Father into taking a vacation. He … he seemed reluctant at first … but then he got into the idea. Shaped a whole new planet for her full of brand new creatures. They were … " His voice trailed off.

"They were what?" Audrey asked.

"I didn't understand at the time," Gabriel said. "I was very young. I didn't understand about … physical … pleasure. The Mother had bet the Father mammals were superior to dinosaurs and the price of the wager was that the Father would take physical form so they could … um …"

"Make love," Audrey said. "You mean … they never … before?"

"I don't think so," Gabriel said. "The Father always hated it when any of us so much as bumped up against him. It was why I always sat at his feet or stayed at his back. If I got any closer, he would cringe. Like Jose' does."

"But the Mother craved to be touched," Audrey said. She didn't add 'like you do.' She could _see _Gabriel _needed _to touch her and reassure himself she was okay right now, but would not do so unless she invited his touch. He'd spent a lifetime being trained not to touch the object of his love.

"The Father was angry every creation the Mother breathed the life spark into could only reproduce via physical union," Gabriel said. "He wanted it to be via a meeting of the minds. Like they had when they created us. We were the one and only time they were ever able to truly work together to intellectually create a life form the way the _Father _wanted them to do. Sometimes … sometimes he used to berate her because of it. In his mind, life should be more like single celled organisms. Just … divide. Via mitosis. He used to say she did it on purpose … deliberately instilled life with the defect to require another of our species to reproduce."

"But you said they worked together all the time," Audrey said. "He would shape life, and she would breathe the life spark into it."

"Not really," Gabriel said, his eyes focusing on some memory in the distant past. "My memories are fragmented, but I seem to recall he was always annoyed that he would shape the clay, and then he would have to go explain to her the characteristics of the creation that he was looking for before she could breathe the life spark into it. If she didn't like what it was supposed to do, she would refuse. But _he _would refuse to shape life forms that she requested. I suspect that was why she finally went to we cherubs and asked _us _to shape exotic life forms such as unicorns and griffins. Whether the Father wished to admit it or not, his intent the day he created us was to grant the Mother her wish to create their children. He imbued us with the same aspects of his own essence that he later imbued humans with."

"What do you remember about your sisters?" Audrey asked.

"Uriel said it was my fault they were dead because I_ tattled _on them," Gabriel said, his voice choked with emotion. "The Father told me to inform him if they did anything unseemly. He didn't trust them the way the Mother did. They … disappeared. For a hundred years. I got scared. I called the Father and told him they had gone missing."

"What happened next?" Audrey asked.

"I don't remember exactly," Gabriel said. "He returned alone. He was furious. He disappeared. He reappeared even _more_ furious. He stormed into his workshop and summonsed the Thrones in for some reason. He kicked me out so I couldn't overhear. And then a little while later, all of a sudden the great gong sounded warning us there were enemies at the gate."

"The Grigori," Audrey guessed.

"And their offspring," Gabriel said. "At least I remember now what they looked like. I guess there's a good reason your kind depicts the devil as humanoid with bat wings and claws. Half humanoid. Half dragon."

Audrey ached to crawl into his arms and reassure him. To comfort him. Had he simply woken up from his nightmare, that is exactly what she would have done. But he had hurt her. He had lashed out at her in her sleep and, until she understood _why, _she couldn't trust him.

"So he stuck weapons in your hands and told you to defend heaven?" Audrey guessed.

"He said we were expendable," Gabriel said softly. "He cursed the Mother for making him create us and told us if we _didn't _fight he would cast our souls into the void for uncreation the same as our sisters."

Ouch!

"I was so glad to see Admodeus standing between us and the … things … the Father had sent us out to fight," Gabriel said. "We had no idea that those were our sisters, or their, children. Asmodeus was our friend. I greeted him and he … he screamed that we had killed his wife and he … he ripped my throat out. And then he clawed into my belly and ripped out my intestines. I can still feel what it felt like." Gabriel's voice was a whisper at the memory.

"Oh, honey," Audrey said.

"I didn't even see it coming," Gabriel said. "The Father was … bullshit. He fixed me up and said if I was defeated again, he was going to throw me in the void like he'd done with my sisters."

Ouch!

"He sent me back out to fight them," Gabriel said. "This time, when one of them attacked me, I didn't stand by and allow myself to be killed. When it grabbed me, I fought back."

Silence stretched between them.

"I didn't know it was only a memory until the Grigori began to cry and I realized it was _you,"_ Gabriel said, his voice choking up for the fiftieth time this morning. "I'm so sorry!"

"Was it a memory?" Audrey asked. "Or a dream?"

"A memory," Gabriel said. "Now that I am awake, I can remember it happening as well as some of the facts leading up to that moment in time."

"You hurt me," Audrey said softly. "What assurances do I have that it isn't going to happen again?"

"I can give you none," Gabriel said stiffly. "I had no control over what just happened. I wasn't aware it wasn't real. It felt as though I were really back in the moment."

Which sounded remarkably like Audrey's visions. Only her visions were memories of events which had not yet happened and therefore could possibly be changed. Not events which had happened in the past which they had _no _power to alter.

"I've hit you and punched you in the face during my visions," Audrey finally said softly, making her decision. "I guess I understand what it's like to not be in control."

"You don't really hurt me when that happens," Gabriel said. "While _obviously _I hurt you. I fear it might happen again."

"Next time you have a nightmare," Audrey said softly. "I shall be smart enough not to shake you awake without being ready to jump away if it appears the dream is a violent one."

It had been like that, at first, with the old junkyard dog. The dog had bitten her once and, on occasion, if she startled him out of a dead sleep, his first instinct was to nip at her. She had learned to always talk to the dog when she approached the shed where she had hidden him so he always knew it was _her_.

"What if I hurt you again?" Gabriel whispered.

"Then I _will _punch you in the face," Audrey said. "Just hard enough to make you let me go so I can get away."

"It was the fact you cried that made me wake up," Gabriel said, his remorse shuddering through every part of his body.

Audrey held out her arms, gesturing for him to travel the nine feet across the boxcar into her arms. Rather than stand, he crawled. A dog who had been beaten and then welcomed back into the house by its owner. He put his head onto her lap like a little boy who needed a hug, his wings quivering as she ran her fingers through his thick brown-black hair and down through his glossy dark feathers .

'_Fucking Father,'_ Audrey cursed in her own mind. Ever since her conversation with Michael, she'd been making an effort to not bad-mouth the Father so much in Gabriel's presence. But then again, he deserved it. Could the Father still hear it if she screamed holy blasphemy at him in her mind.

'_He's not fucking expendable!' _


	134. Chapter 133

Chapter 133

"Things still weird between you two?" Gunnlaeif asked as he helped Gabriel lead the horses off the train in Niobe, North Dakota.

"Yes," Gabriel said, hiding behind his customary undreadable expression. "She's trying to forgive me, but I hurt her. She's seen what I can do when I _mean _to hurt somebody."

"Yeah," Gunn said. "I hear you. It was the same with _my _wife when I got back from Vietnam. She _tried _to understand. She really did. But it just got to be too much for her."

"Is that why she left you?" Gabriel asked, doing his best to hide the emotion which had been gnawing at his gut ever since the night he had flashed back to the night the Grigori had stormed the gates of heaven. Fear. Pure fear. Fear that she would never forgive him and leave him the way Gunn's wife had.

"It was more than that," Gunn said, his expression somber as he remembered things he would just prefer not remember. "Vietnam was a … quagmire. You never knew who you were fighting or why. It was a civil war. A stupid, messy civil war that we should have never gotten involved in."

"The Father told us to stay out of it," Gabriel said. "He was pretty disgusted with humanity by then. I suspect it was the Mother who sent Azrael to start reining in the heavenly host."

"We lost a lot of young kids," Gunn said, jerking the harness of his Spanish Norman mare before she could kick Haizum. "The draft used to reach right into every household in America and grab kids to send for cannon fodder."

"Cannon fodder," Gabriel said, remembering what the Father had told them as he had shoved weapons into their hands and then locked them outside the gate to face overwhelming forces. "That's the right way to describe it. Expendable."

"The rich kids got out of it by going to college," Gunn said. "But the rest of us had no choice but to go. I thought I was lucky, missing the draft right out of high school. Me and Lucinda got married. But then six months later I got drafted. Had no choice but to go."

"You never had any kids?" Gabriel asked.

"Never really had time," Gunn said. "Women's lib and all that stuff. Lucinda wanted to wait until we saved enough money for a down payment on a house. Downright sensible, if you ask me."

"The Father always frowned on intimate relations for any purpose other than to replenish your ranks," Gabriel said. "I never understood the whole…."

"Dude!" Gunn suddenly laughed, startling his horse. "You were the most clueless guy I ever laid eyes on! Shit! Didn't nobody ever sit you down and tell you about the birds and the bees?"

"No," Gabriel glowered. His intimate relations with his wife were nobody's business.

Gunn recognized the look on Gabriel's face and diverted the conversation back into its original topic.

"It was horrific over there," Gunn said. "The incident where I met Azrael wasn't the only horror I saw there. Just … the worst."

"Vlad the Impaler was worse," Gabriel said. "As were a few Ottoman sultans. Hitler. Stalin."

"Sometimes I forget you've seen it all," Gunn said. "Remind me never to play opposite you in a game of Jeopardy."

"Jeopardy?" Gabriel asked.

"Popular culture game show," Gunn said. "You'd win hands down in the ancient military history category. Dude! We've _seriously _got to lock you in a movie theatre for three days straight. Catch you up on the last hundred years' worth of popular culture!"

"I'll pass," Gabriel said.

They fell into a comfortable silence, tethering the horses to some hitching posts along the tracks placed there specifically for that purpose. Then they headed back into the boxcar to lead out two more horses apiece.

"What happened when you got back from Vietnam?" Gabriel asked, trying to force himself to appear neutral. "With your wife?"

"I expected when I went to war it was going to be ugly," Gunn said. "They said it was pretty horrific over there, and they were right. What I _didn't _expect was to step off the plane and have a bunch of protesters spit on me. They called me a baby killer. That …"

Gunn turned his head away, his expression a combination of anger and grief. Even now … it bothered him to talk about it.

"I have had very little personal interaction with humanity since the Savior died and the Father had me give the Prophet Muhammad the Quran," Gabriel said, and then hastily added, "the _first _time he was here and died. But I heard things. The Father ordered us to stay out of it."

"That much was obvious," Gunn said. "The Father's absence was _palpable _over there. It was like … a void. Perhaps that's what this void is like that the Mother is originally from?"

"I don't know," Gabriel said. "The void is someplace the Father taught us to fear. Given the condition the Grigori and their offspring are in after a trip there, perhaps you are right?"

"Have you remembered any more about what the Mother did to destroy them yet?" Gunn asked cautiously.

"No," Gabriel said. "But a lot of other memories have begun to surface. Innocuous things. My sisters doing things. The Grigori being our friends. My brothers shaping creations and breathing life into them. The gift was quite common amongst the cherubs. I was the first, but the others were far better at it than me."

Haizum whickered a greeting as soon as he led over the two horses he was tugging along up to the post. The black-brown stallion began to shake his head up and down in a gesture Gabriel had come to associate with begging for a treat.

"Hey … greedy," Gabriel said to Haizum. He tethered the additional two horses and reached into his pocket for some chunks of raw carrots he had saved from their supplies. "Pets. One of my sisters created the first unicorn. Until I had Haizum, I don't recall ever becoming attached to an animal. The Father scorned emotional attachments to lesser creatures, so I tried to emulate him."

"Unicorns?" Gunn asked, one eyebrow raised in skepticism. "Really? You're not just pulling my leg?"

"They only exist in the garden," Gabriel said. "Although sometimes they escape. They keep searching for my sisters even though they have been gone for millions of years. There are a _lot _of strange creatures the Father always refused to discuss. Mermaids. Griffins. Kraken. Now I remember why. They were created by the sisters he murdered. I guess he was too fearful to kill them, too, after what the Mother did."

"What did the Mother do?" Gunn asked.

"I still can't remember," Gabriel said. "But I know … here." Gabriel pointed to his gut. "And here…" He pointed to his heart. "I know whatever happened, when the memory surfaces it's going to make the day the Father made us become soldiers seem like paradise in comparison. I can feel it. Lurking just underneath the surface."

"I know that feeling," Gunn said, his expression sympathetic as he gave Anu's old nag an affectionate slap in the hind quarters and followed Gabriel back into the boxcar to gather another quartet of horses. "It like a monster lurking beneath the surface of your subconscious. You never know when it's going to leap out of the water and devour everyone around you."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Gabriel said so softly his voice was almost a whisper. His wings twitched nervously as he stopped and looked Gunn in the eye. "What if it happens again? I'm afraid I'll hurt her. _Really _hurt her."

Gunn paused, fiddling with the lead on the next horse he was about to lead outside. He was quiet. Too quiet.

"That's why Lu left me," Gunn said. "I spazzed out one night during one of the flashbacks. Thought I was back _there._ Ran and got my hunting rifle out of the closet. Thought Lucinda was VC. She thought I was going to kill her. After that … well … she'd had enough. Can't say I blame her."

Gabriel patted the Mambo's horse, forming his thoughts.

"What if _–I- _do that?" Gabriel asked.

"Nah," Gunn said. "Don't think it will happen. At least … not the spazz part. You're talking about it. To your friends and the Reverend and stuff. He's got some experience with that kind of thing. So does Mambo. When the memories finally surface, we're gonna be expecting it."

"In the middle of the night?" Gabriel asked. "There's only _one _person who's going to be there to take the brunt of it. Audrey."

"And she knows it's coming now," Gunn said. "I'll talk to her about it. So she knows what to expect. You've got to keep talking, that's all. Try to get it out in the open in the daytime when you've got other people around. None of that strong silent type bullshit. That's where –_I-_ went wrong with _my _wife. Kept telling her nothing was wrong, to mind her own business, pretending I wasn't cracking up inside or nothing. Tried to bury it in a bottle of alcohol and a bunch of drugs. Numb the pain. Didn't help. Uh … did you say Kraken?" Gunn suddenly veered the conversation way off topic.

"Kraken?" Gabriel said. "Oh … yes. Sea serpent. We used to play with it at the beach. One of my sisters shaped it to catch our beach toys when they floated out to sea. That's why it has so many arms."

Gunn was silent for a moment, tugging the reins of the next batch of horses. Gabriel grabbed two of his own and followed his fellow former soldier out of the boxcar.

"Gabriel," Gunn finally said. "You're the strongest person I ever met. Not just physically. Inside. Where it _really _counts. But when it comes to shit like post-traumatic stress disorder, you're just going to have to admit that you're not going to get through it alone. Whatever the bastards did to you and your brothers, you're all suffering total memory loss over it. Whatever happened, it's bad. Really bad."

"I know," Gabriel said. "I can feel it. Like my sisters' kraken. When it escapes and we have to recapture it. You grab one tentacle and fifty more come at you from all different directions and try to drown you."

"How do you beat it?" Gunn asked, the horses clop-clopping down the ramp of the boxcar to join the others.

"We send fifty angels to each grab a tentacle and drag it back to the garden where it won't hurt anyone," Gabriel said.

"Then that's what you're going to have to do with whatever shit's spewing out of your subconscious," Gunn said. "Spread it out amongst your friends so we're ready to grab a tentacle when the damned thing finally surfaces. Talk to us. Let us know what you're feeling so when it comes, we're ready. From the way you've been acting lately, I'd say it's not going to be long."

"How can you tell?" Gabriel said, tethering the next batch of horses to the post and grabbing the hand-pump to a spigot sunk into the ground to pump water into an old bathtub for the horses to drink.

"Because you're wound so tight you're about to snap," Gunn said. "You hide your emotions well, but your wings are your 'tell.' When you start twitching 'em all the time like you're crawling with fleas, I can tell you're about to blow."

Gabriel tucked the traitorous appendages in tight to his back. Gunn was right. He _had _felt as though he'd had the creepy-crawlies lately. Nervous energy with no place to go.

"I never understood why the Father wouldn't just uncreate the kraken," Gabriel said. "Or destroy it. If my sister shaped it, I understand now that he couldn't just dissipate it. But it was _easily _within his power to kill _all _the monsters my sisters had created and cast them into the void. Why?"

"Guilt, perhaps?" Gunn said. "In one fit of anger, he killed 400 of his daughters, destroyed his marriage, nearly destroyed heaven, practically lost his sons, and lost the chance to know the Savior who it sounds like his wife was pregnant with at the time. Even _–I- _had the balls to admit I was fucked up after I threatened Lu with the hunting rifle! I checked myself into the VA for psychiatric treatment."

"But she left you anyways," Gabriel said softly, his wings twitching in the nervous tension Gunn has so accurately pegged.

"I didn't talk to Lu about it until _after _I'd tried to kill her," Gunn said. "They had to detox the alcohol. Wean me off the drugs. Send me for counseling and group therapy. I was all fucked up, man. It was just … too much for her to handle. All at once. We were married six months. And then I was gone a year. And then I come back all fucked up acting like a complete asshole for nearly two years while the shit kept hitting the fan and telling her to mind her own business when she kept asking me what was wrong. And then … I tried to kill her. After everything that happened. I can't blame her for wanting out. It wasn't her problem. You're nowhere near that fucked up."

The sick feeling that had been gnawing at Gabriel's gut for weeks now subsided somewhat. Gunn was right. It had never occurred to him to try to bury the uncomfortable emotions by consuming alcohol or experimenting with the recreational drugs he'd seen so many humans use that ruined their lives. It didn't make the emotion underlying the fear go away. Something ugly was lurking beneath the surface, waiting to escape. It just gave him hope.

He realized that for the first time since he'd even been a cherub that he _had _friends. In addition to Michael. People who truly cared about him. And not just his wife. As a cherub, only Michael and Lucifer had ever sought him out. And the Mother. The Mother who he was beginning to remember more and more. The musical sound of her voice calling his name. The vague sensation of a hug. The way she inhaled his scent so she could guess what he was feeling from it. The reassuring feeling of being wrapped, safe, in her leathery wings.

The Mother's wings had changed according to her mood. Feathered. Leathery. Gossamar. One pair. A hundred pairs. So had her coloring and the number of arms she had. The Mother's natural form was that of the void. Primordial matter. She could assume any form she liked. Gabriel gasped as he remembered _why _his sister had shaped the kraken. The cherubs used to swim in fifty different directions at once. The Mother would transform her arms into a thousand tendrils to keep each cherub afloat as they learned to swim.

Arms like…

Arms like…

Gabriel gasped for breath, hyperventilating at the powerful tentacle of emotion which reared to the surface with no memory attached to it. He grabbed the nearest object, a horse, Anu's old nag, to steady himself as a feeling that could only be described as terror divorced from any reason to _be _terrified gripped him. He felt someone grab him from the other side. Gunn. Gunn had his back.

"Yeah," Gunn said. "It's okay to remember. Better to let it out like this than at night. I'm going to be right here to catch you when you fall."

The emotion passed. Slipping beneath the murky surface, but not disappearing completely. The Father didn't have the heart to destroy the kraken because his sister had captured an aspect of the Mother into physical form. As destructive as the creation had become without its creator there to guide it, the thought of destroying it caused the Father more pain than to just live with it.

"T-thanks," Gabriel murmured, steadying himself and ruffling his wings, shaking out the heebie-jeebies which had seized control. He rapidly hid beneath his most unreadable expression, ashamed at his moment of weakness.

"That's what friends are for," Gunn said. "Down here. We ain't got no heavenly Father to fix all our boo-boo's and make us forget our pain. Either we rely on each other. Or we go to pieces. That's just the way it is."

Gabriel nodded. He was grateful when Gunn dropped the subject, heaving up a bale of hay for him to break apart and divvy up amongst the horses. They were lucky so far the compass rose had kept leading them to a series of ever-smaller and more obscure rail lines, but it appeared their luck was now at an end. The compass rose had told them to get off at this tiny town in the middle of the North Dakota prairie and there were no more trains to be had. The compass rose pointed west. Down an obscure county road. The horses that had begun to seem like a burden to haul along ever since New York City were now about to be put back into service.

It was time to get back on the road…


	135. Chapter 134

Chapter 134

"Is this even a town?" Audrey asked, frowning at the sight of the nothing but bare, open fields covered in light snow and a mere handful of buildings scattered across the endless North Dakota prairie. With the exception of the train station, which appeared to be more of a loading dock to a grain elevator, the town was little more than a ghost town.

"Niobe, North Dakota," the train foreman said. "Population 63. Used to be around 700 before the world ended."

Around her, guards were jumping off the train and stretching their legs and escorting passengers off the train. A boy of around 16 years old came out of the building that lay alongside the tracks with a gigantic tray with a neck strap that appeared like an old-fashioned hotdog hawkers tray at a baseball game.

"Sandwiches," the boy called in a classic hawkers voice. "Hot herbal tea. Filtered water. Got soup, stew, and fresh hot bread inside. Trade rates are fair. Things we'll accept in trade are posted on the board, but if you've got something unusual, maybe we can make a deal."

"_Hot _food would be nice for a change," Mambo De Vivre said, stretching and listening to her knee joints 'pop' in protest from too much time on a train. "These old bones could use some tea."

_Real _tea, as well as coffee, were practically nonexistent these days, the trade routes from Columbia and India vanished. Herbal tea, however, had become a popular substitute. Herbal teas varied region to region according to what herbs grew locally. Sampling them all had become a favorite pastime of the disciples.

"Aren't you leaving as soon as we unload the horses?" Audrey asked the train foreman.

"We're waiting to refuel and reload," the train foreman said, looking at his watch. "Here they come now." The foreman pointed to a convoy of oil tanker trucks that rolled into the tiny town.

"Oil tankers," Audrey said stupidly, stating the obvious as the convoy consisting of a pickup truck full of men with rifles, six oil tanker trucks, and another pickup truck full of men with rifles taking up the rear. Two men rode each tanker truck. A driver. And somebody riding shotgun.

"Where'd they get the oil?" Mambo de Vivre asked. "We're in the middle of the Great Plains."

"Badlands," Muhammad said in his heavily accented English. "Or they come from Lake Sakakawea. That's probably the closest oil field."

Audrey turned to stare at their latest disciple.

"It was what I study at university," Muhammad said. "Mineral engineering. Study of how to get minerals out of the ground and refine them into products people use."

Behind her, Gabriel and Gunn were tending the horses after unloading them. Two-and-a-half weeks getting jammed into boxcars with frequently only a day in-between changing trains had been hard on the horses. _And _on the people who had to care for them and haggle with reluctant train-drovers to provide transport for the fragile creatures on boxcars that were often more profitable to put to other uses.

The Rabbi and Non Gae had pressured them greatly to leave the horses behind, wishing to rely upon modern methods of transportation to get across the country. But Audrey had remained adamant they keep the horses with them. The Savior still dwelled somewhere on the west coast of the United States and at some point they would need to rejoin him. Having spent the first year-and-a-half travelling the country on foot and being at an extreme disadvantage, Audrey was reluctant to abandon the creatures at the side of the road. Unless they were about to ride someplace on the tops of the oil tankers, it appeared Audrey had been wise to refuse to ditch their trusty mounts.

"Reverend?" Audrey asked.

"Got it," the Reverend said. He adjusted the white square on his ministerial collar and stepped to the front of the group, Lyubitshke in her new, toned-down long skirt and prim clothing at his side, the perfect minister's wife.

The Reverend greeted the men working the convoy. Some wore cowboy hats, some hard hats, some just plain old baseball caps. Most wore flannel shirts and work jackets, work boots and jeans. Overwhelmingly, however, the men had long, raven-black hair, usually pulled back in a ponytail, swarthy complexions, and strong facial features. A few of the men wore their hair in two long braids, but only a damned fool would have called the rough-looking men 'sissies.'

"Indians…" Muhammad said, his eyes lighting up with wonder.

'Native Americans…' Audrey automatically corrected. 'Doctor Pasala is East Indian. These are the first peoples of the Americas… Calling them 'indians' is a racial slur…'

"Okay," Muhammad said. "I try not slip, call name. It what we call your … um … _native _people in my country. Pow pow! John Wayne!"

"Just don't let _them _hear you say that," Audrey whispered. Although the men wore modern clothing and rode motorized vehicles, there was something undecidedly … _Indian _… about the men working the oil tankers. The men quickly got out of the vehicles and began to hook supply lines up to the diesel train engine itself, refueling it, as well as to several tanker cars on the train. Efficient. The men moved as though this were something they did every day.

"Ooooo…." Lena whispered excitedly. "Nice, manly men. I haven't felt this … oompha … since … since the Village People came to Salt Lake City."

"Lena!" Audrey hissed. "Please! Don't hit on them until you've had a chance to get to know them!"

Although Lena and the others had long ago come to think of Lena as female and even the Rabbi and Muhammad were beginning to accept her as Gabriel did by simply ignoring her true gender, the fact remained that Lena had not been born female. Sometimes people reacted to her adversely.

Thankfully, Gabriel stayed back with the horses, tucking his wings in tight to his back and making himself as inconspicuous as possible.

Gabriel. What the hell was she supposed to do about Gabriel? Ever since the night of his flashback, she'd been _trying _to reassure him she had forgiven him, but they both knew forgiveness wasn't the problem. Gabriel had no more control over his flashbacks than he did over, say, the rate at which his stomach digested the cheese sandwich he had eaten for lunch. If you can't control something, than you can make no promises it won't happen again.

"Audrey?" the Reverend asked. "Which way are we headed?"

"West," Audrey said. "From there … who knows. We're supposed to go on horseback."

"How do you know that?" Muhammad asked. As the newest member of the disciples, he was still learning the ropes. Largely from his new 'best buddy,' the Rabbi. Despite frequent, often heated arguments, Muhammad felt most at home with the holier-than-thou Rabbi, who most closely emulated what the young Bedouin Palestinian male had grown up with in a country the size of Connecticut.

"Because there's now a little horse here on the compass rose right in front of the arrow pointing west," Audrey said, holding out her hand and showing him the changeable tattoo that adorned her wrist.

"This convoy is from the south," the Reverend said. "New Town. They work with the tribal government there running supply convoys of crude oil plus whatever small amount they can refine on site to the train networks in exchange for things the tribe needs. They said they're willing to give you, because you're pregnant, and Mambo, because she's an elder, a lift into New Town in the back of one of the pickup trucks if that's where we're going. They can't fit any more than that."

"Audrey stays with me," Gabriel said softly, stepping away from where he had been tending the horses. "If she gets too uncomfortable to ride, I'll carry her." He moved into his customary position at her back, flaring his wings somewhat. An implied threat? Or natural protectiveness?

The men _did _appear to be a bit rough, but not criminals. More … outdoorsmen. They recoiled when they realized what Gabriel was, guns aiming suddenly at the angel in their midst, and were ordered back by the foreman of the train.

"Black Crow!" the train foreman bellowed. "These are my passengers. You will treat them with respect or I will take it up with Four Bears!"

'_Damn it Gabriel!' _Audrey cursed him in her mind with her 'evil consciousness.' '_Why do you always have to go and do that?'_ The good consciousness immediately chirped up. _'As if he could hide the fact he has a 25-foot wingspan, doofus! He is what he is… Stop being such a bitch!'_

"Thank you, gentlemen," Audrey spoke aloud to the one the train foreman had indicated was Black Crow. "As you can see, I have my own transportation." For emphasis, she leaned back into Gabriel's torso.

He immediately snaked one arm protectively around her collarbone and pulled her close. She could hear the rustle of his feathers as he fluffed them out to make himself appear bigger. As if he _needed _to be any bigger. She could hear his customary inhalation of breath through his nose. Gauging her emotions with whatever angelic spidey-senses the Father and Mother had gifted him with. Her _mixed _emotions. Ever since the night of his flashback, she knew she had been sending him mixed signals. It both confused and hurt him deeply.

Black Crow relaxed and barked a command at the others to lower their weapons. With nearly 350,000 Nephilim offspring currently walking the earth, over 30,000 of them winged, sighting an angel was no longer the rare event it had been when she and Gabriel had started wandering the wilderness together. Thanks to Jose's nightly webcasts, angels living on Earth were now viewed as the fallen creatures they were. Like humans. With wings. Audrey wasn't sure if Black Crow recognized Gabriel from the webcast, or had encountered non-hostile Nephilim.

"Are you coming to New Town?" Black Crow asked. "It's around 65 miles south of here."

"I'm not sure," Audrey said, pointing to the tattoo on her wrist. "I follow the direction given to me by the Mother. Right now the compass rose points west, although that could change if we are riding on horseback."

"Four Bears would enjoy meeting your group," Black Crow said. "He is my uncle. Chief of the Three Affiliated Tribes."

"If that is where the Mother leads us," Audrey said, "then I will stop in to say hello and mention your name."

Black Crow nodded, and then motioned for the men to get back to work, quietly but firmly giving orders. The men _looked _like wild, rough Indians, but they moved like professionals accustomed to working together.

"You should try this stew," the Senator said, coming out of the grain warehouse-turned-train-depot shoveling a generous bowl of stew into his mouth as quickly as possible. When Cindy came out behind him doing the exact same thing, the others decided the vittles _must _be good at the makeshift kitchen and headed inside as well, leaving her standing there alone with Gabriel.

"Please don't do that," Audrey sighed. "It messes up the meet-and-greet when you go all avenging angel on me too soon."

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said, his tone remorseful. "I didn't mean to harm you."

"You didn't … harm … me," Audrey said. "It's just … you're _too much_ for most people to wrap their brains around."

Gabriel was silent, withdrawing into his shell, only the slight tremor of his feathers betraying how badly she had just hurt his feelings. Withdrawal. Both the Reverend and Gunn had warned her that pushing him away to withdraw while he was emotionally vulnerable like this was the _wrong _thing to do. After 64 millions of having his memories suppressed, things were beginning to surface. She needed to _be _there for him, the way that _he _had always been there for _her _ever since he had recovered enough strength at the base of the cliff to walk again. Not act like a bitch and push him away.

"Hey," she said softly, reaching out to touch his arm. "I'm sorry. I know you're just trying to protect me."

Gabriel silently nodded, his beautiful, unearthly blue eyes clouded with worry as a slight frown registered on his brow. Worry. Worry he might hurt her again? Or worry she wouldn't forgive him. No matter how many times she reassured him that she understood, she knew that Gabriel could _smell _her unease now whenever he acted like … well … like _Gabriel._

'_Dammit!' _Audrey cursed in her own mind. _'Damn you both to hell for burdening him with whatever the hell you've been repressing for all these years!'_

For more than two years she'd cursed his spotty memory and urged him to try to remember. Now that he _was _beginning to remember, she was wishing things would just go back to the way they were. All she could do was hold his hand and help him through it so they got to the other side as quickly as possible.

"Let's go inside and get some of that delicious stew the Senator was raving about," Audrey suggested. Like males of every species everywhere, the quickest way to Gabriel's heart … now that he was willing to eat mortal food … was through his stomach.

"Allright," Gabriel said, grasping the peace offering she was extending.

Audrey tugged his hand and led Gabriel inside to haggle over a trade-price for supper like a large, winged dog.


	136. Chapter 135

Chapter 135

Audrey thrashed in his arms, attempting to reason with the Grigori in her nightly vision. Gabriel wrapped himself around her entire body. Arms. Legs. Wings. His nose nuzzling her hair. His lips gently whispering soft reassurances into her ear. Trying to communicate via touch what her vision-trapped mind could not consciously comprehend. That she was safe in his arms.

'Gabriel!' Audrey screamed in her sleep. He knew she had gotten to the part of the vision where she had no choice but to summons him, knowing it would lead to his death.

"Whoever molesteth the Prophet of the Savior shall incur the wrath of the Left Hand of God," Gabriel murmured into her ear. He gently squeezed her to remind her he was still here, protecting her. Always. It was his duty to protect her. Not hurt her and burden her with his own petty problems. Soon enough … he'd give his life to protect her and their unborn child from the wrath of the Father and her ordeal would be over. Her visions would end and she wouldn't be forced to endure his presence any longer.

Endure… Ever since the night he had hurt her, he often wondered if not for her horrific nightly visions if she would have simply banished him. She _said _she had forgiven him, but whenever they settled down to sleep at night, he could smell her fear. Their lovemaking had taken on a mechanical, flat aspect, Audrey begging off most nights saying she was too tired. She cringed whenever he touched her unexpectedly. Did she even still love him? He _hoped _so. Or did she simply tolerate his presence because she had no choice?

He listened carefully to her half of whatever conversation she was having tonight, listening for clues as to what thread the Prophet chose to follow. What outcome did that thread yield? Was it a subtle improvement? Or did it make things worse? He needed to know what questions to ask her before her vision faded.

The Nephilim were divided, but obeying the Fallen. The Fallen were divided, but obeying Lucifer. The angels in heaven were divided, but obeying the Father. Obey. Obey. Obey. Everybody was obedient. Dammit! His species propensity to obey was going to lead to the universes undoing!

"Let me go!" Audrey cried out in his arms. "He needs me!"

Gabriel quickly moved aside his head to avoid the right hook she inadvertently gave him every night as she punched his brother Uriel in her vision, refusing to pin her arms to her side to prevent her from throwing the punch. It was wrong of him to gloat, but Uriel had always been a little too smug. Dodging her punch every night gave Gabriel perverse satisfaction. His beloved would exact a bruise out of Uriel's jaw for forcing her to watch him die which Uriel would be forbidden to retaliate against. Obedience. Uriel _would_ obey.

The more he thought about the problem, the more he realized the Prophet's initial impression was the correct one. Lucifer was the key. Michael was a great military leader, but only Lucifer had ever been able to entice the other angels to disobey the Father in innumerable small ways, usually related to pranks. If _anybody _could break the stalemate and move the undecided angels, Fallen, and Nephilim to act, it would be Lucifer. Unfortunately, nobody knew where Lucifer had secreted his family. Wherever he had gone, he was keeping a decidedly low-key stance. How _unlike _the brother Gabriel remembered from before he had Fallen.

"No!" his little Prophet screamed. "Gabriel!" She thrashed around in his arms, her swollen abdomen getting in her way and preventing her from turning towards him. This was the moment in her vision when he finally fell and was torn apart by the Grigori.

"I am still here, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured into her ear. "You are laying safe in my arms."

She unexpectedly kicked backwards and attempted to kick Uriel in the groin, just barely missing his testicles. Now _that _would have hurt. He hoped that when the time came, his wife would be able to land the blow and bring his brother's attention to that part of his anatomy the Father ensured the angels kept woefully inactive. Gabriel couldn't help but smile. His little Prophet would leave Uriel scratching his head in confusion the _same _way Jeep had left _him _conflicted and confused about humanity's hopeless propensity to shake their fist at the Father and scream expletives in the face of adversity.

"Motherfucker!" she screamed. "I will _help _Asmodeus rip that fucking smirk off your face for your obedience! You will reap what you have sown!"

This was new. He would be sure to question her about it.

Watching him die each night horrified his little Prophet, but Gabriel had died the day the Father had turned soft, playful, emotional cherubs into a hardened, emotionless, heavenly army. It would hurt. It was pain he would avoid if things were different. But what humans considered to be dying was no big deal. It was what the Father was going to do to him _afterwards _which caused fear to grip his gut. Whatever the Father had done to Lucifer, Gabriel knew it would be much worse for _him._

When Lucifer and his men had been banished to Earth, Lucifer had viewed humanity with utter contempt. After millions of years and at least one failed attempt at reconciliation, the Mother finally gave the Father a chance to get to know his only begotten child without _her _in the picture to complicate things. Lucifer, who suddenly found himself usurped as the favorite, had reacted by pouting and attempting to sabotage humanity. Being forced to descend into mortal form to babysit the humanity his quiet, thoughtful young rival would someday inherit had been a fitting punishment in the Father's mind.

Immortals such as the Father tended to think in blocks of thousands of years as if they were mere seconds. The Father had never anticipated Lucifer would meet a human female, fall head over heels in love with her, get married, start a family, and transform from a callous, flippant prankster and brilliant military leader into a serious, self-sacrificing family man, all in the blink of a heavenly eye. Lucifer had encouraged his men to take human wives because he wanted his men to find the love that _he _had found. Love for his wife and family, however, had tempered his defiance. The brother Gabriel and Michael had thrown into the keep had been obedient and resigned to his fate.

Damn Lucifer for losing the very quality heaven needed now to save itself! If anything, Lucifer's willingness to sacrifice himself had angered the Father even worse. Lucifer's place in heaven had always been the prodigal son. The one who thought outside the box to reap victory upon the Father. The prankster who made the others laugh. Including, occasionally, the Father.

"Gabriel…" Audrey sobbed. "Don't leave …"

"You are safe in my arms, love of my life," Gabriel whispered, running his hand down her side and protectively placing his hand over her swollen abdomen now that they were past the point in the vision where his defiant little Prophet was trying to deck Uriel in the face. He knew she was watching his life spark leave his mortal shell, as she was forced to watch every night. Her sorrow saddened him.

'_Yes,' _he thought to himself. _'She –does- still love me. I will do my best to earn back her trust before I die so there are no regrets between us to mar the connection between our souls.'_

A small 'pop' hit against his hand and Gabriel smiled. Audrey had been trying to help him feel the sensation of their child moving, but this was the first time he had actually felt his son or daughter respond to his touch. He would tell her once she recovered from her vision. It would make her happy. It was the closest he would ever get to holding their child. He would communicate his love for the child he would never see the same way he communicated his love for the Prophet. By keeping them both safe and using touch to convey his emotions when worlds failed him.

"Lucifer," Audrey whispered across the field in her vision. "He was your brother. Why wouldn't you help him?"

Gabriel _knew _why. Unlike the other Fallen, who had merely been confined to solitary confinement, the Father had punished Lucifer by locking him in with Asmodeus. Grigori carried their weapons with them. Sharp claws. Fangs. Wings and a tail with spiked tips. The Father had allowed the insane Grigori leader to repeatedly tear Lucifer apart limb from limb. Every single day. Day after day. Many times per day. For 4,500 years. And every single time, the Father had punished Lucifer by restoring his mortal shell and locking him right back into the Keep with Asmodeus.

As had happened with the Prophet, at some point the shear injustice of what the Father was doing to the object of his disfavor had caused even Asmodeus's rage to become satiated enough to listen to reason…

"Gabriel!" the Prophet sobbed in his arms, jolting him out of his thoughts. Her voice was almost a whisper, her body now limp. In the vision, his body was now dissipated. He knew the battle now continued to wage around her, but his part was done. Everything hinged on matters beyond his control. The disciples. The Fallen and their offspring. The nonexistent mercy of the Grigori. And the Savior, who was too young to lead them.

"I am still here, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured in her ear as she keened over his death. "I will protect you with my dying breath. When I am gone from this realm, know that I will _continue _to protect you with my immortal soul by accepting the full wrath of the Father onto myself for the sin of loving you more than I love _him_."

Just as Lucifer had done…

He felt her shudder, her scent suddenly altering as the Mother's presence filled her vessel and chose tonight to communicate with him through his wife. The next disciple must be close.

"You must remember my sin so you can heal it, my son," the Mother spoke through her vessel, compelling Audrey to reach up and caress his face in a motherly gesture which he could now remember. "The eleventh disciple shall offer your spirit to the Father's brother in the Okipa ceremony. You are strong enough to survive."

Gabriel suddenly sensed a second strong presence. A warning buzz. Anger. The Father. Whatever twisted game the two deities played, the Mother must have come dangerously close to violating some term of the rules by slipping extra information into the message. The messages were always short and cryptic. Never more than three sentences. Never more than 50 syllables.

The Mother must have had faith they would find the eleventh disciple on their own using nothing but the compass rose because she had given no clues as to his identity. However, to date, the Mother only communicated the night before they encountered a disciple. Many times they'd had to pick a disciple out of a crowd by listening for the echo of the Mother's energy. Whatever the Mother wished for him to remember, it must be a doozey. Something the Father did not wish for him to know.

The Fathers … brother?

Gabriel could feel the Mother's presence leave his wife's body. Audrey's hand fell limply to the ground, too drained to hold it to his face. Gabriel gently resettled her into the position he thought would be most comfortable for her to recover in and ruffled his feathers to increase their warmth. He nuzzled behind her ear, inhaling her scent to gauge the level of damage to her psyche. Bad. The nights the Mother visited were always harder on her. He pressed his lips to the pulse point at her neck and tasted her essence. It was … off. More so than usual. Pregnancy was adding to the stress on her body. Neither deity had anticipated the Prophet would be carrying his child before whatever game they were playing resolved itself.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, this time _to _him. The vision was over. She was exhausted. Something else had begun to creep into her voice lately after the visions. Despondency. It was ironic that, just as Gabriel had finally come to accept that defiance had a _place _in the great cosmic scheme of things. Was _necessary _on occasion… That the person who had _taught _him to be defiant was slowly slipping into resignation about the whole affair.

She _couldn't_ give up trying now! He _needed _her to not give up. Not for him! But for the whole human race. Audrey needed to continue to exist long after he was gone. And now he had gone and complicated matters by leaving her with their child to raise without a father to help her.

"What did you see tonight, my love?" Gabriel asked, gently pulling an errant strand of dark hair to the side that had stuck to her mouth.

"Amitea hesitated," Audrey said. "For a moment there, I thought I might get through to her. But I failed. Everybody died at the end. Same as always."

"You kicked Uriel in the crotch," Gabriel said, a statement.

"Yes," Audrey whispered, her voice barely audible. "Honey … can I please just go to sleep?" She was drenched with sweat and shivering, a chill that only natural sleep would make go away.

"Was there any other thread that changed?" Gabriel asked.

"I can't remember," Audrey murmured, already going limp in his arms. "Too tired…" Her voice trailed off.

Gabriel quickly nuzzled the pulse point at the base of her throat, reassuring himself her heart rate was within normal range. She was already asleep. He wouldn't awaken her for any further questions. The Mother had asked him to do some type of dangerous ceremony, so he would do it. Let _him _take the brunt of things for a change in order to obtain information. He was _sick _of the way the two deities were using his wife in their game.

He had no idea what an _Okipa _ceremony was or who the hell this 'Father's brother' was, but he was going to _find _the Eleventh Disciple and do whatever it took to do a little future tapestry thread-surfing on his _own!_

Defiance!


	137. Chapter 136

Chapter 136

"This town looks like the heavenly host barely touched it," Audrey said, reining Cheevers in from a canter to a walk as they passed the _'Entering New Town … population 913'_ city limits sign.

"You shouldn't be bouncing around on a horse so fast," Mambo De Vivre scolded her, grumbling about her sore posterior. "It's not good for the baby."

"Your women ride all the time," Audrey asked Lyubitshke. "How late can you ride in pregnancy?"

"Mama wouldn't ride past the sixth month," Lyubitshke said, glancing at Audrey's swollen abdomen and frowning. "You're almost there now. When you're too big to get up in the saddle by yourself, you should stop riding."

"It's not like we have many other options," Audrey said. "It's either ride, or walk. Personally, I prefer not being forced to waddle like a duck!"

"Waddling like a duck goes with the territory," Mambo said, her chocolate eyes twinkling with mirth. "Especially with _that _baby. You look like someone eight months along, not twenty-six weeks. He's going to be _big._"

"Like his father," Cindy chipped in, sliding right into their conversation in a hail of dust as she halted her horse from a dead gallop. "Why would his baby be any different? Audrey was envious. It should be _her _riding at a gallop!

"Gabriel will carry you where you need to go," Mambo said. "He keeps offering to fly you ahead, and you keep refusing. You must stop being so stubborn!"

Audrey frowned. Things had been … strained … between her and Gabriel lately. It wasn't that she was angry at him, or even that she hadn't forgiven him for his actions during his flashback. It was more … she didn't even know how to put it into words. Soon, he would be gone and she wouldn't have him to lean on anymore.

"I need to stop relying on him so much and start taking care of myself," Audrey said.

"It's not good to punish him for something that's not within his control," Mambo said softly. "A lot of boys from New Orleans went to Vietnam. First Gulf War. Afghanistan. Second Gulf War. Other missions. They go in, but only part of them come back out. They like zombie. Not whole until they learn to talk about the memories with their families, make them understand."

"You never saw what he was like when I first met him," Audrey said, her eyes haunted as she remembered the past. "He was like … Arnold Schwarzenegger … in the original Terminator. No matter what you threw at him, he just kept coming at the Savior like a mindless machine. If he's flashing back to those times … it's scary."

"The Terminator turned out to be a good guy by the second movie," Mambo gently reminded her. "Even when Skynet hacked his CPU and tried to make him turn against the future savior of mankind. He sacrificed himself so John Connor could live. All he needed was time to live amongst the humans and learn."

"Great," Audrey said. "I'm trapped in a sci-fi movie from the 1980's. Now all I have to do is wait for an alien to crack open his chest and hiss at me and then the pod-people will take over."

Mambo gave her a patient, knowing smile about the bad movie references to 1980's blockbusters. Audrey had been feeling really bitchy lately. Ever since Gabriel's … episode. Almost like she had been _before _they had met. The loss of … safety. She could trust Gabriel to lay down his life for her in a heartbeat. She could trust him to always watch her back. She could trust that he _meant _it when he said he loved her more than his own existence. But she no longer felt … _safe_ … in his arms. She hadn't realized how badly she _needed _that feeling until all of a sudden it was gone.

When had Gabriel started making her feel safe?

At the foot of the cliff. Long before he had even awoken. The night the coyotes had come and she had used his mace to fight them off and then curled up next to him to share her warmth. With her parents dead, the world as she knew it gone, and the knowledge there was no one left in the world who gave a shit about her sorry, mouthy ass, she had clung to the broken monster Michael had begged her to save. She had forced Gabriel to stay alive despite his sincere desire to stop breathing because _not _having him survive was more frightening than the memory of him ripping the roof off the car and taking a tumble at 90 miles-per-hour encased in the steel cage of his wings.

"Suppressed memories are like that baby," Mambo said, pointing to Audrey's abdomen. "They kick and let you know they're coming long before the big day arrives. Once the baby comes, no more kicking. Time to deal with crying baby."

Mambo's pursed lips and slight furrow of her brow indicated how displeased Mambo was over her … bitchiness … lately. Audrey felt worse than if the Mambo had thrashed her for her insolence. Why couldn't her _own _mother have been so wise? Mambo's quiet disappointment had a way of nudging Audrey to be reasonable in a way no other person had ever been able to handle her.

Audrey suddenly grinned.

"He'll make one hell of a big crying baby," Audrey said, picturing how readily Gabriel shed both tears of grief, and joy. It was what had moved her towards forgiving him … his tears the day he realized the Father had abandoned him and made him mortal.

"Yes," Mambo said, her expression no-nonsense and stern, letting Audrey know she wouldn't be sidetracked by charm. "He will. And we will all be there for him to help him deal with whatever dark thing the Father made him suppress the _same _way he has always been there for _us._ And _YOU, _Miss Prophet, will start taking proper care of yourself and that baby of his so he doesn't have to worry about you both quite so much while he deals with it!"

"I won't go above a gentle pace from now on unless we need to escape danger," Audrey promised, mollified. Mambo was right. Gabriel had watched her back while _she _had dealt with her suppressed feelings of guilt over her parents and the dog. Now it was _her _turn to care for _him_.

It wasn't like there was a lot of time left to help him through it. She felt her abdomen. She _did _look nearly eight months pregnant. In the vision, she was so big she could barely waddle. She wasn't there yet, but the bigger she got and harder time she had heaving herself up onto Cheever's back, the closer she was getting to the day she would lose him. She was determined to stay as mobile as possible because, in her mind, it pushed out the date she would lose him further away. Maybe _that _was why she found herself pushing him away now?

Mambo grunted affirmation and turned her attention to surveying their surroundings. Muhammad came galloping back from where he and Jose' had ridden ahead to scout. Muhammad rode like he had been bred to be in the saddle and born there to boot. Jose' … not so much. Jose' came bouncing painfully behind him. He'd be complaining about how much his butt hurt during tonight's webcast.

"There's a checkpoint ahead," Muhammad said. "Three men in tribal police uniforms with guns. We spoke to them. They appear to be legitimate. Not highwaymen."

"T-t-they s-s-said they've radioed B-b-black Crow," Jose' stammered. "S-s-someone will meet us at the … the …"

The hands Jose' used to hold the reins shook with tremors as he searched for the word. The new medication they had scrounged up for him in Toronto had been used up and the replacement medication they had found on the road wasn't as effective. Audrey made a mental note to inquire at the Reservation medical center about scrounging up more Clozapine for their most brilliant … and psychologically fragile … disciple.

Although Muhammad was giving Jose' a run for his money in the brilliance department. Audrey could see now why Muhammad's Egyptian sponsor and former boss had brought him here and sent him to the university. Close in age, the two young men had become good friends.

"Where's Gabriel and the boys?" Muhammad asked. "It sounded as though the tribal chief ordered his men to be on the lookout for a group of travelers with three angels in their midst. He gave them orders to escort us immediately to the Three Affiliated Tribes government seat."

"Three Affiliated Tribes?" Audrey asked.

"Yeah," Jose' said excitedly. "M-m-mandan, Hidatsa, and Sahnish. These are the p-p-people that greeted Louis and Clark! Sacagawea was l-l-living amongst them when they chose her to be their g-g-guide!"

Audrey scanned the skies, looking for Gabriel's distinct signature against the clouds. Ever since they had left Toronto, he'd been teaching the two Nephilim boys to scout ahead for trouble via the air. Post-apocalyptic humanity had a saying about the sensibilities of travelling the old interstate highway system. _'Highways belong to the highwaymen.'_ Nobody in their right mind travelled the old interstates unless they were either extremely heavily armed, or desperate.

"There," Cindy said, pointing towards the horizon in the general direction of the town they were headed into. "They must have seen Gabriel and the boys fly over and radioed ahead."

"No," Muhammad disagreed. "They said the chief has been having visions for over two years that three angels would come into their midst. When Black Crow spotted Gabriel, he spread word amongst the tribe that we had finally arrived."

"They only spotted Gabriel at the train station," Lyubitshke reminded him. "You made the boys lay low, remember? How'd he know there would be three?"

"The chief," Audrey said, turning to Lyubitshke. "How much do you want to bet that that's our eleventh disciple?"

"Just like I had visions of my future husband," Lyubitshke replied, an enigmatic smile lighting up her dark gypsy features. "I wonder what visions the Black Madonna has sent our newest member to enlighten us?"

The ladies waited until the others caught up to them so they could assume their usual 'probably friendly' formation when riding into unfamiliar territory. The Great Plains was an endless bible-belt. The Reverend rode out front with his young wife. The Senator and Muhammad men on either side. Gunn and the Rabbi at the back to be their anchors. The ladies and Jose' in the middle. Jose' _still _couldn't fight, ride, or shoot worth shit. Audrey softly ordered him to start filming so his nervous energy would be preoccupied with capturing the encounter with his webcam instead of causing his fragile mental state to deteriorate.

"Welcome," the shorter of the three policemen greeted them as they rode up to the barricades blocking the road. "It is our understanding that you have three angels in your midst?"

The concrete barricades were professionally staggered the way Audrey had seen coming into military bases so that cars were forced to slow down to a crawl to weave amongst them. A line of rubble lined a good direction on both sides of the road so a malfeasor couldn't simply avoid the roadblock by driving over the flat prairie. A 'checkpoint ahead' and 'stop for guard's signal' sign, as well as instructions on how to proceed through the roadblock, were prominently displayed. Audrey could see why Gabriel had not been alarmed. This was the roadblock of a professional police force at the entrance to a town.

"Gabriel and the two Nephilim boys are there," the Reverend said, pointing up to where Gabriel now circled an easy hawk-dive overhead.

"Four Bears welcomes you to the Three Affiliated Tribes nation," the shorter policeman said. "Follow this road past the Fort Berthold Community College. The tribal seat of government is four blocks past that."

Audrey glanced up to see Gabriel bank left and then swirl upwards as he patrolled the pathway the disciples would be travelling. The two Nephilim boys flew in close formation to either side of him like a squadron of F-16 Thunderbirds performing an aerial maneuver. Gabriel felt it was important to teach the boys how to integrate into the Father's armies, or provide a separate army for the Savior should the need arise. Audrey smiled and unconsciously patted her abdomen. Gabriel still tended towards seriousness, but he was also patient with the boys. He was going to make a wonderful father.

If she could only figure out how to keep him alive…


	138. Chapter 137

Chapter 137

Gabriel signaled the boys to land, fluttering down in a less-than-perfect formation of squadron leader followed by two sloppy plop-plops a millisecond apart. Anu excessively beat his wings, showboating for the 'audience' which had gathered in front of the tribal seat of government to greet them. He frowned. The boys should have landed simultaneously exactly three seconds after he did and were supposed to gracefully tuck their wings tightly against their backs into 'dress wings' formation. He would speak to them later about maintaining the proper skill and decorum.

"Greetings," a man in his early 50's greeted them, stepping forward without fear to shake Gabriel's hand. "I am Four Bears. The current chief of the Three Affiliated Tribes. And you have already met Black Crow. My nephew."

"Pleased to meet you," Gabriel said, glancing at the group of assorted Native American faces, a few other races mixed in. Most of the people here were older. The Tribal Elders. Gabriel had deliberately held back until his little Prophet had an opportunity to greet the tribal leaders and discuss whatever preliminaries needed to be discussed, waiting for her to use the high-pitched dog whistle to summons him. He didn't want to be accused of 'going avenging angel' on her again.

"Four Bears was just telling us how the tribe has been thriving thanks to the oil field that lays underneath Lake Sakakawea," Audrey said. "They pump around 3,000 gallons per day of crude oil out of the ground and supply the surrounding area with fuel."

"We are very picky about who we sell our oil to," Four Bears said, nodding his head in the direction the large lake lay in which Gabriel had spotted from the air. "The nation will only sell to allied forces. Railroads. Police and national guard. Supply ships that ply the Missouri River. No personal automobiles or home heating oil. Not a wise use of scarce resources."

"We were instructed by the Mother to get off the train in Niobe and ride in by horse," Gabriel said, nodding towards the railroad tracks which lay two blocks across the street.

"This is a different line than the one in Niobe," Four Bears said. "They used to connect far south-east of here, but no longer. The skin walkers destroyed the railroad bridge across a river. No resources to fix it right now, so we truck in a convoy of oil to lines to the north twice per week. But please … come inside. We have been preparing for your visit ever since Black Crow came back and informed me he had spotted you at the train station."

"You said you've been expecting us?" Gabriel asked, waiting outside while the tribal elders and then the disciples began to file into the tribal government building.

"After the apocalypse came," Four Bears said, his expression grim, "Kill nearly one-third the tribe, I went on a dream walk. Lone Man came to me in the wilderness and told me to expect a winged man who would need my help. Told me to prepare my nephew here, Black Crow, to lead in my stead. Told me would need to teach the winged man how to do the dream walk to access the other realms. Told me of a child who had been born who would lead us out of these dark times."

"Only one-third," Gabriel said. "Your tribe was fortunate. Less than 7% of humanity survives."

"We didn't feel fortunate at the time," Four Bears said. "Most of us were here. At a Christmas Eve pageant performed by our children, when the world ended. We weren't even aware until we went outside and smelled smoke."

Two-thirds of the tribe had fit in this hall? The tribe must be relatively small, Gabriel thought to himself. The auditorium had a seating capacity of around 600 people.

"How did you know there were _three _angels in our group?" Audrey interrupted, automatically leaning back into his torso as soon as he took his customary position at her back, wings slightly flared to provide maximum cover should any danger arise.

"Lone Man keeps coming to me every night in my dreams," Four Bears said. "First he showed me just you and the young woman. Then he showed me the man of the cloth. Then the … um … bridge woman. And so on. I have seen every person in this group, including that large black stallion over there who has no rider. That is the stallion ridden by the big angel." Four Bears pointed to where Haizum contentedly stood behind Non Gae's pregnant mare, looking mighty pleased with himself.

"So you see things as they unfold," Gabriel guessed. "Not the future."

"That appears to be the case," Four Bears said. "Although, since I was not with you, I don't know for certain whether these visions were given to me before or after each new member joined your group."

Four Bears led them into a large hall where folding tables and chairs had been set out around dining tables and a buffet feast prepared for them. Around them, tribal elders clustered around disciples and herded them to the buffet tables to get food, and then to the smaller tables to speak to them as though each small cluster had been assigned a separate disciple to question. Four Bears really _had _been expecting them.

"Then the Mother must have told you in your dreams last night what I must do," Gabriel asked softly.

"Not Woman Above," Four Bears said. "Lone Man. Lone Man ask me last night to host you for Okipa Ceremony so you can remember Woman Above. It is very dangerous. Not for the faint of heart."

"What?" Audrey asked, suddenly realizing Gabriel was talking about something she had no clue about. He had deliberately avoided mentioning it when he had reminded her of her vision the night before. Memory of her vision mercifully faded with the dawn. Never forgotten. But faded enough into her subconscious that it didn't totally incapacitate her during the day. It was _Gabriel's _job to listen for the clues in the vision and help her piece them together into a strategy.

"We'll talk later, honey," Gabriel murmured in her ear. "The Mother asked me to do something for her."

Four Bears looked between them, immediately gauging the situation, and nodded to a woman in her thirties. After whispering something in her ear, the young woman immediately approached Audrey to introduce herself.

"I am White Tail Runs," the woman said. "Four Bears daughter. Please … my grandmother has asked for the honor of sitting with the Dreamwalker who commands the love of angels."

Audrey appeared ready to protest, but White Tail Runs firmly looped her arm through Audrey's and gently tugged her towards an ancient Native American woman who had to be well into her 80's.

"Thank you," Gabriel said. "She won't … understand."

"So it is with women everywhere when sacred ceremonies are performed to help men like us communicate with the great spirits," Four Bears said, a knowing smile upon his face. "They are such intuitive creatures, discerning the whims of the spirits with such ease. They don't understand that, for men like us with strong egos in the way, we need much more to commune with the gods."

"Who is this Lone Man you speak of?" Gabriel asked.

"We believe that in the beginning," Four Bears said, "there were two brothers. Lone Man and Original Creator. Together they created the Earth, but it was empty. First Creator made the hill country and filled it with game, while Lone Man created the flat plain and filled it with cattle and sheep. Original Creator was not very impressed with what Lone Man had created. One day people came, but their lives were very hard. Lone Man entered into the corn a young woman was eating so that she became pregnant and birthed him as a human child. One day a great flood came, but Lone Man built a barricade and kept out the flood. When it was time to leave our people, he turned into a sacred cedar. But Original Creator … he turned into a coyote."

"The Father and … his brother?" Gabriel guessed. "At least … that is what the Mother insinuated last night after the Prophet's vision. But the angels in heaven have no memory of either the Mother or this … brother … that you speak of. I have only started remembering her since I fell from the Father's grace."

"Native peoples lived separate from the sons of Abraham for tens of thousands of years," Four Bears said. "We have many legends of spirits the sons of Abraham chose to forget. Christians come. Try to force us to convert. Forget old ways. But we remember truth. Why would the Father demand people not worship other gods unless there were other gods to worship besides him?"

"Oh," Gabriel said, feeling incredibly stupid for never daring to think such an _obvious _thought in all the time since the Mother had left the Father. Blasphemy. But truth. Names of so-called 'false' gods jumped into his mind. Including countless creation myths about two brothers who had created the world together. Mambo had a similar creation myth about two brothers.

"Lone Man says I am to sponsor you for the Okipa," Four Bears said, glancing at Audrey. "The ceremony takes four days to complete. It would be best if your wife does not attend. She would not understand."

Gabriel glanced at his little Prophet, animatedly chatting with the tribal elders. He had no problem subjecting himself to whatever ceremony the Mother wished if it would lighten her burden. What to do about her nightly visions, however, while he was gone was a different matter. Would she weather them okay if he wasn't there?

All he could hope was that the Mother would lighten her burden while he was attending to this task the Mother had assigned to him to perform.

"Tell me what the Okipa ceremony entails…." Gabriel asked.


	139. Chapter 138

Chapter 138

"So this Okipa ceremony," Audrey asked. "Is it dangerous?"

"Most great plains tribes have a version of the Okipa," White Tail Runs said evasively. "It is a rite of passage for our men who want to assume leadership positions within the tribe. Only a man who has gone through the Okipa can receive visions from Lone Man."

Audrey suppressed her annoyance. Ever since they had gotten here, everyone had been giving her the runaround, refusing to discuss the intimate details of their so-called 'sacred ceremonies.' The Reverend knew, but had been uncharacteristically silent on the whole issue. _He _had chosen to go through the ceremony as well. And Gunn. And Muhammad. The Senator had declined going through the ceremony itself, but would attend. He had also been mum on the details, leaving Cindy in a tizzy of anger. The two Nephilim boys had asked to do whatever Gabriel did, but would not undergo the full ceremony themselves as the Three Tribes did not consider them to be quite old enough. They would, however, be allowed to participate.

As of dawn this morning, just about every male in the town had disappeared, leaving only a skeletal, largely female police force in place to babysit the female disciples plus the Rabbi, who adamantly refused to participate in any ritual smacking of 'false gods.' For once in her life, Audrey sympathized with the Rabbi. _She _was muttering about 'pagan' ceremonies herself today. At least 'pagan' ceremonies that she wasn't being allowed to participate in!

"Testosterone poisoning!" Audrey exclaimed in frustration. "What is it with men and their secret societies and lodges and funny hats?"

White Tail Runs gave her a patient smile. "Intuition comes easily to women. It is necessary to anticipate the needs of our children and families. Children don't obey rules. So we are born with the ability to sense needs beyond those conveyed by the five senses. For men it is all about the ego. This rule. That rule. Rule. Rule. Rule. Must follow rules to be a man. Must be brave. Must be strong. Must never show fear or cry. Must be larger than life. It gets in the way of sensing the spirit realm."

"She's just described Gabriel in a nutshell," Lena said, anxiously twirling her scarf. As a 'berdash' or 'man dressed in woman's clothes, Lena had been offered a choice. Participate with the men. Or stay with the women. A 'berdash' was viewed as a sacred bridge between the masculine and feminine in most native cultures and accorded great privilege. Four Bears called Lena 'Bridge Woman.' Lena had learned what was involved with the Okipa ceremony and then, as she put it, chickened out. She knew what Gabriel was going through right now, but she refused to speak of it.

"Except for the 'never cry' rule," Audrey said. "When he grieves, he weeps, and then he is done with it. I guess the 'don't cry' rule is one that was added _after _the angels were created."

"A seven foot tall, 350 pound, 25-foot wingspan man with a mace do whatever he want," Non Gae said wryly. "Nobody say nothing. Wish more men like Gabriel."

"Gabriel acts like the ideal first people," White Tail Runs said, sadness crossing her features. "Eagle Flies was like that. So strong. I wish he was still here to meet your Gabriel. I think they would have gotten along."

Eagle Flies had been White Tail Runs husband. When the tribal members gathered to watch the Christmas pageant featuring her children had come out of the tribal community center and realized the town was in chaos, her husband had run home to make sure his parents were safe. His mother had been possessed by the heavenly host and killed his father, and then him. White Tail Runs was now raising four children alone.

As Audrey would soon be doing if she didn't find a thread that would alter Gabriel's fate…

"I think they would have gotten along, too," Audrey said, deciding to lay off the questions for a while. White Tail Runs was the chief's daughter and also the granddaughter of the village medicine man. She would not go against her ingrained culture simply to satisfy Audrey's curiosity.

"So," Mambo said, firmly sidetracking the conversation to distract everyone from the missing men of their group. "When are we going to get a tour of the community college? I can't believe you still have a working community college in this town…"

White Tail Runs began to describe how the tribe had chosen to continue community college so their youth didn't fall behind. This was the _first _town they had encountered with a still-functioning higher education system. Classes offered were, by necessity, limited to those that would help tribal members survive in the post-apocalyptic world. Just enough literature, psychology, sociology, and philosophy to develop critical thinking, but no more abstract studies in arcane fields. Lots of math so students could compute the complex formulas needed to run the oil rigs. A strong engineering and medical program. Brand new classes in chemistry taught by a white woman the tribe had managed to lure in after the apocalypse from a defunct state university down-river.

"I'd love a tour," Audrey said, offering the olive branch. She'd been hammering White Tail Runs with questions ever since they got here two days ago. It was time to lay off the 'third degree' and start being a grateful guest. The group hadn't stayed in such civilized accommodations since they'd left Salt Lake City.

Gabriel arisen before dawn, extricating himself from her sleeping form and gently kissing her goodbye. The ceremony would take four days. He'd been anxious about leaving her to weather her nightly vision alone, but the other women had agreed to bunk in the same room as her to assist her. If she got so bad that she needed him and nobody _but _him, Lena was authorized to 'crash' the ceremony. Audrey had tried to talk him out of it, first attempting to reason with him, then beg, then plead, and then pout, but Gabriel had been adamant this was something he needed to do. She hadn't seen him this unmoving in his stubbornness since he'd first healed enough to resume getting around on his own after being thrown off the cliff by the Father.

'_This is something the Mother asked me to do,' _Gabriel had said, his eyes intent with an emotion Audrey could not name. Not resignation. He wasn't doing this to obey the Mother. Something else. If not for the fact he was _obeying _the Mother's wishes, Audrey would have mistaken the set of his jaw to be … defiance?


	140. Chapter 139

Chapter 139

His eyes were squidgy and his head was swimming!

Gabriel looked to where Gunn and Muhammad enthusiastically danced around the great hall with the native participants to the beat of six men pounding turtle drums and two men shaking rattles, chanting a song about how Lone Man had woven a wall of cottonwood trees to keep the tribes safe from a great flood. The exact details of the Three Affiliated Tribes creation myths varied depending upon who was telling the story. Once three separate tribes, small pox following on the wake of Louis and Clarks' expedition had decimated the three tribes so badly that they'd been forced to intermarry and join forces.

Very few purebred members of any single tribe still existed, but different families had slightly different mythologies depending upon the dominant tribal mix in their particular family. This did not seem to bother the Okipa ceremony participants. They had obviously agreed to disagree more than a century ago. With enough men to act the parts of the various spirit-creatures, all spirits were welcome at the Okipa. Around him, men with painted bodies wearing a variety of animal masks and attire danced around the lodge.

"This bundle represents items Lone Man carried with him during his time as one of the Mandan," Four Bears said, or for the purposes of this ceremony, the Koni'saka. "Like the Savior, he chose to incarnate into human form to make our life easier. He saved us from a great flood. But it happened long before your Savior walked the Earth. He has shown me that he is not the same person as your Savior, but his uncle."

Four Bears pulled out a buffalo robe, stuffed raven pipe, assorted headdresses and buffalo tails, and a set of buffalo teeth. For perhaps the fourth time in four days, he asked Gabriel to recite a series of creation myths taught to him earlier about the Lone Man, First Creator, and the Woman Above aka Corn Woman.

Gabriel tried to regain his lost marbles by focusing on the features of the 75 foot oblong sacred lodge whose enormous roof was held up by 6 enormous vertical support posts surrounding a large, central cedar pole painted bright red. The central pole was surrounded by cottonwood boards interwoven with reeds, a symbol of the wall Lone Man had built to keep out the flood. One side of the lodge was painted black, the other red. Four Bears had told him the symbology of the lodge, but it escaped Gabriel's mind now as four days worth of fasting, sleep deprivation, dancing, and a foul-tasting beverage another 'player' in the ceremony called the Hoita had given him to drink, the tribes' medicine man and Four Bear's father, Thunder Cloud.

"Drink," the Hoita, aka Thunder Cloud ordered as soon as the tribal elder dancing around the cedar pole playing the part of Lone Man acting out the flood myth. The old man's face was craggy and stern, with brilliant dark eyes staring out at him. Eyes that appeared to be lit from within, or was that just Gabriel's swimmy head making it appear that way? Thunder Cloud had the face of a man accustomed to a lifetime of hard work out in the sun.

"What's in this stuff?" Gabriel asked as he gagged down another large cupful of the foul-tasting concoction which he suspected was drugged. All around him, the drumming had taken on an ethereal feeling to it, the constant drumming and chanting causing his very bones to vibrate. It felt like … pressure. As though something were pressing down upon his consciousness.

"Morning glory seeds," Thunder Cloud said with a grunt. "Government forbid, but federal government too far away now to care. In the Dakotas, tribal governments only government that exists now. Sacred beverage not part of traditional Three Tribes ceremony, but brothers to south use. Make experience better for stubborn warrior like you who refuses to relinquish control to the spirits. Elders vote exception for sacred ceremonies. Make dreamwalk better. Drink!"

Gabriel finished the cup and handed it back to Thunder Cloud. As Four Bears finished reiterating another native creation myth, the room began to swim worse. What day was it anyways? Day 3? Or Day 4? When would that incessant drumming get out of his head so he could just sleep? Never in his very long existence, not even when he had battled the Grigori, could Gabriel remember feeling this bizarre mixture of exhaustion, exhilaration, and mental fuzziness.

The man playing Lone Man came over and gestured for Gabriel to get up and dance around the cedar pole along with the others. So far, Gabriel had resisted making an ass out of himself to perform the strange, hopping dance, but Four Bears had warned him it was part of the ceremony. It was time.

"Like this," Four Bears said, correcting his awkward movement. "Okipa hunting and war dance. Might help if you pretend you are buffalo, charging at rider."

Gabriel promptly swung around and knocked over two of the dancers, including the Reverend, with his wings. He was off-balance from his head swimming and unconsciously using them to keep his balance. Why was it everybody but _him _seemed to get into the spirit of things so easily? Everything he was doing now had been forbidden by the Father. Dancing. Stories about 'false gods.' Drugged beverages. Copious amounts of tobacco smoked in a long pipe that Four Bears reassured him was not drugged, but which made his head swim in those amounts nonetheless from the nicotine.

The very _concept _that the Father had a brother was too enormous for Gabriel to wrap his brain around. At least he had _recognized _the voice of the Mother when his little Prophet first commanded him to live at the base of the cliff, but there had not even been _rumors _of an uncle in heaven that he could recall.

"Watch your wings," Four Bears gently chided him. "Tuck them into your back so you don't knock anyone unconscious." Four Bears voice sounded distorted and far away, as if he were speaking from under water.

Where were the boys? The thought flitted through his brain, a momentary clearing of the brain. He was responsible for them. Anu and Ningizzada. Two boys who were finally being allowed to pick up and live their eleven-year-old lives after a 4,500 year hiatus. The boys were cheerfully fitting in with some native boys around the same age. The momentary clarity faded as the room grew fuzzy once more. Never, ever in his life had Gabriel ever _voluntarily_ submitted himself to conditions which would cause him to lose complete control of his faculties. It was an uncomfortable experience which his mind resisted.

As his sponsor, or the 'Giver of Ceremony,' Four Bears was responsible for making sure his guests were suitable candidates to complete the Okipa ceremony. The Senator was dancing, but would not finish the final portion of the ceremony unless he experienced a vision which commanded him to do otherwise. Gunn and Muhammad had been readily accepted, the Bedouin having a tradition of long fasts in the desert to induce visions and Gunn already having had his _own _near-death dreamwalk in the form of the Angel of Death.

Jose' was present, but it had been decided his mental state was too fragile to deprive of sleep or spike his beverage. Jose' walked in a perpetual dreamwalk even in his waking moments _without _sacred ceremonies. Jose' was walking around the room happily hallucinating along with the other fasting-and-sleep-deprived braves _without _the need for _either_ fasting _or _sleep deprivation.

The Hoita barked an order in one of the ancient tribal languages which Gabriel's normally fluent brain was slow to translate and suddenly the drumming stopped.

"It is time," Four Bears said, leading him towards the alter which had been set up in near the central pole of the lodge with buffalo skulls, sharp sticks, an assortment of cutting and poking implements, and leather thongs. Already the men of the tribe had strung long ropes up over the cross-beams being supported by the six supporting poles. It was time.

"You ready for this?" Gunn asked, pretending he _wasn't _anxiously tugging on the two long Viking-like braids coming down from his beard.

"Who goes first?" the Reverend asked nervously. He was wearing his ministers uniform today. As _if _that would protect him from what he was about to put himself through. And also to throw Lyubitshke off the scent, who would have been instantly suspicious if her husband had 'gone to work' _without _his trappings of ministry.

"I'll go first," Muhammad volunteered nervously. He had dressed in the typical taqiyah prayer cap of his faith despite the decidedly _un-_Muslim ceremony they were putting themselves through now. His Bedouin forebears often journeyed into the desert, fasting and meditating, to induce visions the way that Muhammad had done when Gabriel had given him the Quran. The young man had decided that if the Angel of the Lord Jibr'il who had given the original Prophet Muhammad the Quran could do the Akipa ceremony, than he could too.

"Lone Man showed me the winged man must go first," Four Bears said. "The rest of you … decide if you still want to do it after you see."

"Remember," Thunder Cloud grunted with the paucity of words the wizened medicine man had spoken the entire time they'd been there. "You get extra points if you don't scream."

"Maybe I'll bow out," the Reverend said.

"Chicken!" Gunn said, only half in jest. Mighty Gunnlaeif was _himself _looking like he wanted to cut and run.

"We will only keep you suspended until you pass out," Four Bears said. "Then we will lower you to the floor to finish your dreamwalk so it minimizes the trauma on your body to only that necessary to induce the desired mental state."

"What's the longest anybody's ever been able to do it?" Gabriel asked, suppressing his fear and donning his customary unreadable expression."

"Two hours," Four Bears said. "My ancestor, the first Four Bears, who greeted Louis and Clark. He did this ceremony twice. The second time, he hung for two hours before he finally passed out."

"Shit," Gunn whistled. "Reverend … remind me why I volunteered to do this?"

"Because you're a psychotic ex-army Ranger suffering from Rambo syndrome," the Reverend said.

"Strip!" Thunder Cloud ordered. "All of you. You must meet the spirit gods the way you were created."

Gabriel obediently stripped, almost losing his balance as his head swam. His stomach churned from the foul-tasting beverage they had finally made him consume to induce a dreamlike state after realizing they would be here for weeks if they waited for his Father-enhanced angelic body to deteriorate to what a normal man would if similarly deprived of all food and water for four days. Thunder Cloud stood at the altar, a sharp knife and hardwood skewers around two inches think with both ends sharpened and a notch.

"Kneel," Thunder Cloud ordered. Gabriel obeyed. "You must smile and pretend this doesn't hurt!" The old man expertly took the knife and carefully stabbed a hole into the top portion of Gabriel's pectoral muscle close to his collar bone, first on the central side, and then on the side nearest his arm. Gabriel suppressed a howl of pain as the old man grabbed the wooden skewer and none-too-gently shoved the stick through the back of his chest muscle and out the hole on the other side.

"To transcend the rules of this realm and project your consciousness to another one," Thunder Cloud explained as he stabbed the knife through the second pectoral muscle, "you must experience so much pain that your consciousness leaves your body without actually dying."

As had happened when he had been shot in Santa Fe. He had been _conscious_ of the Mother and the Father arguing about his fate in a way he had never been while still in the garden. Michael had shielded his body, but he had also been _conscious _of Azrael catching his soul to prevent it from inadvertently travelling into the void.

"Smile," Gunn cracked to alleviate his _own _discomfort at watching the medicine man mutilate Gabriel's flesh. "You don't want to go meet the Lone Man with a scowl on your face."

Smile? It was all Gabriel could do to clamp his teeth tightly shut so he would not scream in pain as Thunder Cloud worked the second skewer through his flesh and then attached the leather thongs.

"Stand!" Thunder Cloud ordered.

Shakily, Gabriel lurched to his knees, pain plus his already hunger and sleep deprived body causing the room to spin. He would _not _make an ass out of himself and pass out in front of all these people before he had even completed the ceremony! Reaching deep inside himself, Gabriel found the strength to stand straight and give the 'smile' which was really a grimace of pain that the Three Affiliated Tribes expected of a worthy Okipa participant.

"We will lower you as soon as you stop twitching in pain," Four Bears said. "Let the unconsciousness claim you. There is no shame in losing consciousness right away. It is perfectly acceptable to experience the bulk of your dreamwalk from the floor of the lodge."

"Up!" Thunder Cloud ordered, his ancient voice loud and only slightly warbly for a man in his eighties.

They tribal men cried out as they heaved Gabriel's enormous girth up toward the ceiling.


	141. Chapter 140

Chapter 140

"_Up!" Thunder Cloud ordered, his ancient voice loud and only slightly warbly for a man in his eighties._

_They tribal men cried out as they heaved Gabriel's enormous girth up toward the ceiling._

Gabriel sucked in his breath and gritted his teeth in agony as the men of the tribe pulled on the ropes, hauling him up towards the ceiling suspended only by the two wooden skewers impaled through the back of his chest muscles, but he refused to scream. The room swam, and swam, and swam, but merciful unconsciousness refused to claim him. He resisted the urge to flap his wings to alleviate his own discomfort. The Mother had told him to complete the Okipa ceremony, so he would complete the Okipa ceremony the same as any other man.

A short time later, he heard a deep groan of pain as a second supplicant was hauled up towards the ceiling. Muhammad. The tough young Bedouin groaned and twitched, but did not scream.

Gabriel was aware of his head gradually clearing, not getting fuzzier as was expected. Adrenaline was causing the effects of the mild hallucinogen to wear off and his level of pain increase as Thunder Cloud ordered the third supplicant to be hauled up to the ceiling. Gunn.

Gabriel lifted his head to look around the room, an effort which only increased his agony, but allowed him to watch as the Reverend stepped up to the altar and, surprisingly, allowed himself to be mutilated and strung from the ceiling like a giant fish hanging from two fishhooks impaled in his chest. The Reverend yowled in pain on the way up and twitched in agony, but did not ask to be let down.

Muhammad finally passed out with pain and was lowered to the floor to complete his dreamwalk. No one touched him. It was forbidden to touch the dreamwalker other than to lower them until their vision had finished and they had awoken on their own lest touch interrupt the vision they had just endured so much pain to experience.

Within minutes, the Reverend followed him down. Gabriel was amazed the Reverend had even submitted himself to such torture. The Reverend had explained that if there was anything that could help him facilitate the path of the Savior, anything at all, then he would do it. The Reverend's quiet commitment to his mission, a soft-spoken man of the cloth, never ceased to amaze Gabriel. First he had married, but still had not touched, his young gypsy bride. And now this?

Gunn twitched like a dying fish suspended from a hook out of water, like Gabriel, refusing to lose consciousness, but barely hanging on.

"Let go," Gabriel said. "Don't fight it."

"Speak for yourself," Gunn grunted in pain, his eyes glazed over in pain as involuntary tremors shuddered through his body. Gabriel could see when his pain caused his vision to start despite still being semi-conscious.

They hung there. And hung. And hung. And hung. The drums beat. The dancers danced. Gabriel's head cleared as the dream state stubbornly eluded him. At some point, Gunn finally lost consciousness completely and was lowered to the ground. The pain was excruciating, but he could bear it. He had borne worst pain in battle. Gabriel gritted his teeth and stubbornly hung on, unable to let go of his self-control and slide into the dream state which he could feel touching the edge of his consciousness, but unwilling to throw in the towel and admit defeat by signaling the Hoita below to lower him to the ground without first experiencing his vision.

He _would _experience the vision the Mother had asked him to undertake. He _would _somehow take the burden of the terrible visions off his little Prophet. No matter what…

Below him, he was aware that Muhammad had regained consciousness. The dancers cheered. A buffalo robe was wrapped around him and he was given food and drink before being led away to a group of elders who would help him interpret his dream.

Gabriel hung on, refusing to flap his wings, refusing to ask to be lowered to the ground. The drummers pounded. The dancers danced. The pain continued, but he pushed it aside so he could bear it. The slight pressure of the dreamwalk pressed harder upon the edge of his unconsciousness, seeking entry, but Gabriel didn't know how to let it in. He tried clearing his mind. He tried deep breathing. He tried silently chanting sacred sounds. Nothing helped. There was no way he could help the dream state along. How long had he been hanging there, anyways?

Beneath him he was aware of Gunn regaining consciousness. The dancers cheered as he was given a buffalo robe and then food and water.

"I can't believe he's still conscious," Gunn said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm still here," Gabriel hissed in pain from the ceiling, lifting his head to look down. "This hurts like a bastard."

"You … don't speak to him!" Thunder Cloud ordered. "Interrupt dreamwalk. He must hang longer."

Gunn mumbled apologies as he was led away to the tribal elders who would help him interpret his vision. Great… Hang longer.

The sensation of something pressing upon the edge of his consciousness increased. It began to press in upon his heart, his lungs, his kidneys, his spleen. Pressure. Something was trying to gain entry, but billions of years worth of conditioning to resist forbade him to let go and allow it in. So he continued to hang there on the ceiling, unable to enter the dreamwalk and too stubborn to simply allow himself to pass out from the pain.

The skin and muscles by which he was suspended had gone numb. The drums drummed. The dancers chanted and danced, singing ancient songs older than humanity. The chanting song and beat of the drums began to vibrate in his bones the way they had done when Thunder Cloud had given him the morning glory concoction. Gabriel studied it, examined it, intently studying by what process the dreamwalk could be induced. He knew his lucidity was slowing down the pressure which now threatened to crush his brain, but he wished to understand this thing which was pressing down upon him. Control it. Harness it. And so he hung. And hung. And hung.

The Reverend was unconscious for a very long time. Finally, Gabriel was aware the Reverend had awoken. The dancers cheered as they wrapped him in a buffalo robe and gave him food and water, leading him off to speak to the tribal elders and help him interpret his dream. Gabriel was _certain _the Reverend had experienced a vision.

"Et permitto tibi dimatte Patris fratris salutat vos [you must let go and allow the Fathers' brother to greet you]," the Reverend said in the ancient, heavenly language. "Quasi diceret … tu desine potestate omnia Pater facit [he said you must stop trying to control everything like the Father does]. Proin egat est somnium ambulat [the dreamwalk is about relinquishing control]."

The Reverend had only ever been able to speak a few words of the ancient language, only ever able to interpret the written symbols he had learned long ago in the seminary. Now … he appeared to be as fluent as Gabriel was.

Gabriel grit his teeth against the pain, determined he would not be defeated. He could feel his wings involuntarily shudder, flapping like some poor decapitated chicken hung upside down to bleed out as his pain caused him to lose control of them.

"Mother … please," Gabriel whispered to the ceiling he was suspended off of. "I don't know how to do this…"

The drummers continued to drum, the dancers dance, and he heard a shriek of pain as a fifth participant was hauled up towards the ceiling. And a sixth. And a seventh. The pressure increased on the edge of his consciousness, but never was able to seize control. Soon enough, the three tribe members who had chosen to join him in the ceremony of self-mutilation were being lowered to the ground to finish their dreamwalks on the ground, given robes upon awakening, and led off to the elders. The pain was excruciating, but Gabriel could neither let go enough to enter the dreamwalk, nor give up and simply pass out without experiencing a vision.

"Mother," Gabriel pleaded. "Please… You must help me enter the dream state."

A small puff of light appeared in the rafters amongst the support posts and Simbi appeared in his typical serpent form, his intelligent golden eyes widening at Gabriel's predicament.

"It isss forbidden for the Mother to divulge any more than wasss agreed upon in the wager," Simbi hissed regretfully. "You weren't even sssupposed to live. The Father isss being pig-headed about this. If you want more information than isss permitted in the wager, then you're going to have to learn to find your own sssources of information."

"I'm trying," Gabriel murmured, his voice low from exhaustion, thirst, hunger and weakness. "I just can't get there."

"Ssstop trying to control it, Father," Simbi said. "If he presses any harder, he will crush your mortal shell."

With that, Simbi disappeared in a tiny flash of light between the dimensions.

Gabriel was aware of another groan of pain, another body being hauled up directly next to his as he hung there like a fish out of water. Four Bears. Four Bears had decided to achieve the rare accomplishment of undergoing the Okipa ceremony twice as his famous forebear had done.

"The force of the Lone Man fills this entire room," Four Bears said through gritted teeth. "You must let go of your fear and allow him to take you wherever it is he wishes to take you."

"I am trying," Gabriel mouthed the words, only mumbled sounds coming out from his parched tongue and mouth. How long had he been up here, anyways?

"Take my arm," Four Bears said, gasping in pain as he reached out and locked arms with Gabriel, forearm to forearm. "I've got you. Now just focus on the feel of my arm and let your mind go!"

The pain was overwhelming. He was so tired. So thirsty. He needed to vomit. The overwhelming pressure which had been building against his body all afternoon grew even more intense, crushing in its insistence to let him in. The sound of the drummers and singers began to fade, only the deep vibration in his bones signaling him they were still there. The room began to fade. His entire body began to fade until he was only conscious of the beating of his own heart and the vague sensation of Four Bears forearm locked against his, holding him here.

Off in the distance, Gabriel could sense another consciousness calling him. Calling him from across the void.

"Now let go and enter the dreamwalk," he heard Four Bears say as though he were a million miles away.

Four Bears let go of his arm.

With a brilliant, blinding flash of white light, for the first time since the day the Father had cast him down from heaven, Gabriel disappeared from the sacred lodge and slipped between the dimensions…


	142. Chapter 141

Chapter 141

"Gabriel!" Audrey suddenly startled out of her daydreams where the Three Affiliated Tribes women were teaching the female disciples an excruciatingly detailed lesson about weaving baskets out of native prairie grasses.

"Audrey?" Lena asked. "Are you okay?"

"Where's Gabriel?" Audrey asked, her heart suddenly racing with panic as a feeling she could not name washed over her. It felt like … emptiness. It felt like … it felt like the crushing feeling of loss she felt each night in her vision after Gabriel died and the Father caused his mortal shell to dissipate into nothingness.

"He's still at the Okipa ceremony," White Tail Runs said.

"No!" Audrey said, the sensation growing stronger. "He's not! He's … gone! I can't…" She didn't know how to describe the sensation. Until now, she'd only ever been vaguely consciously aware that it even existed. That … awareness … that he was always nearby … protecting her. The only time she'd ever felt this peculiar translocation of disembodied … emptiness … in the waking realm was the day Gabriel had been shot.

Even before a runner had come back from the sacred lodge late last night and informed them the ceremony would be progressing for a fifth day, Audrey had been uneasy. A vague … she didn't know how to describe it … sensation. Of pain. Only it wasn't _her_ pain. _She _felt fine. It was more like an echo of pain. And hunger. And thirst. And exhaustion. Subconsciously she had been rubbing her hands across the muscles just beneath her collarbone since sometime yesterday morning.

"What do you sense, child?" Mambo De Vivre asked, concern etched in her dark features. "Concentrate."

"He's gone," Audrey said, her voice shaking as panic surged through her body like electricity. "I can't feel him anymore."

"Don't worry," White Tail Runs attempted to reassure her. "My father knows what he is doing. If he thinks your husband is in any danger, he will stop the ceremony immediately."

"You obviously don't know Gabriel very well," Lena said. "Once he makes up his mind to do something…"

"He's _gone!"_ Audrey said, inadvertently knocking over the flimsy folding chair she had been sitting in and bumping the table with her swollen abdomen, jostling it and spilling the cheap Styrofoam cups of coffee encircling the table. "Take me to him. Please. Now!"

"I'm certain he's fine," White Tail Runs said, the expression on her face much less certain than the words which were coming out of her mouth. The grim look Lena gave her made White Tail Runs flinch.

"_Safe _isn't a word I would use to describe the Okipa ceremony," Lena said pointedly. "Is it?"

"Are you certain?" Mambo asked Audrey, reaching out to take her hand. Mambo was a Vodoun priestess. She understood people formed spiritual connections that went _beyond _the physical.

"I can't feel him!" Audrey cried out, clutching her heart. "Here! He's gone. I've been feeling pain … here … ever since yesterday morning … and then all of a sudden it just vanished!"

She couldn't breathe! It was as though the emptiness caused by his absence was consuming her and sucking the air out of her lungs. She hyperventilated, trying to catch her breath, and made it worse.

"He probably finally passed out," White Tail Runs said, and then clamped her mouth shut.

"Gabriel has been seriously injured before," Lena suddenly said, stepping to one side and looking decidedly less female and much more male. "If she says she can't feel him, then something has happened to him. We need to take her to him right away."

"I agree," Mambo said, positioning herself on Audrey's other side. "The connection between those two is blessed by the Mother herself. If she says she can't feel him, then we need to investigate."

"It's forbidden for women to enter the sacred lodge during the Okipa ceremony," White Tail Runs said uneasily, the other native women stepping to either side of her to reinforce her authority. "Only men can attend."

Audrey hyperventilated. The emptiness. It felt like … it felt like when she had died the night of the apocalypse and been floating in that terrible, soul-crushing emptiness before she had sensed another consciousness grab her and tug her back towards the gateway. It felt like … it felt like the time she had been shot in the Appalachian Mountains and wandered at the edge of the void, amazed at her ability to cross in and out through the doorway and peek inside without being trapped. It felt like the nothingness of the void filled her soul, so overwhelming was the feeling of emptiness and loss. Her very soul … comprised of the nothing. It felt like … annihilation.

It felt like she had just stuck her hand into an electrical socket of emptiness and couldn't let go of it. Her whole body shuddered with ….

"I want to go see my fucking husband NOW!" Audrey screamed, her body shuddering with an emotion that wasn't quite anger or rage. Not holy blasphemy. More … panic. But whatever it was, the compulsion to go to him was overwhelming. The nothingness which flowed through her veins like cold, electrified ice water would not be denied.

Several windows in the tribal headquarters shattered as she screamed, the floor shuddering as though someone had just unleashed a small earthquake. The tribal women who had been cheerfully engaged in teaching them basket-weaving shrieked in terror. Audrey hyperventilated as the compulsion to find her husband grew stronger the longer she felt his absence, the building shuddering along with her every breath. Wherever he was, he wasn't … here … anymore.

"You'd better take her to him," Mambo De Vivre said nervously, patting Audrey's arm and attempting to calm her. "Before she levels this entire building. She has not yet learned to control this gift of the Mother."

"It is very bad if a woman enters the sacred lodge while the ceremony is still going on," Deer Without Heart said, her rheumy eyes filled with compassion as she shakily stood her ground. "Not just a silly prohibition. Women are too … sensitive … to the levels of energy men need to enter the dreamwalk. Women don't need a lot of energy to do it. Already _know _how. Men … are thick headed. Stubborn. Need to be knocked over the head with it. The levels men need can damage a woman. Enter the dreamwalk and can't get out. Become lost. Catatonic."

Lost. In the void. While still alive.

Deer Without Heart was the elderly grandmother of Four Bears and the most senior female Tribal Elder. She was in her mid-80's and a powerful herbalist and medicine woman, a role somewhat akin to Mambo's position within the Vodoun community. Deer Without Heart commanded great respect within the tribal community.

"In case you've forgotten," Lena said, her female attire suddenly being the only thing about her that was not male. "I was born male. Four Bears said I could join the ceremony if I wish. Now … I wish."

"Yes," White Tail Runs said, glancing at her grandmother who nodded agreement. "That would be acceptable. As a berdache, Bridge Woman may enter either ceremony, male or female."

"I can't feel him," Audrey said, panic racing through her entire body. "He's gone." She reached out to touch Mambo and Lena, to reassure herself that she, herself, was still in this realm. The sensation of nothingness was so overwhelming that Audrey wasn't even certain _she_ was still even here. Wherever it was Gabriel had just gone, he had pulled part of her soul along with him.

She was vaguely aware of Mambo and Lena herding her out the door of the tribal center and into a waiting minivan. White Tail Runs grabbed the keys while Deer Without Heart got into the front passenger side seat. They rode in near silence to the outskirts of the town where a replica of a traditional Mandan village had been built along the shores of Lake Sakakawea, a series of small lodges surrounding a sunken dance area and a large, oblong lodge around 75 feet in diameter. The sacred lodge where the ceremony was being performed.

"He's not here," Audrey said nervously. "I can't feel him."

"Perhaps you sensed him enter the dreamwalk," Deer Without Heart said reassuringly. "The men drive themselves to the point of exhaustion, and then offer themselves in sacrifice to the spirits. They say it is as if they go someplace else."

"This doesn't look right," White Tail Runs said, pointing to the group of men milling about outside the lodge. "At this point in the ceremony everyone should be inside. Lena … I think it's time for you to go investigate."

"Get my son," Deer Without Heart said, her voice laced with authority. She was used to being paid the proper respect and demanded it now. "Tell Four Bears he will come speak to us right away."

Lena nodded and headed towards the entrance of the lodge. A couple of men Audrey hadn't seen before moved to stop her, and then stepped aside as soon as they realized she was a berdache, a man who wears women's clothes. Unlike other places in the world, many native tribes considered it fortunate to have a berdache living in their midst. Lena disappeared inside the lodge. Moments later, she came out with Black Crow trailing behind her.

"Four Bears is still unconscious from his dreamwalk," Black Crow said, his expression anxious.

"Where's Gabriel?" Audrey almost shrieked in panic, her voice high and shrill even to her own ears. "I can't feel him anymore."

"Gone," Black Crow said. "Just … gone. In a flash of light."

Audrey's mind began to race. Gone? It wasn't time. Gabriel was supposed to die in battle against the Grigori and _then _dissipate in a … flash? No. Not a flash. In the vision, it was more as though Gabriel's molecules turned into light and then slowly drifted away from her like fairy dust. Not a flash.

"Gone?" Mambo asked.

"Did you see another angel?" Audrey demanded. "Or … a loa. A … um … a serpent or something?"

"Is my father okay?" White Tail Runs asked simultaneously, now _also _visibly nervous.

"Why did my son perform the Okipa ceremony a second time?" Deer Without Heart demanded. "It is tradition now to only do it once! He's getting too old to be doing such asinine things!"

Black Crow appeared to be accustomed to answering questions in order of seniority, therefore answering Audrey's question last.

"Gabriel was having trouble entering the dreamwalk," Black Crow said. "Four Bears received a vision on the floor instructing him to offer himself for sacrifice a second time so he could show Gabriel how to enter. Lone Man's presence was so intense we were _all _experiencing visions. Even the ones who hadn't fasted. But Gabriel didn't know how to let go and just let it happen."

While Black Crow was describing what had happened, Gunn came out of the lodge supported by two native men. He appeared to be … shaky. He was wearing nothing but his pants and a buffalo robe thrown over his shoulders. In fact, _most _of the men were dressed … or more accurately _undressed _… with little but loin cloths, hides, an assortment of feathers, and lots of body paint. Far wilder than anything Audrey had ever seen depicted even in the wildest old western.

"Gunn!" Audrey exclaimed. "Did you _see _this … Lone Man … come take him?"

"I think he did it all on his own," Gunnlaeif said, his expression a strange blend of exhilaration, exhaustion, and pain. "I've seen Michael slip between the dimensions like that. In a flash of light. Lone Man must have helped him."

It was then that Gunn let the buffalo robe slip and Audrey saw what they had done to his chest. Gunn had clean white bandages taped with copious amounts of white medical tape plastered above both pectoral muscles on his chest. Just below his collarbones. Exactly where Audrey had been rubbing with discomfort for the past 24 hours. A horrifying image of something she'd seen on some late-night history channel special burst into her brain. Black Crows words echoed in her ears. Offer himself as a sacrifice?

"Take me to him," Audrey said, fury rising in her voice. "Now!" Without even waiting for an answer, she pushed her way out of the back of the minivan, bumping her enlarged abdomen against the seat rest.

"It is forbidden to go inside," Deer Without Heart said nervously. "Especially in your condition. It could harm your baby."

"I feel no presence of _any _supernatural deity right now," Audrey snapped, her fury growing. "Take me to him!"

"He's not inside," Lena said. "I already checked."

"Show me what they did to him!" Audrey screamed, that terrible black electricity of nothingness surging through her veins as she pictured what Gabriel had permitted them to do to him. She was furious. At _him! _Favor for the Mother her ass! Gabriel _knew _what they were going to do and had _asked _Four Bears to do it. _Why?_

Without waiting for an answer, she shoved her way inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim, fire lit interior of the lodge before her eyes could take in what the men had been doing. The painted native men dressed in costumes representing animals and deities. The drums. An altar in the middle of the room surrounded by buffalo skulls with an assortment of sharp cutting implements on it. Four Bears, unconscious on the floor in the center, buck naked, ropes stringing from two sharp sticks impaled into his chest, and nobody moving towards him to help him.

Up on the ceiling dangled two more ropes attached to two empty leather thongs with two sharp, bloody, pointed sticks. A sun dance, the documentary she had watched years ago had called it. Sioux tribe, she had thought. Not this tribe. But similar. Very similar. Fury surged through her veins that Gabriel would do something this dangerous to himself and not _tell _her about it so she could talk some sense into him.

"Gabriel!" Audrey screamed up towards the ceiling, the black nothingness surging through her veins as she attempted to call him back from wherever it was he had just gone to. Not here. Not anywhere on Earth. She was certain of it.

The entire lodge shuddered at the power in her voice.


	143. Chapter 142

Chapter 142

Gabriel couldn't breathe! He flailed against the leather thongs which had kept him suspended from the ceiling for the last 27 hours and suddenly realized they were no longer there. The room had gone black. The sensation of the pounding drum and the singsong chants of the singers had gone silent. It felt like … nothing.

"You don't need to breathe here," a voice that sounded familiar said. "You are an immortal. The need to breathe only exists in the material realms."

"Father?" Gabriel asked, verifying his eyes were open and still seeing blackness. Just to be certain, he flapped his wings. It felt like they were still attached to his back. He moved his arms and legs just to be certain they were still attached to his body. He _had _to still be alive. His chest hurt like a bastard where they had strung him up from the ceiling.

"I am Ehyeh," the voice said. "Yahweh's brother. Your uncle. Or the one my great plains nieces and nephews call 'Lone Man.'"

"Why can't I see you?" Gabriel asked.

"Oh … I'm sorry," Ehyeh said, a hint of humor lacing his voice. "It's been a while since I assumed semi-corporeal form. Is this better?"

A gentle light flared from the hand of a deity who, for all intents and purposes, could have been an identical twin to the Father if his pale blonde hair were not cut short and his chin clean-shaven and beardless in a style modern humans would find acceptable. Even his dress was in keeping with attire worn by modern humans, not the shapeless robes preferred by the Father. Ehyeh, it appeared, kept tabs on the humanity he had once incarnated into mortal form to help.

"You look like…" Gabriel said.

"I'm not," Ehyeh said, an expression crossing his face that could have been regret, or could have been annoyance.

The Father had made the humans in his own image. Or that of his species, Gabriel now realized. The fact that emotion crossed the deities face was proof this was not the Father. Gabriel couldn't remember any emotion other than a scowl crossing the Father's face in millennia. The most the angels were usually able to elicit from him was anger, contempt, frustration, or occasionally an unreadable expression that might or might not be happiness. Only Gabriel had ever seen the fifth emotion the Father displayed once he had forgotten Gabriel still stood watching his back. Bone-weary exhaustion.

Gabriel subconsciously reached to touch the wounds in his chest and winced as pain shot through his body. Semi-corporeal or not, he was able to feel mortal pain in a way he had never been able to feel anything while he had still basked in the light of the heavenly Father.

"Allow me," Ehyeh said, reaching forward with one hand and gesturing to heal the wounds.

"No!" Gabriel said, putting his hands in front of his chest. "I earned these scars the hard way. I wish to keep them to prove I underwent the Okipa ceremony."

"Pride," Ehyeh said with bemusement, a twinkle of mirth lighting his eyes as a slight dimple lit up one corner of his cheek near his lip. Definitely _not _the Father. "My brother would say that is a sin."

"Sin or no sin," Gabriel said, hiding behind his customary unreadable expression, "I would like to keep them." He carefully moderated his tone to pay the proper respect that should be paid to a brother of the Father, falling out or no falling out.

"I see Asherah standing here before me in your dark hair and wings," Ehyeh said fondly. "And yet, I see a carbon copy of my brother in your demeanor."

"I am not worthy to be compared to the Father," Gabriel said, twitching his wings and suddenly realizing he was still buck naked from the Okipa ceremony.

This was where the trouble had started with Eve. She had tasted the forbidden fruit and recognized her own nakedness before the Father. Gabriel stood, uncertain of what to do. Finally, he attempted to nonchalantly twist one wing around to cover his naked manhood, pretending to be straightening a few errant primary feathers in that wing.

Ehyeh burst out laughing. A deep, hearty sound which made the air vibrate all around him. With a twist of his hand, the Father's brother made an enormous fig leaf appear mid-air in front of Gabriel's face.

"Is this what you were looking for?" Ehyeh snorted in laughter.

Gabriel turned pink with mortification. He had thought he was being discreet. Could Ehyeh read his thoughts the same way the Father could?

"Yes," Ehyeh said. "And no. To answer your question. You are here and I am curious to communicate with you, so I am looking into your mind. Remarkably easy to read, I might add. I'm surprised the Father never gave you boys lessons on how to cloak your thoughts! Although then he wouldn't be able to control every aspect of your behavior. But I am not omnipotent. And neither, I might add, is my brother."

"Then how did you know what I was thinking?" Gabriel asked.

"We can only know that which we are focused on at the moment," Ehyeh said. "Not everything at once. Don't mistake technology and careful record-keeping for omnipotence."

"The sigels," Gabriel guessed. "Michael can use them to circumvent the Father's omnipotence to a limited degree."

"You don't need sigels to avoid having your mind violated when you don't _want _it to be violated," Ehyeh said. "The sigels are only necessary when technology is in use. Like those horrific collars the Father makes his sons wear. He does it just to goad her, you know."

"Who?" Gabriel asked. "The Mother?"

"_Your _Mother," Ehyeh said, his expression waxing wistful. A small, sad smile lit up one side of his face, which appeared to be far more youthful than that of the Father simply by virtue of the fact Ehyeh frequently smiled.

"I came here to remember what happened between them so I have a chance to heal it," Gabriel said softly. "Please … can you help me remember?"

"Yes," Ehyeh said. "But first please allow me to at least heal your wounds enough that they're no longer bleeding or in pain. _You _may be capable of ignoring the pain, but _I _am squirming in pain just looking at it. Grant me this small boon."

"Fine," Gabriel said. He inhaled sharply as a gentle warmth spread through his body and radiated out the wounds as they stopped bleeding and closed up, the scars of wounds which had been healed for at least a year.

"And some _real _clothing," Ehyeh said, noticing that Gabriel had unconsciously, without thinking about it, wrapped himself in his wings again. "They're not real. When you go back you'll be naked again. But your wounds will _stay _healed."

Thankfully, the deity granted Gabriel the dignity of manifesting an exact replica of his favorite cargo pants, undergarments, combat boots, and a button-down shirt so he could dress himself instead of just hocus-pocusing them directly onto his body as Gabriel knew he must be capable of doing. Everything Ehyeh had done so far was identical to what the Father could do.

"Not everything," Ehyeh said softly, reading his thoughts once more. "I can readily shape matter and have superior interpersonal skills, but my brother always had the gift of shaping intricate creations down to the tiniest detail. That's why _he's _in charge of the universe and the rest of us have been banished to the hinterlands. None of the other brothers and sisters was ever able to duplicate his level of genius."

"What happened to them?" Gabriel asked as he pulled on the clothing the deity had just manifested. "The Mother and the Father? I only remember fragments."

"Before you remember the fracture in heaven," Ehyeh said, "I must show you what happened even _before _the universe was created. Before you were born. It will help you understand the bigger picture."

Gabriel nodded. He was ready.


	144. Chapter 143

Chapter 143

"_Before you remember the fracture in heaven," Ehyeh said, "I must show you what happened even before the universe was created. Before you were born. It will help you understand the bigger picture."_

Gabriel nodded. He was ready. Ehyeh waived his hand and flicked his wrist to manifest a three-dimensional image and expanded it until Gabriel was in the center of it, only aware of Ehyeh's voice.

"Before the universe which you dwell in existed," Ehyeh said, "the Father and I lived in a garden not too different from the garden you grew up in along with our thousand brothers and sisters. Our Mother and Father tried to be loving, but as often happens when there are so many children, occasionally one gets overlooked and is allowed to spend too much time off by himself. Your Father was that deity."

As he spoke, images of a garden appeared with numerous humanoid children running around, chasing after strange plants and animals the likes of which Gabriel had never seen before. Off to one side he could see the young Father, sitting by himself, intently studying the movement of a beetle-like creature while the others played.

"Your Father was always more prone to watch than participate," Ehyeh said. "Not so different than _you _were as a young cherub. If something captured his attention, he would study it until he knew everything about that thing. He would seek to improve its design until it was perfect."

Images of the Father shaping a _new _beetle, better than the one he had been studying, flashed all around Gabriel. As Gabriel watched, he saw how the Father slowly gained confidence in his ability to shape matter and create intricate things. Not just playmates. But entire ecosystems to _house _those creations. Using his ability to create as a crutch, the Father finally began to emerge from his shell and _enjoy _being the center of attention. The Father transformed from an awkward, shy youth to a self-assured young man. Ehyeh dragged Yahweh along and got him into all sorts of comical predicaments, while Yahweh could always be relied upon to come up with a genius solution to get them _out _of that predicament.

"Only one thing was holding him back," Ehyeh said. "Holding us _all _back. Only so much primordial matter trickled out from the point of origin someplace inside the void. But the void was terrifying. Someplace even immortals fear to tread. Most souls that enter the void are torn apart by the same forces that cause the matter-stream. Even the souls of immortals. Only a very strong soul is capable of withstanding it."

Ehyeh waved his hand and showed Gabriel a gateway to a darkness far darker and ominous than the mere paucity of matter in the realm the other immortals now inhabited. The gateway the Mother now guarded. As he watched, sometimes a ripple would appear at the surface of the void, as though a fish rippled close to the surface of a pond and then resubmerged. There were creatures living in the void.

"Yahweh became obsessed with the void," Ehyeh said. "He must have sat there ten or twelve million years, just studying what little he could see from the gateway, while the rest of us went about our lives. In time, the others got too busy to even think about Yahweh and his strange obsession with the void. I was the only one who ever bothered to check up on him. One day, he announced he had made contact with a creature from the void. He intended to capture it so he could force it to do his bidding."

"The Mother?" Gabriel asked.

"She was not recognizable as the Mother you know now," Ehyeh said. "But … yes. Her form was such that it defied definition. More formlessness than form. A creature of nightmare and horror. Something we others would probably have destroyed upon sight. But Yahweh … all he saw was the unlimited matter he could shape if he could get this creature to do his bidding. For the next million years or so, he did nothing _but _interact with her through the gateway and attempted to earn her trust."

As he spoke, Ehyeh projected the memories onto the hologram which surrounded Gabriel. He could _see _what had happened.

"She came out for him?" Gabriel asked.

"No," Ehyeh said. "She was happy there in the void. It was the only life she'd ever known. _We _were the strange creatures to _her._ Yahweh finally resolved to go in after her."

"The Father entered the void?" Gabriel asked incredulously, his expression skeptical. "He is terrified of it. He used to use stories of it to make us obey when we were naughty cherubs."

"How do you think he learned so much about it?" Ehyeh asked, his raised eyebrow suddenly visible through the swirling hologram of the void. "He went in to drag her out against her will."

"He forced her?" Gabriel asked. "To marry him?"

Ehyeh snorted with contempt. "He intended no such thing! Her true form is … is … oh darn! There are no words to describe it. Here … I'll just have to show you…"

Ehyeh waved his hand and the image changed to display a … darkness? With smoky tentacles and billowing smoke and formlessness and sound, so much sound, and sensation, a heavy, crushing, screaming sensation that felt as though it were about to vibrate the very molecules in his body and shatter them into a billion pieces….

"Okay, okay!" Gabriel cried out, realizing the screaming sensation was coming from _him _as he fruitlessly covered his ears trying to drown out the sight and sensation and sound. "I get it. The Mother is pretty scary in her natural form!"

"At the time, I thought he viewed her the same way he views _you_," Ehyeh said. "A tool to complete a job. He asked me to sit at the gateway and wait for him, and then he dove in to retrieve her as though he were diving for a pearl in an oyster.

"What happened?" Gabriel asked.

"All didn't go as he'd planned," Ehyeh said. "He grossly underestimated the crushing pressures of the void and the other creatures that live there. Yahweh got trapped. There was nothing any of us could do to help him."

"How'd he get out?" Gabriel asked.

"_She_ helped him," Ehyeh said. "She'd been unaware he'd been foolish enough to come in after her. She surfaced at the gateway, expecting to see _him, _and met _me_ instead. I thought I was going to shit my pants when she reached a tentacle out the gateway to touch me … here." Ehyeh pointed to the center of his forehead. "In an instant, although her outward form was terrifying, I understood that her consciousness was pure and loving and good. I understood everything about her. No words were spoken. They were not necessary."

Ehyeh's shoulders slumped as something else flitted across the hologram, so fast Gabriel had barely seen it. The Mother had done a lot more than allow Ehyeh to see she meant no harm. She had thought, until she read his thoughts, that he _was _Yahweh. The deity who had patiently sat at the gateway for millions of years, trying to earn her trust and coax her out. It had been a lovers' hand which had reached across the gateway between worlds to sooth her beloved's worried brow and make him see stars as she projected her emotions into his brain. Something she had done countless times for the Father.

"In her mind," Gabriel guessed, "he was already her mate?"

"Yes," Ehyeh said. "Until she touched me, I thought my brother had learned to hide his contempt for her. But after, I realized that Yahweh had been pretending contempt amongst his brothers so we would not ridicule him. Reaching out to share her mind was, amongst her species, a holy union of minds reserved only for husbands and wives."

"The Father does not like to be touched physically," Gabriel said. "He prefers intellectual stimulation. Such a meeting of minds would have appealed to him."

"It has not always been thus," Ehyeh said sadly. "But when the Mother touched my open mind, thinking I was him, she realized our species was also capable of _physical_ love. She … she was very surprised when I reached out to stroke the tentacle she offered. He had never physically touched her other than allowing her to touch the tendril she offered to his forehead. She discovered she liked being touched."

Gabriel recognized in the image Ehyeh had projected of the Mother responding to his touch the same hunger for love, the hunger to be touched, that he saw in his brother Azrael, or whenever Michael spoke of Mary Magdaline. They had inherited it from _her._

"You cut your hair short and wear modern clothing," Gabriel said. "But other than that fact, you could be him. Even your voices are the same. My first thought was that _you _were _him._ It was an honest mistake."

"Not for me," Ehyeh said, guilt lacing his voice. "The moment she touched me and I could see into her mind, I had to have her. I didn't care _what _her exterior shell looked like. Her touch is like a drug."

"But she didn't _want _you?" Gabriel guessed.

"In her mind," Ehyeh said, "_he_ was her mate. The moment she realized her mistake, she reached hundreds of tentacles through the gateway to pin me down and read my mind. She would have killed me for daring to touch her, but she realized I had come to ask her to help _him_, not violate her trust. She let me live."

Ehyeh waved his hand and a scene of an enraged, indignant darkness reaching through the gateway and pinning him to the ground as though to strangle the life out of him was projected onto the air. This was not the gentle, passive Mother who Gabriel had memories of. This creature was, if any corporeal creature could describe it, like a kraken. Ehyeh was obviously terrified, and also exhilarated by both her power and her touch.

"She went back in for him?" Gabriel asked.

"It is her home," Ehyeh said. "She knows how to survive there. It took her quite a while to find him. She's not the only creature that dwells in the void. Something else had gotten hold of him and was in the process of crushing his soul when she found him."

"Could you show me?" Gabriel asked, gesturing towards the hologram which had become frozen at the image of the multi-tentacled creature diving back into the void while Ehyeh stood helplessly by the gateway.

"I wasn't there," Ehyeh said quietly. "I only know what he, and later when she could speak our language, she, told me about the condition she found him in. She said she had to piece him back together."

"Like the heavenly host," Gabriel said.

"He wasn't that far gone," Ehyeh said. "His consciousness and his will are formidable. But there are pieces of him, memories, events in his past which he cannot remember, habits he possessed his entire life which were suddenly changed. Empathy. After he went into the void, it became very difficult for him to put himself into another person's shoes. He became … narcissitic. Self-absorbed. Caught up in strange, self-destructive rituals. I think she missed a few pieces."

"What made her agree to come out of the void?" Gabriel asked.

"She had to become semi-corporeal to drag him out," Ehyeh said.

Ehyeh waved his hand and an image of the kraken-like creature dragging the unconscious Father out the gateway of the void appeared, cradling the unconscious Father in her multitudinous arms as though he were an infant. This time, the Mother did not immediately dive back in. She stood there, nervously tasting the air with her tentacles while Ehyeh attended to his brother. If Gabriel ignored her kraken-like form at that point in time, the way she protectively hovered was familiar.

No wonder the Father had never had the heart to destroy the kraken his sister had created! It resembled the first corporeal image the Mother had taken upon emerging from the void. The one which had saved him from annihilation!

"While he recovered," Ehyeh said, "he taught her how to assume a semi-corporeal form which was pleasing to him. Many forms. The Mother has hundreds of forms she can now assume which he taught her so she wouldn't be so terrifying to behold in her natural state."

"Including the winged form I seem to recall as being her most usual shape?" Gabriel asked, glancing at his own raven wings. "Although I can remember others?"

"Yes," Ehyeh said. "That was the form the Father liked best. He taught her how to shape a shell on the _outside _that was as beautiful as she was _inside_ and she wished for him to shape that form for her children."

"Why did she stay?" Gabriel asked.

"She loved him," Ehyeh shrugged. "She would have done _anything _for him. Her deepest desire is to be loved. But after she met me … she also desired to be touched. The simple sensations we all take for granted are like a drug for her. Touch. Scent. Taste. All things that do not exist inside the void."

"All I can remember is him treating her as an annoyance he had to tolerate in order to gain the life spark for his creations," Gabriel said. "Why would she stay with him?"

"The void damaged him," Ehyeh said. "He became … twitchy. Irritable. Easily agitated and distracted unless he had complete peace and quiet. I think she blamed herself for not putting him back together the same way he had been before. His creations became more beautiful and elaborate, but the more he worked on them, the less satisfied they made him feel."

"That sounds like the Father," Gabriel acknowledged. He had seen the Father spend a thousand years on a single modification, only to destroy the entire species when it wasn't perfect.

"Without her," Ehyeh said, "Yahweh would have always been limited to small creations. So he asked her what her dreams were, if she could live anyplace she wanted. This…" Ehyeh gestured around the space between which was no longer empty, but depicted the entire universe. "This was her dream. This … and an unlimited number of children to fill it so she would never feel lonely again. She possessed all the building blocks, but she had no clue as to how to actually shape it. The Father promised her that if she would stay with him, he would give her this dream."

As Gabriel watched, Ehyeh projected an image of the Mother shaping part of the mass she wielded from the void into a large, black ball. They nestled together, her wings flared in intense conversation, as the Father compressed the matter into a macro-singularity. As he took the ball from her and held it in front of her face, the Mother's expression was one of pure joy as she took a deep breath and then blew into the ball the way a child might blow out a birthday candle while making a wish.

As Gabriel watched, the macro-singularity spun out to create gigantic fiery gas clouds. The Father rapidly spun the gas clouds into gigantic suns and then, as those burned out and exploded, he used the matter to spin yet _more _suns, smaller this time. The leftover matter was used to shape planets, asteroids, comets, galaxies and solar systems.

As he worked, the Mother gathered more matter and gave it to him to shape the cherubs. One thousand total. The same number the _Father _had been part of as a child. The Mother laughed and called out attributes she wished for the Father to imbue each cherub with, while the Father shaped it for her before she breathed the life spark into them. It was a game. An exhilarating, joyous game for the both of them, and Gabriel's heart hurt to see how happy the Father had been to work with her to create matter. Once upon a time, the Father had loved the Mother. Gabriel was certain of it.

"He _didn't _just lure her out so he could use her," Gabriel snapped adamantly. "He truly cared for her!"

"That's what I believed at the time," Ehyeh said. "I am the only other deity to have looked into her mind. The other brothers and sisters initially made fun of him for consorting with a chaos creature from the void. Once we got a look at the form he had taught her how to assume, however, it was a different story. Dark coloring or no dark coloring, your Mother was the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen and my brothers were falling all over themselves trying to get her attention."

"Is that why she finally left?" Gabriel asked. That would explain a lot … why the Mother had never gone back. He could remember that towards the end, the Father was at times quite cruel to the Mother. Finding a new mate would have been justified.

"No," Ehyeh said softly. "She has only ever had eyes for your father. And surprisingly, despite his current denial, it appears he felt something for her. When she first gave him unlimited license to spin the primordial matter she could wield to build everything you know, he seemed … happy. Ecstatic. Especially when they spun all of their hopes and dreams into you cherubs."

"I remember the day we were created," Gabriel said. "Both of them appeared to be very happy."

"They were," Ehyeh sighed, that expression of regret causing his shoulders to slump once more as his voice waxed wistful. "If only it had been _me _she had loved. I would have treated her better than the Father did. _All _of you better. But she wouldn't give me the time of day."

"We fell short of the Father's expectations," Gabriel said.

"You far _exceeded_ any expectation he ever had!" Ehyeh growled. "You were perfect! It's ironic that the most perfect creatures the Father ever created was the one time he relinquished control and allowed the Mother to act as co-creator, not simply breathe the life spark into something _after _he had settled upon all the creations attributes."

"What about humans?" Gabriel asked. "He said he created _them _in his image."

"_His_ image," Ehyeh snorted in disgust. "His and _her_ image together! She has learned to compensate for her pathetic lack of natural ability to shape matter by nurturing the life spark until it learns to shape its _own _shell to please her. It takes a long time, but every single creature the Mother has ever taken an interest in surpasses anything the Father can create from scratch. I can hand her a slug to work with and, give her a few million years or so to fiddle with evolution, and she will hand me back a beautiful, sentient Seraphim."

"The death spirits?" Gabriel asked. "And Simbi."

"She's still tinkering with the death spirits," Ehyeh said. "But her biggest success is the primate bridge-species the Father used as the building block to create humans the last time he swallowed his pride and attempted to lure her back. There's a reason humans are so much like angels. She was shaping their species so that one day her children would be able to find worthy mates that wouldn't freak the Father out like happened when their daughters married the Grigori. The Mother only seeks for her children to find love. Her own form is malleable, so she doesn't care what form love takes. Only that the love is real."

"Like Audrey," Gabriel said. "And the wives of the Fallen?"

"Yes," Ehyeh acknowledged. "It pains her that the Father enjoys antagonizing her by forbidding you cherubs to love and putting those damned control collars on you to suppress your emotions."

"When did the Father become cruel?" Gabriel asked.

"I don't know," Ehyeh said. "Gradually. Like a … sickness. One by one, if we protested how he was treating something, he'd boot us out of his universe. And then he started wiping out humans who remembered there had once been other gods. I was probably the last to go."

"Why didn't you battle him for it?" Gabriel asked.

"We _helped _him do the early shaping," Ehyeh said with a shrug. "But this was always _his _universe. None of us ever shared his talent. Or his genius. A few of the others _did _try to stay on after he told us to get out, but we learned pretty quickly he'd just destroy whatever pet project we were working on that was keeping us there. If we cared one iota about the creatures we had chosen to help, we got the hell out of town and hoped he forgot about them."

"Smallpox?" Gabriel asked, suddenly realizing what Ehyeh's last pet project had been. Four Bears people.

"Yes," Ehyeh said, putting his head down in his hands. "Yahweh was never the same after he came out of that void. He'd always been a loner, but never before did he lack empathy. What he did to your sisters…"

Ehyeh turned away suddenly, only the shudder of the muscles in his back indicating to Gabriel that his uncle was weeping over their fate. The sisters he could only remember as fragments of memory.

"What happened to them?" Gabriel asked. "The Father destroyed them?"

"She underestimated his control streak," Ehyeh whispered. "She will never, ever, forgive herself for what she did. No matter _how _many times I tell her it was not her fault the Father reacted the way he did."

"Does she know you love her?" Gabriel asked gently.

"Of course she does," Ehyeh said, his back still turned. "She does not take advantage of my feelings for her to get me to help you. You are my nephew. I help of my own volition. But my help is limited to what information you are capable of reaching through to _this _universe to obtain. The Okipa ceremony is so painful that it motivates the participant to make the leap of consciousness. If I punch through to _your _universe, I risk angering him."

"The Mother said it is time for me to remember her sin," Gabriel asked. "Please. You must show me."

Ehyeh was silent for a moment, and then suddenly grinned a huge, shit-eating grin.

"What?" Gabriel asked.

"Listen…" Ehyeh said. "I can hear her from here."

"Who?" Gabriel asked. "The Mother?"

"No," Ehyeh said. "Listen. You tell _me_."

Gabriel listened intently. He could hear nothing. Nothing at all.

"Here … you _are _thick-headed!" Ehyeh said. "The Father isn't the only one who can tinker with matter. Just the most talented."

"Hey!" Gabriel said as he suddenly felt something just go … ping! … inside his head. A release of some inhibition of some sort. All of a sudden, he could hear it.

'_Get your goddamned sonofabitch tailfeathers back down here right now or, so help me god, if you die, I will kill you myself!'_

"Audrey," Gabriel said, smirking as the echo of holy blasphemy rang in his ears like the sweetest, most heavenly choir he had ever heard. "How far away is this, anyways?"

"We're not even in the same universe anymore," Ehyeh said. "After I left _your _universe, I started creating my own. Part of your wife's consciousness has remained connected to the void. All matter everywhere flows from the void. She can use it to make herself heard no matter _where _you go."

'_Gabriel!' Audrey sobbed. 'Please! It's not time…'_

"She fears for me," Gabriel said. "I must return to her now." The compulsion to rejoin her was overwhelming. He could picture her standing there in the lodge, her abdomen swollen with their child, staring in dismay at the empty thongs hanging from the ceiling.

"First," Ehyeh said, his expression turning ominous, "you must remember why the Mother removed herself from your world and refuses to return. If it were up to _me_, she would _never _return to his universe or have anything to do with him ever again. It is the reason he holds you cherubs hostage. Because he shaped you with his own hands, he holds the power to dissipate your form with a single thought you the _same _way he dissipated your sisters. Control you, and he controls _her._"

Ehyeh waved his hand.

"Focus on your wife's voice," Ehyeh said. "So long as you can hear her, you will always be able to find your way back to her on your own. When you return, you will remember."

Gabriel focused on his little Prophet's voice. In a flash, he felt the sudden sensation of flitting between the dimensions, and then falling. The vision started before he hit the floor.


	145. Chapter 144

_Note:__ I'd like to express my gratitude to everyone who keeps reading, especially those who drop comments or a review! I've got company this weekend, so I haven't been able to write as much as I like the last few days. But the Muse is still whispering and I've got the vision fleshed out. Now … all I need is time to write it all down! If I haven't had a chance to respond to anyone yet, please know I appreciate your comments. I'm writing one paragraph at a time under the pretense of (frequent) trips to the bathroom!_

X

Chapter 144

"Gabriel, please…" Audrey pleaded as a sob involuntarily rose in her throat. "It's not time…"

Her anger evaporated at the awful truth. He was gone. The two blood-stained, empty instruments of self-mutilation Gabriel had used to free his mind dangled from the ceiling of the lodge. At her feet, Four Bears was still unconscious, covered by a buffalo robe at her insistence, but otherwise left unmolested to finish whatever vision he was experiencing from _his _participation in the Okipa ceremony.

"H-h-he's with the b-b-brother," Jose' said, his eyes wild and hands shuddering with excitement as a full-blown, waking hallucination overrode the chlozipine which normally kept his psychosis in check. "Ehyeh says d-d-don't b-b-be afraid."

"Jose'," Audrey pleaded, grabbing his cheeks firmly between both hands and forcing him to make eye contact with her. "Where is he? Where's Gabriel?"

"H-h-he's g-g-gone," Jose' said, fighting to gain some semblance of focus as he stammered mightily to get out the words that seemed to want to stay stuck in his mind. "B-b-but he's okay. H-h-he's w-w-with the f-f-father's b-b-brother. Ehyeh says y-y-you sh-sh-should b-b-be able to f-f-feel him now!"

Who the hell was Ehyeh?

Audrey focused on that awful emptiness which had tipped her off he was gone. It was still … not empty. Distant. Far away. Incredibly far away. She could feel part of her consciousness stretch through time and space through the void, the void which became easier for her mind to navigate each time she had an incident, and out some other portal that was so far away she had no idea _where _it was. But she could feel him. It felt like he was reaching out to her so he could find his way home.

A blinding flash of white light suddenly appeared right where the wooden stakes suspended by leather thongs dangled from the ceiling. Her relief that he did not rematerialize with the sadistic things impaled through his body immediately turned to fear as she realized he failed to flap his wings and was falling. Right on top of her. Giving Jose' a shove, she barely managed to get the two of them clear as all 350 pounds of muscle and wing thudded heavily upon the floor and shattered the altar, barely missing Four Bears.

"Gabriel!" Audrey exclaimed. "Black Crow! Get a robe!"

She realized as he curled up in a fetal position and began to shudder that he _wasn't _unconscious. Mambo rushed up beside them and gingerly lowered herself to her knees.

"What are we supposed to do?" Audrey cried out, panic causing her stomach to do an unpleasant flop.

"It's not a seizure," Mambo said, touching his forehead and cheek. "Gabriel! You're having a vision."

"Don't touch him!" Thunder Cloud suddenly ordered, gesturing them to step back. "This is the vision he came to experience. Do not interfere."

"Like hell!" Audrey snapped. "He is my husband! How dare you torture him! Bunch of fucking barbarians!"

"Audrey," Lena said, touching her shoulder. "This is why he is here. Just … let him finish."

"Why?" Audrey asked, her voice high pitched and almost a wail as she helplessly felt him shudder, gasping for breath as he made horrified little sounds beneath her touch. "Why would he do such a thing?"

"Because he can't bear the thought of his suppressed memories causing him to hurt you ever again," Lena said quietly, her man-like demeanor of earlier disappearing and the much more familiar soft, feminine drag queen making her appearance. "You know Gabriel. He always hits a threat head on. He was trying to get it out in the open so he could just deal with it. He didn't want you to keep cringing away from his touch because you're afraid of him now."

"I'm not…" Audrey said, and then shut her mouth. She _was._ She didn't _mean _to be. She didn't _want _to be. But how could you trust somebody not to do something which they had no control over? Things had been outright chilly between her and Gabriel lately. _Despite _her concerted effort to forgive him.

"How much time do you have left in your visions?" Lena asked, glancing at her swollen abdomen. "You refuse to speak of the future you see, but every disciple in the group _knows_ you foresee his death. We all _know _you have been able to foresee a way to avoid every single unpleasant outcome _except _his death. So … how long. How long will we all have him here? Because he's _our _friend too!"

"Two months," Audrey whispered. "Maybe three, tops. We're close. So close to at least a stalemate between the Savior and the Grigori. But Gabriel still sacrifices himself so the Father won't hurt our child."

"It's been nearly a month since he started his flashbacks," Lena said. "And you've held him at arms' length ever since. _He _knows how much time he has left before that Father of his locks him in the Keep and throws away the key. Can you _blame _him for trying to get rid of his flashbacks so things can go back to normal?"

"I … didn't … mean …" Audrey stammered. Lena had _known _what Gabriel and the other men were going to do and had kept her mouth shut despite declining to participate.

"Do you know what bothers me the most about the night my Lenny died?" Lena said, tears springing to her eyes. "We had a big fight. It was over nothing. Stupid, really. But the last words we said to each other were said in anger. I don't know if he's in heaven or hell right now. All I know is that the memory he's going to carry with him for all the rest of eternity is of me acting like a total bitch."

"Lena is right," Mambo De Vivre said gently, her expressive dark eyes filled with compassion. "Neither one of you has been … right … since that night. You can't blame him for trying to seize the bull by the horns."

Audrey knelt down beside him and pulled the buffalo robe up around his neck, thankful his wings no longer possessed razor-sharp feathers as they involuntarily shuddered and twitched with whatever horrifying memory now wracked his body. Mindful of Thunder Cloud's admonition not to interrupt the traumatic vision Gabriel had just endured so much pain to experience, she silently placed her hand on his cheek so that he would feel her physical presence. Was this what it was like for himto have to watch _her _visions every night?

"I am here, my love," she whispered into his ear. "Remember what you need to remember, and then I will be here for you."

"We'll _all _be here for him," Gunnlaeif said, touching her shoulder. "He's not in this alone anymore. He has friends."

Tribal medicine man and Four Bears father, Thunder Cloud, herded the others out of the lodge, leaving only Audrey and Four Bears in the room, who was _also _still unconscious from his experience. After a time, Four Bears awoke and was led out of the lodge by his father.

From the look of pure horror on Gabriel's face and the pathetic whimpering sounds he made as he shuddered and spoke in the ancient language of heaven, it _had _to be awful.

"I'm here, my love," Audrey murmured, finally slipping underneath the buffalo robe, spooning against his back between his wings as best she could so she wouldn't be struck by the involuntarily shuddering limbs, and snaked her arms underneath the joints and as far around his muscular torso.

He was three times her size. She was not capable of physically using her body to shield him the way Gabriel had for as long as she had received the visions. But she _had _to believe that, on some level, he knew she was here for him.

"You don't have to carry this burden alone anymore," Audrey murmured. "We will face this together."

It was many hours before the vision subsided and Gabriel finally fell into an exhausted sleep.


	146. Chapter 145

_Note:__ The next four chapters are really one very long one. Gabriel's vision of the events that caused the fracture in heaven between the Mother and the Father. Four chapters in one day …. Thanks to all who read and review and I promise I'll make time to answer your kind comments personally tomorrow!_

X

Chapter 145

"When you return, you will remember," Ehyeh said.

Gabriel focused on his little Prophet's voice. In a flash, he felt the sudden sensation of flitting between the dimensions, and then falling. The vision started before he hit the floor.

"_Mother!" Gabriel cried, reaching up his chubby little toddler arms and throwing himself into the Mother's arms as he sobbed. He barely reached up to the Mother's waist._

"_What's wrong, little one?" the Mother asked, instantly shifting forms from an ebony dragon into her 'default' form that looked like the cherubs. A beautiful, black winged angelic female. The form which the cherubs had been created to mimic._

"_The Father is angry at me!" Gabriel sobbed, his words flowing as rapidly from his mouth as the pitter-patter of his racing heart. "I picked some flowers and ran in to gave them to him while he was working and when I leaped into his lap he threw me down and threatened me with uncreation in the void if I ever touched him again unless he –asked- to be touched!"_

_Gabriel's words turned into wailing as he buried his face in his Mother's neck, his heart broken at the Father's rejection._

"_Oh … Gabriel," the Mother sighed, kissing his eyelids and gently caressing his cheek. "You don't understand… The Father is … I don't know how to say this. Damaged. Something bad happened that made him really, really sensitive to physical touch and it was –my- fault it happened."_

"_But I love the Father so much!" Gabriel cried. "Why doesn't he love us back?"_

"_He –does- love you cherubs," the Mother said. "I just hadn't realized when we created you how badly his … sensitivities … were going to become. If you want the Father to accept you, you're going to have to discipline yourself to wait for –him- to reach out to touch –you-."_

"_B-b-but…" Gabriel sobbed. "I just wanted to learn how he does it. Someday when I get bigger I want to be just like –him!-"_

"_Of course you do, sweetheart," the Mother reassured him, giving him a hug and then looking into his eyes in that way Gabriel knew meant the Mother was looking straight into the life spark she had given him when she had breathed life into him. "You, of all the cherubs, possess a temperment most like the Father. The way he was –before- he became … damaged. Do you know how we met?"_

"_How?" Gabriel asked, curiosity momentarily overcoming his hurt feelings._

"_He would sit just outside the gateway to my home and wait for –me- to come to him," the Mother said. "He waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, until finally one day I was curious enough to come and ask him why he kept sitting there, quietly watching everything I did, year after year after year for a million years."_

"_And then what happened?" Gabriel asked._

"_I reached out to touch his mind," the Mother said. "And I discovered just how wonderful and brilliant your Father really is. I decided right then and there that it was –him- I wanted to be my mate. Not a creature from my own realm."_

"_He just sat there?" Gabriel asked. "And waited? For you to notice him?"_

"_Oh," the Mother said, her voice wistful as she spoke. "I noticed him a long time before I decided to let him –know- he had caught my attention. We are very different creatures. But over time I grew to trust that he would always be there. But I didn't know how to hold a physical form back then so that I could exist –here.- In this realm. I was too afraid to cross over. The lack of pressure and sound felt … terrifying … to me. Then one day my parents told me to give up my foolish obsession with the man on the other side of the gateway and tried to force me to marry one of my own kind. The Father … he came in after me."_

"_Into the void?" Gabriel asked. "Really?" Wow … -nobody- ever went into the void. Ever. And lived to tell about it. He'd never realized the Father was so … brave! He had to be the bravest Father ever. Anywhere!_

"_And then you lived happily ever after?" Gabriel asked, wonder making his eyes sparkle at this wonderful tale of his brave, wonderful Father. His hurt feelings of earlier had all but disappeared._

"_No," the Mother said. "I hadn't realized he had come in after me. My … the creature my parents had betrothed me to against my will got to him first. He …" The Mother looked away, black tears streaming down her eyes._

"_But he was okay, right?" Gabriel asked. _

"_No," the Mother said, her voice low and ashamed. "He wasn't. I … I never realized how much power I could wield until the day I found my voice and ordered Tezcatlipoca to put your Father down. We … we did battle for your Father's body. I prevailed … but not before … before …"_

_The Mother began to sob, pulling Gabriel in for a close hug._

"_I'm sorry, Mother," Gabriel said, now crying as well. "I didn't –mean- to make you cry."_

"_I'm okay," the Mother said, hugging him and hastily wiping her tears. "Just … give your Father a little slack …okay? You're very big for a cherub. Always knocking things over and bumping into things. Perhaps if you learn to be less … busy … and sit quietly … the Father will stop objecting to your presence."_

"_Like when he sat at the gateway waiting for you to notice him?" Gabriel asked._

"_Yes," the Mother said. "It was what impressed me the most about him. His patience. The way he was always just … there. Quietly watching everything I did and learning all he could about me. Like I was the most fascinating creature he had ever seen."_

_The Mother tussled Gabriel's hair and gave him a big, noisy kiss upon the cheek while simultaneously tickling him so that he began to giggle._

"_I'll do that, Mother," Gabriel said, his earlier tears gone. _

_As soon as the Mother released him, he happily skipped back to the Father's workshop, quietly slipped in the door, and pretended he was –just like- the Father waiting for the Mother to notice him, quietly sitting at his feet and observing everything the Father did. At last, the Father absent-mindedly reached out and affectionately tussled his hair just like the Mother had done. _

_Just like the Father –never- did with the other cherubs. Gabriel felt … special. The Mother had just given him the secret to worming his way into the Father's heart._

"It's not a seizure," Mambo said, touching his forehead and cheek. "Gabriel! You're having a vision."


	147. Chapter 146

Chapter 146

"Audrey?"

Gabriel tried to form the words, to call his wife, but all that came out was an exhalation. His mind was stuck in the past. He felt a second consciousness touch upon his mind and that subtle 'ping' sensation again. Ehyeh releasing another blocked memory.

"_Mother," Gabriel called, tears streaming down his face. The Father was in a foul mood today. He had been for days. He had dragged Gabriel out from his customary hidey-hole underneath the Father's workbench and physically tossed him out the door by the scruff of the neck like an unwanted puppy._

_He heard the sound of voices. The Mother. Speaking to his sisters. His sisters had been acting strange as well, lately. Always the most cautious of all the angels whenever barging into an unknown situation, Gabriel hung back behind the underbrush and listened for what was going on._

"_Mother," Amitea sobbed. "The Father sent them away! I've never seen him so angry. He says they are little more than worthless creations that were created to do a job and so was –I-."_

"_Your Father has funny notions about what it means to love," the Mother sighed. "I've tried talking to him. Give him time. Maybe once he gets used to the idea…"_

"_We don't have any more time," Eloa said, rubbing her lower abdomen. "It's too late. We've already declared our vows. The unicorn is already out of the stable."_

_Why were his sisters worried about locking up the unicorn one of his sisters had created, Gabriel wondered? A small twig snapped beneath his foot. He faded just far enough back into the underbrush so he would not be seen._

"_This –is- a problem," the Mother said, the garden shuddering with the concern in her voice. "You know I approve of the boys. But your Father? He has a very … limited … viewpoint."_

_Gabriel watched her worriedly shift forms as she transformed into a many-armed goddess so she could embrace her daughters who had gathered around her. After a while, she appeared to finally come upon a solution._

"_He doesn't understand any form of love except the meeting of two minds," the Mother said. "I have tried to tempt him, but he has always been oblivious. I will tempt him again and be more blatant about it this time. Perhaps then he will understand?"_

"_A vacation," Amitea suggested. "Why don't you get him to take you away for a while?"_

"_That might work," the Mother said thoughtfully. "But to drag him away from his work? He's obsessed with those new sentient dinosaurs he's been trying to establish on that blue planet he seems to like so much. It would take a wager …"_

"_Bet him ... oh … bet him something along the lines of a nature versus nurture experiment," Eloa suggested. "You know how he always fails miserably in the nurture department. It would be an easy win for you."_

"_Hmmmm…." the Mother said. "I've already got a wager going with him on one of my favorite little creations on that planet. The little warm blooded primates. Perhaps I should up the ante?"_

_Gabriel faded back into the dense vegetation and headed back to the Father's workshop, his earlier tears forgotten._

"I am here, my love," his little Prophet's voice whispered in his ear. He felt her gentle touch upon his cheek and arm. "Remember what you need to remember, and then I will be here for you."

Ping! Ehyeh reached out and removed another block in his memory.

"_Argh!" the Father exclaimed in frustration, smashing down his hands upon the clay he had been trying to shape for weeks now. "Foolish creation! It has no sense of social hierarchy!"_

_Gabriel faded further under the table of the workshop, pressing his back against the wall to hide his traitorously large frame which had inexplicably begun to shoot up. The Father had been in –such- a foul mood lately that Gabriel had learned to quietly hide, a mix of fear and curiosity. The Father's work which intrigued him far more than any creation or playmate in the garden. The sentient dinosaurs the Father was trying to establish on the blue planet had design defects which put him in a foul mood. _

_A thought jumped into Gabriel's mind and was instantly dismissed as blasphemy. Ever since Lucifer had created the Grigori, it had been as if the Father couldn't rest until –he- improved upon the precocious cherub's design. But so far, the Father hadn't even been able to come close. He could make the creatures incredibly intelligent, but the first thing they kept doing was going off alone on their own little endeavors to study the environment, running into some sort of trouble, and getting themselves killed. The more brilliant he made the creations, the quicker they went extinct._

"_Yahweh," the Mother called. _

_Gabriel faded even further under the table and pretended to be invisible, a trick Azrael had taught him, chanting 'I'm invisible … I'm invisible … I'm invisible …" in his mind so the Mother wouldn't immediately pick up on his mind-energy. The Father would be irate if he discovered Gabriel crouched under the table like a thief. He'd tossed him out in no uncertain terms earlier this morning and threatened Gabriel with uncreation if he snuck in one more time, a threat Gabriel had frequently seen the Father carry through when a creation he had made particularly displeased him. _

"_I'm busy," the Father grunted. "Go away and come back later."_

"_You won't succeed no matter –how- many times you reshape that creation and try to establish it on the planet," the Mother teased, practically gliding into the workshop and stepping so that she hovered mere inches from his back. "If it can't form connections to others of its own kind, it will keep going extinct. You need to imbue it with the yearning to find love."_

"_Harumph!" the Father snorted, waving his hand at the Mother dismissively as though she were a fly. "None of my other creations have that attribute and they are doing just fine!"_

"_That's not true," the Mother said, her voice husky and low as she bent in to whisper in his ear. "The cherubs we created together crave love as I do, and they have far surpassed anything you have ever been able to create on your own."_

"_Foolish, useless creations!" the Father grumbled. "Always underfoot or demanding attention that I don't have time to give. I wish I'd never created them."_

_At the complaint about 'always being underfoot' Gabriel faded back under the table even further. If the Father discovered he was 'underfoot' he would be dissipated and his molecules sent into the void like the Father kept threatening whenever the Mother was out of earshot. The Father's private attitude towards the cherubs lately had been … frightening. Gabriel only witnessed the hateful words the Father muttered about the cherubs and their 'confounded abominations' they created as playmates because he had taken to hiding so the Father wouldn't kick him out._

"_They are –our- children," the Mother said, ignoring the hurtful words the Father often said to deliberately upset her and make her go away when he was focused on his work. "Proof of our love for each other. You should imbue the –same- attributes into whatever sentient creations you are working on."_

_The Mother stepped between the Father and his workbench, pushing back his chair and swinging one leg over so that she was sitting directly on his lap facing him. A tentacle formed out of one long strand of the Mother's ebony black hair and snaked over to caress the Father's forehead._

"_Asherah," the Father said, a change coming over his voice as the Mother touched his mind. "You know I can't concentrate when you do that."_

"_I know," the Mother said, bending in to kiss him. "You've been working too hard lately. It's time to take a break."_

"_I can't …" the Father said and went silent, his features suddenly relaxing as a content smile Gabriel had never seen before lit up the Father's features. "Asherah … please stop. You know our love transcends the vile animal urges of these … creations … I always make."_

"_They're not –vile- urges," the Mother said huskily, transforming more of her long black hair into slender tentacles and reaching out in a cloud of silky hair to completely envelop the Father's head. "You are creating physical creations to inhabit the physical realm. They need physical demonstrations of their love for one another to stay grounded in that realm or they will –keep- dying out on you."_

"_I w-w-want my creations to t-t-transcend those urges," the Father stammered in a way Gabriel had never heard before. From his position underneath the table, Gabriel could see that the Father's hand tremors, which always increased whenever he was agitated or one of the cherubs came bounding in and leaped into his lap, had increased dramatically. The Father –hated- to be touched because it overwhelmed his fragile grip on the heavenly realm, a defect the Mother had explained to Gabriel once a long time ago. Some sort of injury the Father had suffered when he had dared enter the void._

_I want to try something," the Mother said, her voice almost a purr as the entire room thrummed with a primordial vibration Gabriel couldn't comprehend with his mind, but was making a certain part of his anatomy which had suddenly developed a mind of his own lately when he dreamed at night stir with interest. "An experiment. I want to see if together we can improve upon the design of the cherubs."_

"_H-h-how?" the Father stammered. _

_What was the Mother doing? Gabriel had stumbled in on one of his sisters in the bushes with one of their Grigori playmates one day and seen them doing something like … what? The Mother had the Father's robe pushed aside and was gently nipping the tender skin upon his neck._

"_You owe me payback from one wager," the Mother said huskily, her voice so deep and low that Gabriel could feel it vibrate the entire room. "The little primates you said would never survive? They have reproduced and populated the entire planet. Some of them have even evolved to have a crude social structure. I demand payment."_

"_W-w-w-what p-p-payment?" the Father stammered, his tremors getting worse. It was obvious the Father knew –exactly- what wager the Mother was talking about. Gabriel had –never- seen the Father so … nervous. And vulnerable. _

"_Nonetheless," the Mother said, sprouting even –more- of the slender hair-like tentacles and using them to caress every inch of the Father's body. "You owe me one physical union. I wager that any child that union produces will be superior to anything you can cook up all by yourself in this work room."_

"_T-t-that's … primitive!" the Father objected. "You're too … p-p-pure … to wish to r-r-reproduce in such a vulgar m-m-manner."_

"_Does –this- feel vulgar?" the Mother said, arching her entire body against the Father's lap and capturing his lips in hers as he gasped for breath, attempting to keep control._

_It finally dawned upon Gabriel that he was witnessing something a cherub had no business watching his parents do. His sister had been outraged when he had stumbled upon she and her Grigori playmate acting like this. But there was no way for him to escape from his hiding spot without alerting them he had been hiding there in the first place. Gabriel had the distinct sensation it wouldn't be the Father who was outraged if he interrupted, but the Mother._

"_It's t-t-t-too m-m-much sssssensation," the Father gasped, squirming uncomfortably in his chair as the Mother gently caressed every inch of his body._

"_Come," the Mother purred. "It's this workroom. No wonder you're always over-stimulated! Let's go someplace where your exquisitely delicate senses won't become so overloaded. You're going to enjoy this. I promise…"_

"_W-w-w-where?" the Father stammered, reaching up suddenly to grab the Mother and start tearing at her tunic with a ferocity that appeared to surprise the Mother by her pleased squeak._

"_How about that new little planet you've populated out in UDFj-39546284?" the Mother asked, naming the furthest galaxy from the Father's current pet project she could think of as she nibbled on his ear and reached down … down …_

_Ewww! What were the Mother and the Father doing? Gabriel glanced down to notice that the Father wasn't the –only- person in the room responding to whatever subaudible vibration the Mother was humming out into the room._

"_M-m-my w-w-w-w-work," the Father gasped for breath, suddenly standing and picking the Mother up as though she weighed nothing at all. _

"_I have already asked the girls to take care of everything," the Mother reassured him, biting down gently upon his lip and making him gasp. "While we are there, you can create whatever creatures you like to inhabit that world and I will help you bring them to life."_

_Barely watching what he was doing, the Father grabbed a little cage off a shelf with a white peace dove he had shaped earlier for communication purposes and, with the wave of his hand, a note appeared attached to it. In a flash of blinding white light, suddenly both the Father –and- the Mother were gone._

_Gabriel crept up to the bench and peeked at the note._

"_Only to be used to contact the Father in case of emergency," the note said. "Otherwise do not disturb under threat of uncreation."_

Gabriel was aware of a small form tucking in along his back. His little Prophet. Attempting to hold _him _the way he had always held _her _during her visions. He was too large. She too small. His wings were in the way. But he could feel her. Could feel the reassuring hump where her abdomen pressed into his lower back. Her arms could barely reach under his wings to wrap around his torso, but he was comforted by it. A gentle hand caressed his cheek, murmured reassurances into his ear.


	148. Chapter 147

Chapter 147

Ping! Ehyeh released an entire cluster of memories in his mind.

_The Father and Mother had been gone a very long time. His bossy sisters had ordered the male cherubs to do all the work while they went down to the blue planet to play with the Grigori and create their own life forms. Gabriel resented it. He was certain the Father would disapprove. Especially when he went to check in on the sentient dinosaurs the Father had worked so hard trying to establish and discovered they had gone extinct again because the planet was being overrun with hundreds of thousands of some new kind of creature._

_Gabriel crept back into the empty laboratory, scratched out a brief note, slipped it into the tiny capsule on the dove's leg, and released it. Within minutes, the Father reappeared alone in his laboratory in a flash of blinding white light._

"_This had better be good!" the Father demanded, obviously annoyed. The Father looked … different. Suntanned and relaxed. And dressed more like the –other- immortals dressed, his aunts and uncles. No sign of the hand tremors. The Mother was right. Whatever she was doing, it was good for the Father._

"_The sentient dinosaurs went extinct," Gabriel said. "Some other creation has taken their place."_

"_What creation?" the Father demanded. "Nothing should have evolved quickly enough to upset the balance this quickly."_

"_My sisters and the Grigori have been making creations on their own," Gabriel tattled. "They just left us here. Alone. To do all the work. They said they can do –better- than you can."_

"_What?" the Father shouted. His face turned … purple … as his entire body began to shudder with rage. "Where are they?"_

_For the first time, it occurred to Gabriel that perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut. _

"_Tell me!" the Father screamed at him, picking Gabriel up by the front of his tunic so he was level with the Father's face. His blue eyes had turned glowing red as the Father grew larger, and larger, until he nearly reached the ceiling of the workshop. The Mother, it appeared, wasn't the –only- one who could shift her form._

"_On the blue planet," Gabriel whispered, terrified of this side of the Father that he had occasionally witnessed glimpses of whenever a creation disappointed the Father so badly that he decided to destroy it._

"_Worthless creations!" the Father screamed at him, hatred in his eyes as he threw Gabriel down upon the floor as though he were a piece of garbage. "Get out! I'm finished with you worthless cherubs! You're all being replaced!"_

_In a flash, the Father was gone. Gone … down to the planet to mete out punishment to Gabriel's sisters._

"_Mother!" Gabriel cried the moment the Father was gone. He had to find her! His sisters were in trouble and –he-had been the one to put them in jeopardy!_

_But the Mother was nowhere to be found. Wherever the Father had spirited her away to, she was no longer residing in the Garden of Eden._

"I am right here, my love," Audrey whispered, rubbing the back of his wings and sliding up to kiss the back of his neck and the sensitive spot on his back between his wings where the feathers petered out to tiny, hair-like pin feathers before transforming into skin. "You must finish the vision so we can help you heal that wound."

'_You must remember, nephew,' _Ehyeh said. _'The Mother wishes for you to remember the truth. Forgive her…'_

Gabriel cried out as Ehyeh reached out and, this time, quite forcibly ripped out a dam in his psyche which was holding back the memory. It hurt! It hurt so badly. This memory wasn't from _his _viewpoint this time. It was from Ehyeh's.

'_Father?' Amitea said as the Father suddenly materialized in the midst of one of the cities she and Asmodeus had been building on the blue planet. Although but a mere blink of an eye in heaven, in the material realms the Father had been gone for a very long time. Long enough for she and her sisters to birth dozens of children with their husbands, raise them, have –those- children marry and provide grandchildren, and now some of the grandchildren were –also- having children of their own. In a mere hundred years, they had conquered this planet, eradicated a hostile form of dinosaur that was intelligent but socially inept, carved numerous cities from the landscape for their children, and were well into expanding a –fifth- generation of Grigori-angel children who would number in the millions. _

"_What have you done?" the Father screamed at her._

"_We are married," Amitea said haughtily, stepping between Asmodeus and the Father. "Our husbands are noble creatures, worthy of our love."_

"_We wished to create a great civilization in your name," Asmodeus said, bowing respectfully to the deity who ruled the universe they lived in, his master because Lucifer had –ordered- his creations to serve the Father. But not –his- father. "We have taught all of our children to obey your laws and hold great love for you in their hearts."_

"_Where are my sentient dinosaurs?" the Father demanded, already knowing the answer because Gabriel had told him and it had taken the Father less than an instant to verify the truth of what Gabriel had told him._

_One by one, the other female angels and Grigori teleported in, circling the Father in a ring. _

"_They attacked us, Father," Asmodeus said. "They attacked our wives and children. We had no choice. It was us … or them."_

"_THEY were far more valuable than you, worthless creation!" the Father screamed at him, growing even larger with his rage until he stood nearly thirty feet tall. "I will destroy you for your insolence!"_

_The Father reached out with his hand and, with a flick of his wrist, attempted to dissipate the mortal shells of the Grigori. Nothing happened. This enraged the Father even more. Gesturing harder this time, he dissipated the vegetation and even the earth itself from underneath Asmodeus's feet, but Asmodeus himself was unharmed._

"_YOU did not create them, Father!" Amitea challenged, fire in her eyes. "Lucifer is their Father. Not you. And they are far more worthy creations than anything YOU ever created!"_

"_Perhaps so," the Father hissed, his voice ice cold this time. "But there is ONE mistake I can rectify now. The Mother is with child. A –begotten- child. YOU, worthless creation, are no longer needed."_

_With a flick of his wrist, Amitea screamed. Asmodeus leaped for his mate, only to have her mortal shell turn to star dust in his arms, her lingering scream of terror the last part of her that lingered as the Father banished her soul into the void for uncreation. The other female angels screamed and tried to run, their Grigori husbands leaping in front of them, attempting to prevent the same thing from happening to THEM as had just happened with Amitea. It was in vain. With a great glow of light, all 400 female angels simply ceased to exist._

"_Amitea!" Asmodeus cried, tears streaming down his greenish skin as he reared up on his hind legs to face his wife's murderer._

"_And YOU will be next, worthless creation of my creation!" the Father snarled._

_Asmodeus trumpeted his grief and rage at the Father, no longer the friendly, helpful playmate Lucifer had created. Leaping into the air and flapping his wings, jaws wide and claws unsheathed, Asmodeus catapulted himself at the sadistic Father who had just brutally murdered all 400 of his own daughters._

_Only the Father's ability to teleport between the dimensions saved him…._

_Within minutes, the Father redirected a series of asteroids and pummeled them into the Earth, wiping out all life but the smallest life forms. There! They were all dead now!_

_What the Father hadn't counted on was Lucifer had imbued his creations, and all of –their- half-angel offspring by default, with his ability to teleport. Within hours, the Grigori and 325,000 of their surviving offspring were storming the gates of heaven, seeking to destroy it and make the Father pay for what he had just done._


	149. Chapter 148

Chapter 148

Gabriel began to sob uncontrollably. The Father had just … destroyed … his sisters without a second thought. As though they were no different from an arachnid species or a bacteria he had been working on which displeased him. He was not a son to the Father. He never _had _been. Angels were just something the Father had created to submit to his will. The Father had always made that sentiment abundantly clear, but the Mother had always led them to believe they were his children. Special. Equal to the Father. Gabriel understood now that they were not, never had been, and never _would _be.

"Honey," Audrey whispered in his ear as she hugged herself into his back as much as she could given her small size compared to his enormous one. "I'm here for you. Just finish your memories so we can help you through them. Okay? Everything's going to be okay."

Ehyeh triggered Gabriel's earlier memory of the Grigori offspring storming heaven. Simbi. Getting torn to shreds by Asmodeus. Dying. Being restored by the Father and sent back into battle. The vision which had caused him to reach out in his sleep, mistaking her for an attacking Grigori, and hurting her. This time, he was conscious enough that it was a vision that he was able to control the direction of the vision. It was horrible. What the Father had done was horrible.

'_Now you must remember the Mother's sin,' Ehyeh said. 'Just remember that she loves you all dearly.'_

_The Grigori and their half-angel offspring pushed them back through the gate and breached the outer walls to heaven, knocking the walls down as though they were toys. Gabriel fought. And fought. And fought. And fought. One by one, he watched his brothers fall and be torn apart, only to have their forms restored by the Father and returned to battle. _

_At some point, it began to dawn on the Father that, without the 'expendable' cherubs he had just turned into an army to defend heaven, everything he had ever built was about to be destroyed. The Father finally was forced to acknowledge that his 'army' of cherubs was the most important force holding his empire together and it was the higher-order beings who were expendable._

_The Eternal City where the higher-order beings of heaven lived and attended to the fine clockwork of the universe was destroyed. Many higher-order creations were killed and many of their souls lost to the void when the Father couldn't capture and reshape shells to hold them in this realm fast enough._

_Gabriel did not die again that day, although he was grievously wounded many times. He did not wish to be banished to the void. He must defend the Father at all costs. As the biggest of the cherubs, now in a mature body despite his young mind, Gabriel teamed up with Michael to hold the line._

"_Fall back!" Lucifer ordered. "They've breached the garden. We must fall back!"_

_Gabriel nodded and obeyed. They fell back to defend the area around the Father's workshop, where the Father was barking orders at the other heavenly beings to evacuate heaven. He had given the order to abandon this entire galaxy so he could destroy it._

_All of a sudden, lightening split the sky of Eden. Black, roiling clouds blew in as a horrific sound, more a vibration than a true sound, rattled down to the core of Gabriel's and the others bone marrow._

"_The Mother is returning to Eden!" Gabriel shouted to Michael. "I sent Simbi to go retrieve her."_

"_What can –she- do?" Michael said. "The Father says the Mother is useless and weak!"_

"_Does that –look- useless and weak?" Gabriel said._

_The Father was screaming at the Seraphim, calling them useless creations and dissipating a few of –those- for good measure. The Thrones, quaking in their sandals, apprised the Father about the near-total destruction of the ecosystem of the planet below. Although the Father had been the one to order the asteroid attack, for some reason it made him even –more- angry. For good measure, he dissipated a few of the Thrones, too._

_The black cloud descended into their midst and coalesced into the form of the Mother._

"_Yahweh?" the Mother asked. "What is going on?"_

_Gabriel took one look at the Mother and realized something was different about her. The Mother had gained a significant amount of weight. In fact … she looked …_

"_She's with child," Michael whispered in his ear. "No wonder the Father no longer needs us. We've been replaced."_

_Fear tore through Gabriel's gut. What had he done? -He- had done this by asking the Father to return before his sisters had finished building their new world with their husbands. The Mother had spirited him away to a –new- world to build and was giving him a –new- child so that the Father would grow bored with the blue planet and his silly sentient dinosaurs that kept going extinct. If the Father grew bored with something, he usually just left it alone unless it antagonized him. Benign neglect._

"_Yahweh?" the Mother said as Uriel rematerialized between them, his mortal shell torn to shreds. "Uriel? Uriel! What have you done to my son?"_

"_He's not your –son,-" the Father snarled. "He's just a collection of worthless matter that I was STUPID enough to let you help me create. He's nothing to me!"_

_As he hissed at the Mother, the Father began to work on piecing Uriel back together. While he worked, Arakiba and Barakiel also limped back, mortally wounded. Then Raphael, Kokabiel, and Penemue also materialized back, torn to shreds and barely breathing._

"_Yahweh?" the Mother screamed in fear. "Where are the girls? Where are my daughters?"_

"_Shut up, bitch," Yahweh snarled at her. "You KNEW! This is all YOUR doing. You used … vulgarities … to lure me away so they could take over my kingdom! You sought to use your feminine wiles against me! Whore!"_

"_Not your kingdom," the Mother said, tears streaming down her face. "Just one small little planet amongst the many we have created. That's all they wanted. A place to call home. Please, Yahweh. What have you done with them?"_

"_They are all DEAD now!" the Father snapped. "Gone! Into the void! Where I should have banished them eons ago!"_

"_What?" the Mother whispered in horror. She looked at Gabriel. Gabriel nodded. It was true._

"_You will stop this right now!" the Mother ordered. "And you will restore them. Right away!"_

"_You will pay me the proper respect," the Father snarled. "Worthless female. You are nothing without me!" Before any of them could react, he strode over to the Mother and slapped her across the face._

_The Mother stared at him in disbelief. Never, ever, had the Father ever dared hit her._

_Just then, another cherub-turned-angelic warrior rematerialized into their midst, mortally wounded. One of the Grigori had disemboweled him and torn the jugular vein out of his neck. Before she could even kneel at his side, her swollen abdomen making it hard for her to move, Azrael whispered the Mother's name and then the light went out of his eyes._

"_Worthless creation!" the Father snarled, looking at the other cherubs who had taken refuge in the garden seeking to have the Father tend to their wounds. "Watch! This is what happens to worthless creations who let me down!"_

_With a flick of his wrist, the Father caused Azrael's now-expired mortal shell to dissipate into star dust, banishing it into the void._

"_Why don't you go back where you came from, worthless whore!" the Father snarled at the Mother with such contempt in his voice that it turned Gabriel's blood cold. "Go back to the void where you belong!"_

_The Mother had been wailing this entire time, trying to understand this vengeful, malicious side of her husband that had always been there, but she had chosen to make excuses for and ignore. Just then, the Grigori and their offspring breached the last wall and flooded into the inner sanctum of the garden. All around them, cherubs were being torn limb-from-limb, outnumbered thousands to one. It was a bloodbath._

"_Stooooppppp!" the Mother screamed. As she screamed, an undertone entered her voice which all the cherubs had caught glimpses of from time to time, but had never really seen. The soil vibrated beneath their feet. The glass in the Father's workshop shattered. The iron in the ruined pearly gates and eternal city hummed like an out-of-tune fiddle. The sky turned black. The clouds began to roil. One by one, stars that had been in the sky for as long as Gabriel could remember suddenly went 'puff' and disappeared._

"_Mother!" the cherubs, now full-grown angels, cried out in terror._

"_Whoever shalt defile my children defiles ME!" the Mother howled in rage. Thousands of tentacles erupted from her body where her arms had been, each wielding a weapon. Fangs erupted from her mouth as she howled like an enraged dragon. "What are these vile creations? I shall feed upon your souls like the foul creatures you are!"_

_Gabriel dove for cover, pulling Michael with him. The other cherubs dove for cover as well. The Father cowered in fear. This was a side of the Mother none of them had ever seen before. As Gabriel watched in horror, the Mother grew to be fifty feet tall and began to circle through the mass of teeming creatures which followed the Grigori, her primordial scream of rage blocking their ability to teleport to safety as she mercilessly cut them all down. A dance. The Mother bent down with each twirl of her body to sever the heads of her enemies and string them around her waist and neck with one tentacle as though they were a necklace and belt. Within minutes, the Mother had slaughtered every single one of the strange beings which had threatened to kill her sons. The Mother grabbed Asmodeus by the scruff of his neck._

"_Tell me where my daughters are?" the Mother howled. "What have you done to them?"_

"_The Father dissipated them and cast their souls into the void," Asmodeus sobbed. "He murdered them. And now YOU have murdered our children! YOU are no better than HIM!"_

"_Liar!" the Mother screamed. "Where are my daughters?" She reached out and grabbed the nearest angel by the wings, Michael, picking him up to her terrible, toothed maw which no longer even remotely resembled the Mother they had grown up with._

"_He tells the truth," Michael cried out. "Please! Mother! You're scaring us!"_

_The Mother glanced at the spot where the Father had dissipated Azrael only moments before and cast his soul into the void. Then, she noticed the Father cowering by the door to his workshop._

"_YOU did this to them!" the Mother screamed._

_Faster than any of them could react to help him, the Mother was upon the Father, tearing him apart limb-from-limb. The Father screamed, but was powerless to stop her. THIS was her natural state. A creature of the void. The destroyer. The Father could dissipate with a thought that which he created directly with his own hands, but every life spark and all matter in the universe the Father had built had originated with the Mother. The chaos creature he had lured from the void with promises of love and a family. _

"_Liar!" the Mother screamed, her rage now turned to tears. "You used me!"_

_The Father's semi-corporeal shell twitched as she tore him into tinier and tinier pieces. Finally, in one last indignity, she bent down to kiss him goodbye, and then transformed into a gigantic leathery-winged dragon and bit into his neck, severing his head. Picking up the decapitated head, the Mother bent her head towards the sky and howled in rage, throwing the Father's severed head towards the sun._

_Her cries suddenly changed, from rage to pain as she gripped her abdomen and realized that part of the pain she was feeling was not simply emotional, but physical. The trauma of teleporting here and then doing battle had cast her into labor. She was giving birth. Right now. With a howl of pain, she squatted there right over the decapitated body of her baby's Father and gave birth to a wingless replica of the Father._

_The baby cried._

_The Mother cried._

_All of the cherubs cried._

_Gabriel cried._

"_There, there," the Mother said, picking up the child who had just cost her so much to conceive and rocking him to a breast she caused to form so she could suckle him. "You are safe. Nobody is ever going to hurt you." As Gabriel watched, the remainder of the Mother transformed back into the form they usually associated with her. A beautiful, ebony winged angel._

_The Mother glanced around at the cherubs, now grown angels, who stood around in terror, and realized that several more were on the brink of expiration from their wounds._

"_Raphael! Assiel!" the Mother called. "Please … do as I taught you! You must hold their spirits in their shells and not allow them to leave until their shells can heal themselves!"_

_With a flick of her hand, the storm clouds which had heralded her arrival gathered once more. She gestured to Asmodeus and the other Grigori, who cowered prostrate on the ground, to follow her._

"_Mother!" Gabriel cried out. "Where are you going?"_

"_To retrieve Azrael and your sisters!" the Mother said, tears streaming down her face as she cradled her newborn son to her breast. "I'm so sorry my actions caused him to hurt you."_

_With a black flash of nothingness, the Mother disappeared from heaven forever, taking the Savior with her. The Grigori followed. Teleporting themselves directly into the void to join their shattered wives._

_Leaping into the sky, Gabriel flew in the direction the Mother had thrown the Father's severed head and retrieved it before it had made it all the way into the sun, tearfully bringing it back to the Father's mutilated body._

"_Father," Gabriel sobbed, attempting to piece together the Father's gruesomely shredded shell. "Please! I don't know what I'm doing!" _

_Closing his eyes to focus, he remembered the lesson the Mother had given about shaping matter the day he had shaped Simbi. He shaped a –new- physical form out of the pieces of the old form for the Father to inhabit. The Father stirred. It appeared it took more than a broken shell to kill an immortal._

"_Father!" Gabriel sobbed with relief when he realized he wasn't dead after all. Whatever strange rage had overcome the Father, it was now gone. The Father appeared … helpless. And vulnerable. And very, very frail._

"_Dear gods," the Father said, a look of horror on his face. "What have I done?" He reached up and, for the first time that Gabriel could remember, touched his face._

"_I will protect you, Father," Gabriel sobbed, tears streaming down his face. This misunderstanding had been all –his- fault. –He- had been the one to summons the Father back and tattle on his sisters. –He- had been the one to send Simbi to retrieve the Mother. _

_The Father suddenly looked so small. So frail. Gabriel had been made to be large, and the Father had accelerated that growth so that he would grow into his full size. Compared to Gabriel, the Father was a tiny, slender thing. Gabriel easily picked the Father up and cradled him in his arms, carrying him into the workshop and setting him down upon the narrow cot the Father kept in the back for those rare occasions when he felt he needed to rest._

"_Whoever hurts you will have to deal with –me-," Gabriel promised, parking his large form at the Father's side and watching his back to make sure none of the other heavenly creatures retaliated against the Father. He was soon joined by Michael. What he –didn't- add was that the one exception to that promise was the Mother. He wouldn't hurt his own Mother, either. _

Gabriel lay there, shuddering with the horror of the memories as more and more and more memories triggered. None as traumatic as this one, but how the Father had reacted to the Mother leaving him. She retrieved Azrael before his soul had shattered, but his time in the void had turned his pale skin ebony black. All he touched instantly died. The anti-gift of the life spark the Mother could give, Azrael could now take away. As for the rest … the Grigori had been telling the truth.

"Audrey," he whispered, exhausted, when Ehyeh finally stopped triggering repressed memories in his mind, likely because he mortal shell was so traumatized from his ordeal that it would perish if he continued.

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered in his ear. "You're back."

"I'm so cold," he whispered. He was so weak he couldn't even lift his hand.

"Sleep, my love," Audrey said, gently kissing him. "When you awaken, we will discuss what you have seen.

Gabriel drifted off to sleep, safe in her arms.


	150. Chapter 149

Chapter 149

At some point during the night, Gabriel regained enough of his faculties to realize he had left his little Prophet out in the cold, shivering at his back where she had plastered herself to help him through the horrific visions. He rolled, so weak and exhausted he could barely move, and encircled her in his arms and wings. She murmured without awakening, as exhausted as he was.

Thankfully, the Mother mercifully did not send his beloved her nightly vision. One partner in the marriage hallucinating apocalyptic visions was enough for the night.

He drifted back to sleep.

He did not feel her extricate herself from his arms, an escape which never failed to awaken him. Sunlight streamed through the small skylights modern sensibilities had caused the Three Affiliated Tribes to install at the top of the sacred lodge from the south-west windows. It was well after noon. His last memory before teleporting to the alternate universe to meet Ehyeh was the sun moving towards the west to go down. He'd been out of it for nearly an entire day.

"Hi," Audrey whispered, caressing his cheek and running her fingers through his hair. "You're awake."

At some point she had shoved a buffalo robe underneath his head to soften his spot on the packed dirt floor. Several robes were piled up on top of him to compensate for the loss of her warmth. The fire in the center of the lodge was burning brightly and filling the room with warmth. At some point she must have allowed some of Four Bears tribe in to replenish the supply of wood, but the rest of the lodge remained disheveled from the five-day ceremony. Now six.

"That … was not fun," Gabriel said, stretching and remembering he was naked underneath the robes. He studied his little Prophet's dark blue eyes and watched the plethora of emotions which crossed her face. Relief. Anger. Worry.

"Should I murderlize you now?" Audrey asked finally, her expression serious. "Or later?"

"Murderlize?" Gabriel asked.

"It's an expression my father used to use when I was a little girl," Audrey said. "Usually when I had driven him to wits end with a temper tantrum. Death by murderlization. As when you are so exasperated that you really, really want to kill someone. But you love them. So you torture them to death by tickling them until they pee their pants. Murderlization."

"Oh," Gabriel said. "Murderlization." The unfamiliar word stumbled off his tongue. He knew it was not a _real _word because if it had been, he would have automatically known its meaning. Murder. To kill with malice aforethought. –Ization. A suffix indicating an act or some type of process to achieve an end. The Prophets light-hearted definition of what the word meant did not match the ominous sum of the parts. It must be another of her made-up words such as when she picked the crumbs off her dinner plate and called them 'greebles' or referred to his manhood as his 'winkie.'

If only Yahweh had been as emotionally evolved as his little Prophet's father had been…

"What did you see?" Audrey asked, moving around awkwardly on her hands and knees where she crawled around on the floor so she would be at his level, her swollen abdomen making movement awkward. She was no longer moved like the lithe, agile girl he had first fallen in love with. She was swollen with child. _His _child.

Just as in the vision the Mother had been swollen with the begotten child who had made Yahweh assume he could just flick out of existence the useless cherubs who had plagued his existence since the day he had lured the Mother out of the void. Annoying playmates he had created to appease her in order to gain access to her ability to channel matter and the life force. At some point during Yahweh's and the Mother's romantic getaway, the Mother must have convinced him that evolution though begotten means was superior to creations shaped from the soil. Yahweh had assumed the impending birth of a _real _child, _his _child, meant he could simply dispose of the playmates the Mother no longer needed.

Yahweh had been wrong. The Mother had set him straight. But then she had taken the Savior who Yahweh had no power to uncreate and abandoned the now-grown cherubs to his care. Why?

'_He uses you boys to control her…' _Ehyeh had said.

Of course. How like Yahweh to threaten to uncreate what she considered sons with a mere flick of his hand if she didn't continue feeding enough matter to his universe to keep it running. The cherubs had grown into adulthood during their ordeal. She didn't dare take them with her or the Father would uncreate them as he had done with the others. But she couldn't stay, either. She had a newborn son to protect. Staying away while giving Yahweh just enough matter to keep things running had been her only option.

Except for poor Azrael, who had died and been banished into the void. He had been the last one the Father had uncreated. Somehow, the Mother had been able to retrieve his soul before it had become hopelessly shattered and taught him how to use the primordial matter of the void to recreate his shell as _she _did. Azrael could now wield the power of the void. He just couldn't remember…

But Yahweh did. Which is why he feared the Angel of Death. Having transcended what to even an immortal was death and, unlike Yahweh, survived the experience intact, Yahweh no longer had any power to uncreate him. Yahweh didn't have any creations to hold over Azrael's head that he could destroy to control him. No _wonder _Yahweh had forced the cherubs to forget...

It made sense. So much of what had always appeared to be mysteries to Gabriel now all of a sudden made perfect sense…

"Gabriel?" Audrey asked, touching the tears that streamed down his cheeks at the memories which had just been uncovered. "What can I do to help you?"

"Nothing," Gabriel said, pulling the robe close around himself and curling back up into the fetal position he had assumed earlier, during his vision, as the memories replayed once more in his mind. This time, they were natural memories, without the force of a vision or flashback. Ugly things he did not wish to have to remember. It had been a kindness on the part of the Mother and Father to wipe those memories from his mind. Now … he would never be able to forget them.

The Grigori had not been destroyed. The Mother had spared them when she had slaughtered the teeming masses of creatures killing her sons_._ Gabriel had thought the Grigori-angel hybrid children were _creations _run amuk when Simbi had first appeared before the terrified young cherub who had just been handed a mace. _Before _Asmodeus had informed him Yahweh had murdered his sisters and then disemboweled him. That was what he had told Simbi when he had sent him to retrieve the Mother.

_He_ had been the one to give the Mother bad intelligence. She had teleported in, seen her sons being slaughtered, and acted instinctively to protect her family by destroying the attackers. She had spared her sons-in-law who were leading the attack. It was _his _fault the Mother had misunderstood the situation.

It was _his _fault Yahweh had returned from his idyllic experiment in begotten-son world-building before the Mother had sufficient time to sway him. The Mother had been trying to convince him to accept the idea of creating whole _new_ worlds for each naturally begotten child they could conceive and simply allowing the cherubs and their offspring to assume regency over _old _worlds Yahweh no longer had the time or energy to manage as soon as they became old enough.

Asmodeus had immediately bowed to swear fealty to Yahweh and informed him they were raising their children to honor his name and obey his laws. It had been their plan all along. They had voluntarily done what Yahweh had been trying to get the foolish sentient dinosaurs that kept dying out on him to do, without success. Created a self-sustaining world that Yahweh didn't have to micro-manage.

Only Gabriel hadn't _understood._ All these years, the Mother had banished herself from heaven, guilt-ridden over a series of horrific misunderstandings which were _not _her fault! _He _had caused this mess!

The Grigori had teleported out of Eden along with the Mother and followed her straight into the void to retrieve their wives souls … goning insane in the process. No wonder the Mother had always refused to allow the Father to simply destroy them!

"Do you want something to eat?" Audrey asked, touching his hair.

"No," Gabriel said.

"Are you cold?" Audrey asked.

"I'm fine," Gabriel said, his voice almost a whisper as an emotion he could only remember feeling a few times before in his very long life.

Despair.

"Do you feel strong enough to get up yet?" Audrey asked, reaching under the buffalo robe to caress his bare shoulder. "Lone Man appears to have healed your Okipa ceremony wounds. He left you with the scars, though."

"Please," Gabriel asked, closing his eyes and sinking down into the warmth of the coarse hairs of the buffalo skin robes. "Just leave me alone."

Audrey was silent a moment at this odd request. Never once, in the entire time he had known her, had he ever asked her to leave him alone.

"What did you see?" Audrey asked. "What did the Father do?"

"He's not my father," Gabriel whispered, curling up and wrapping his wings around himself under the robes where he crawled and wished the earth would just swallow him whole so he wouldn't have to remember. "Please. Just leave."

"Okay," Audrey said, caressing his cheek and running her fingers through his hair once more. "Rest. I'll be just outside when you're ready to talk about it."

Gently, she tucked the buffalo robes around him, threw some more wood into the fire, placed a flagon of water and some bread within his reach, and left.

As soon as he heard the door of the lodge shut, he pulled one of the buffalo robes into his face to muffle the sound and wept. Wept for the loss of a 14-billion year old lie.


	151. Chapter 150

Chapter 150

"How is he?" Lena asked, glancing over to where Gabriel sat in the corner of the Four Affiliated Tribes group dining room, his back turned to the others in the room in a way the ever-vigilant angel _never _did, silently eating his breakfast. Alone. "Any change?"

"The same," Audrey said. "Depressed. He found out everything he'd ever believed about himself was a lie. It's going to take a while for him to adjust."

"Any more … incidents?" Lena asked, referring to the night Gabriel had experienced a flashback and mistaken Audrey for a Grigori attacker.

"He's having memories surface all the time now," Audrey said. "It's a lot for him to process. But that appeared to be the big one that was causing all the problems. What a fucked up situation!"

"Pop the boil and squeeze out all the puss," Lena said. "Only then can the wound heal."

"Puss," Audrey said. "A fitting analogy for what he's been suppressing all these centuries. He's struggling now with how much to tell his brothers. He says Yahweh is not his father and he has no loyalty to him anymore, but I don't think he really means it. Yahweh is the only father he's ever known."

"Isn't this what you've always wanted?" Lena asked. "To have him finally cast off the yoke of the Father and strike out on his own?"

"Look at him," Audrey said, gesturing to where Gabriel sat alone, his wings drooping pathetically as he hunched over the table and mashed his scrambled eggs with his fork without eating them. "The only reason he came out of the lodge to eat this morning was because I _forced _him."

"When the gods want to punish you," Lena said, "sometimes they will give you what you ask for. I thought you despised the Father?"

"I do," Audrey said. "But … last night instead of a vision I had a dream. Of the void. In the past. Sent by the Mother, I'm sure."

"And?" Lena asked, her eyes glittering with interest.

"When the Mother dove in to rescue the Father from her betrothed," Audrey said, "the Father hadn't just been damaged by the chaos creature. The chaos creature had begun to consume him. That's what souls are to a lot of them in there. Candy. Lesser creatures. A source of quick energy. The Mother's betrothed had already absorbed portions of the Father into his … whatever the hell you call those things is. Form?"

"It … ate … him?" Lena asked, her expression one of pure disgust. She glanced down at the two slices of bacon she had just put on her plate from the buffet table and hastily put them down. "Like … cannibalization?"

"The Mother grew enraged the same way she did when she returned to discover unknown creatures were killing off her sons," Audrey said. "In her realm, she is descended from a long line of destroyers. She has the ability to destroy matter through sound and vibration. She quite literally shattered her former betrothed and carved the energy that used to comprise the Father's consciousness out of his … I don't know what the hell to call that thing in there. Form? Body? Big ugly black puffball cloud?"

"So how is the Father still alive?" Lena asked.

"The Mother pieced him back together," Audrey said. "In the dream, I saw how. But some pieces were missing, while others had become intertangled with chunks of that … thing … her parents had tried to force her to marry. He's … contaminated. There are pieces of a second, separate consciousness intertwined with his. One that is callous and cruel and hates all physical creations. It's why she put up with his condescending attitude for so long. She got two mates in one. The one she wanted. And the one her parents tried to force her to marry. In a way, the Father is every bit as damaged as the Grigori.

"The Devil within," Lena whistled. "You feel sorry for him?"

"Not … sorry," Audrey said. "Just … I don't know." She glanced over to where Jose' was happily eating bacon and eggs, chattering with Muhammad and the two Nephilim boys. Although the mind-damaged young man was lucid at the moment, his hands still trembled slightly as he lifted the fork to his mouth. Without the buffer of medication and his electronics, Jose' quickly became over-stimulated. The _same _way the Mother had shown her the Father was ever since his near-fatal brush with uncreation in the void.

Gunn walked into the room, glanced at Gabriel, then glanced over to where Audrey was talking with Lena. He gestured to Gabriel and raised an eyebrow. Audrey nodded yes. Gunn wandered over to where White Tail Runs had set up a breakfast buffet to fill a tray to overflowing and walked over to Gabriel's table, asking if it was okay to sit down. Audrey watched as Gabriel gave an apathetic shrug. Gunn sat down and started eating. After a period of silence, Gabriel finally picked up some of the mangled eggs with his fork and began to eat as well. Male bonding. Step one … check.

Once it had become apparent that Gabriel wished to crawl under a rock for a few million years and lick his wounds, time they did not have, Audrey had called a 'pow-wow' of the eleven disciples to brainstorm. Each disciple had a unique relationship with Gabriel. Although none of them could relate to the totality of what he was feeling, each individual disciple had unique life experience which added up to the sum of what Gabriel had just remembered. Gabriel's newly discovered knowledge was too much for him to bear alone. They had come up with a plan of helping him divide the load.

"Are you going to tell him?" Lena asked. "About what the Mother showed you last night?"

"I already did," Audrey said. "How do you think I got him here?"

Lena excused herself and moved over to sit with Mambo de Vivre and Non Gae. The three single women of the group. On another table the Reverend and Lyubitshke sat with the Senator and Cindy. The 'married couples' table. Chief Four Bears was sitting with his family. Gabriel was finally speaking with Gunn. Audrey did not wish to disturb him. Gabriel needed other people to talk to about what he had witnessed. It was best if she held back on joining them.

In the back of the room, sitting by himself, sat the Rabbi. Audrey's _least _favorite disciple and the only one she regularly locked horns with. She sighed. It was time to get to better know the disciple who bugged the everliving fuck out of her.

"May I sit down?" Audrey asked, glancing at the ring of empty chairs surrounding the Rabbi.

The Rabbi looked up, surprised, from where he had been absent-mindedly eating while reading the Torah. "Be my guest," he said, gesturing to the empty chairs.

Audrey sat down and started swirling her fork through her scrambled eggs, and then started eating it. They were quite good. So was the bacon. Fresh cold milk. Some sort of coffee-like beverage with honey and real cream. And fresh corn muffins. Contemplating all the ways the Three Affiliated Tribes had quickly bounced back from the apocalypse much the same way the Mormons had was far easier than initiating small talk with the aloof Rabbi, who preferred living separate from the rest of them. The Father's representative in the group.

"Have you been able to make contact with your wife?" Audrey finally asked.

"Yes," the Rabbi said without even glancing up from his Torah.

Audrey waited to see if the Rabbi would elaborate and, when he did not, glanced over at how Gabriel was doing. He was talking to Gunnlaeif, animatedly gesturing as though he were angry. Good. Gabriel was talking about it. He _needed _to talk about it _now, _while they were in a secure location, so the 'strong silent type' bullshit act didn't cause him to blow up in their faces when they really needed him. Audrey glanced over at the other disciples, busy in their little cliques. The Rabbi was her most logical option. Gabriel would never, in a million years, mistake her conversing with the Rabbi as her shunning him.

"Have many more Hasidic Jews moved to Rochester to join your family?" Audrey asked, searching for non-controversial subjects of conversation.

"Three," the Rabbi said, still too engrossed in his Torah to even make eye contact.

More silence. Audrey glanced over to where Gunn was now animatedly talking and shaking his fist into the air. Whatever they were discussing, Gabriel's wings had perked up and were no longer drooping towards the floor.

"In light of all that's happened," Audrey finally asked. "Are you going to recreate the exact same community you had in New York City? Or are your people going to merge with the larger Jewish community in Rochester?"

The Rabbi looked up at her and closed his book. "Why are you here, Miss Anderson?"

"Huh?" Audrey asked.

"You don't like me," the Rabbi said flatly as though he were discussing a scientific theory about quantum mechanics. "I don't like you. Neither you, nor a single one of the other disciples listens to a word I have to say. You argue with me tooth and nail about every little viewpoint I was raised to believe. And even Muhammad now is beginning to question his faith. So why are you here?"

"I … um …" Audrey stammered. She glanced over at Gabriel. The Rabbi followed her glance. "If you don't like it so much, then why are _you _here?"

"The same reason _you _are," the Rabbi said. "Someone who may or may not be the Messiah my people have been waiting for to arrive for thousands of years has asked me to come meet him. Since Adam and Eve, countless false prophets have claimed to be the one, only to be disproved. I am here to either prove his claim, in which case I will hear the words from the horses' mouth about which of our beliefs need to change and which do not, or I will prove him false, in which case my people will know not to follow him when he leads the rest of humanity down the rabbit-hole of self-destruction."

Audrey was flabbergasted the Rabbi thought so little of their group of disciples. She opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it when she noticed Gabriel glance her way and give her a curious look. Interested. She needed to feign interest in getting to know the Rabbi better so Gabriel would finish that conversation she had sic'd Gunn on him to have. She looked at Gabriel and faked a smile. She was relieved when he turned back to whatever conversation he was having with Gunn.

"In case you haven't noticed," Audrey hissed through the false smile, "the world has ended. 93% of the worlds' population is _dead._ There are insane lizard-people flying around the Earth. And angels. Whoo … boy. We've got angels crawling up the yazoo!"

"And this differs from the holocaust … how?" the Rabbi asked flatly. "Or being exiled from most of Europe? The Spanish inquisition? Roman genocide of Jews early in the Christian era? Or how about the Christians slaughter of Jews they blamed for the Black Death? I could go on all day about apocalypses, genocides, and false prophets."

"Flying monkeys," Audrey said, shooting Gabriel another big, cheerful smile as he glanced her way once more. "You forgot the flying monkeys."

The Rabbi looked at Audrey, then at Gabriel, who had turned back to speak to Gunn once more, and then back at Audrey.

"What would you like to _pretend _we're having a conversation about?" the Rabbi asked.

"Do we have any common ground at all?" Audrey asked.

"Gabriel," the Rabbi said. "I am here because Gabriel asked me to come. Even in his current fallen state, he is one of the four most sacred beings in the Jewish faith after the Father. Everything I have learned about him _since _meeting him has only reinforced my convictions that what the Father wrote down as laws for my people to follow is the right course of action."

"But Gabriel doesn't…" Audrey started to say.

"Gabriel doesn't argue with you because he loves you and doesn't want to see you upset," the Rabbi said. "But for billions of years, it was _my _laws he followed. The ones handed down by the Father. Not yours, which keep changing depending upon whichever way the wind is blowing. Look at him! Even now … given what that pagan god showed him … Gabriel can't give up hope on the Father. Do not take away his love for the Father and assume that loving –_you- _is going to fill that aching void in his heart."

The last sentence was delivered softly, without incrimination. Audrey's shoulders slumped. Given the dream the Mother had sent last night showing there being a _reason _the Father was such an asshole, it appeared the Mother was in agreement with the Rabbi. At least partially.

"He's so … I don't know," Audrey said, searching for the right word. "Discouraged? Depressed? Distraught? I don't know what to do for him."

The Rabbi pointed to Audrey's backpack. The King James Version of the bible given to her by Michael stuck out of it. It was all a bunch of bullshit. But for some reason she always carried it close at hand in case someone had a question and they needed Gabriel to debunk some crock political bullshit some petty king or tyrant had written into the bible to increase their own power.

"He needs to retain as much of his foundation as you can allow him to retain," the Rabbi said. "He's almost fourteen billion years old and for thirteen-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine of those years, _that _is the way he was taught to be. If you continue to cut the foundation out from under his feet and keep forcing him to change faster than he can adjust to it, he's going to fall. You need to figure out which cornerstones are still steady enough for him to stand upon."

"It's all bullshit," Audrey snapped. "Everything. Everything he ever believed in was a lie!"

"Not everything in that book is false," the Rabbi said, and then snapped shut his Torah, holding it up. "I'd loan you mine, but it's written in Hebrew. I don't think you can read it."

"I thought Gabriel told you most of the stuff written in _that _book is _also _crap?" Audrey finally asked.

"It _is…_" the Rabbi said, a small smile lighting up his normally serious face beneath his funny black hat and long sideburns and beard. "But unlike you, I've taken the time to go through the book line-by-line with him and I know _which _parts of it are fairy tales and _which _ones were written for a reason. Knowledge. The first thing our youngsters are taught to desire after connection to the Father is truth. I've learned more truths about my faith in the past few months than the entirety of all Rabbi's and Prophets before me."

"He just found out the Father views him as little more than an expendable … thing," Audrey said. "Where's the truth in that?"

"Gabriel has _always _known that," the Rabbi said. "The Father never once alluded to him that he was otherwise. The Father has always taught him that he is the lowest order of heavenly creatures. Even lower than _us. _And he warned them he would destroy them if they ever disobeyed. Which he did."

"He's a genocidal maniac!" Audrey snarled.

"I'm not saying it's _right_," the Rabbi said. "The Christians have always said the same thing about _us_ and had no qualms about exterminating _us _from the planet. Why should Gabriel be any different?"

Audrey opened her mouth to give the Rabbi a snappy retort and froze. On the counter behind the Rabbi, a small mouse with amazingly intelligent serpent-like golden eyes was standing on his back paws, busily nibbling on a piece of toast in his front paws, and intently watching the conversation. Simbi. Wearing the mortal shell of a mouse to blend in. The Mother was trying to send her a discreet message.

"I suppose you're telling me I'm supposed to listen to this crap?" Audrey asked, half to the Rabbi, half to Simbi.

"Yes," the Rabbi said. "At least the part about leaving your husband a leg to stand on when you're done pulling the rug out from underneath him."

Simbi had his mouse-host raise his tiny paws in the air, the piece of toast raised above his furry head like a football player who had just passed the goal line, and then threw down the toast like he was making a touchdown. As Audrey watched, the mouse did a little touchdown victory dance, looked straight at her, and then the golden eyes suddenly vanished, leaving just a very confused, ordinary field mouse. The mouse had the wherewithal to grab the crumb of toast as he disappeared.

Audrey shoveled another spoonful of eggs into her mouth before glancing over and noticing Gabriel was looking at her with a perplexed look on his face. She _doubted _he had seen Simbi. The mouse-loa had deliberately chosen a position where the Rabbi would block his line-of-sight.

"I'll keep that in mind, Rabbi," Audrey said, picking up her tray and moving to rejoin Gabriel. "Thank you. This conversation has been very … unusual."

"You're welcome," the Rabbi said. Without further ado, he reopened his Torah and continued to read, deliberately tuning out anything that didn't fit in with his narrow definition of reality.

The Savior had chosen the Rabbi because he wished to have someone in his ranks who could remind him of how the Father thought. Well … Audrey had just gotten the Father's viewpoint which was, unfortunately, _still _not that drastically different from the way Gabriel thought…

It wasn't until she sat down next to Gabriel and nestled in next to his warm torso that she noticed the compass rose had reappeared on her hand. Their safe haven amongst the Three Affiliated Tribes was at an end. They were being instructed to head due west.


	152. Chapter 151

Chapter 151

Gabriel stared at the yawning, open plains stretched before them. Empty. As empty as he had felt ever since Ehyeh had granted his wish to remember his past. He felt as though his heart been ripped out, torn in half, and then he had been handed back only that portion of his identity that loved his little Prophet. The other half was a great, big, empty void. No more duty. No more honor. No more obedience. No more sense of a lifetime of service for the greater good. Just … emptiness.

"It feels good to be on the road again," Audrey said, reaching up from where she sat on Cheevers, her trusty Morgan, to Gabriel's significantly higher seat on Haizum. "When I was a little girl I always wanted a pony. With wings. And a big unicorn horn. And now we've got lots of ponies." She gave him a smile as she slid her small, delicate hand down his forearm, lingering at his wrist. Gabriel switched the reins into his other hand so he could reach down to intertwine his fingers with hers, still amazed at how tiny her hand was compared to his.

"Someday maybe you'll get to see Eloa's unicorn," Gabriel said absent-mindedly, staring at the vast, empty plain, devoid of all life except the native grasses which had begun to sprung up to replace the former endlessly cultivated crops of wheat, rye and barley. With no fuel to run irrigation systems and no people left alive to eat the vast fields of grain, the Great Plains were reverting back into the grasslands pioneering humans had first discovered when they had pushed their country west. All that was missing were the buffalo.

Behind them, Four Bears was bidding a fond farewell to his parents and daughter. The Three Affiliated Tribes had transported them, their horses and supplies as far beyond the reservation as they had trading agreements, but they could not afford either the manpower, vehicles, or fuel to transport the disciples into unknown territory. Four Bears had connections to the Crow tribe in south-central Montana if the compass rose led them in that direction, but between here and there was many weeks of nothing but grass, grass, and more grass. Lots of grass. Not a lot of water. And a few stretches of outright badlands. From here on in, they were going to have to revert to old skills learned wandering the American southwest.

"I miss being on the road with you," Audrey said, coyly looking at him from beneath her lush, black eyelashes. "Sleeping under the stars. Together. Just you and me…"

"And eleven disciples," Gabriel reminded her. "One disciples wife, two overly-curious Nephilim pre-teenage boys, twenty-two horses, a burro, and six mules hauling a covered wagon."

The wagon had been at Deer Without Heart's insistence, Four Bears medicine woman mother. She had insisted that Audrey was now entering her sixth month of pregnancy and should not ride in the hot sun for hours on end. Advice his little Prophet was doing her best to ignore, but which Gabriel could already see she would be forced to succumb. The land was flat and easily travelled by wagon for quite some distance in all directions. Mambo and her 'bum leg' had been put in charge of driving the wagon.

Black Crow and the other Three Affiliated Tribes men and women who had accompanied their curious little convoy just past the North Dakota state line into neighboring Montana finished helping them load up the pack horses, hook the mules up to wagon, and waved them farewell in a party-like atmosphere that Jose' was, of course, getting on live webcam for uplink later this afternoon. Gabriel watched the 'festivities' with detached interest. How happy, and sorrowful, these humans were when being parted from family and loved ones.

"Remember, uncle," Black Crow said, giving his uncle an impromptu, bear-like hug. "Stay off Interstate 94 and also Route 16. We've been getting reports of road warrior type activity on those roads. The Apsaalooke Nation has put out word amongst their members to watch out for you and will lend us what assistance they can. But they fared a lot worse in the apocalypse than we did and there were never that many of them to begin with. We put Jose' in contact with their tribal elders on Dot Gov."

"Lone Man himself guided me to hand over the feather of leadership to you when the old world ended," Four Bears said solemnly. "I have taught you everything I know. You will be a good leader for our people while I am gone."

"You will come back to us," Black Crow said. "This time, the Savior will walk amongst our tribe and see our ways are as worthy as the white mans."

"We have already had our savior," Four Bears said. "Lone Man came to us after his brother had forgotten our people. Our ways have already been vindicated by our rapid recovery from the wrath of the Father. Now … he has asked me to repay him by helping his nephew lead the other peoples on the same path."

Gabriel watched the two men give a firm hug, and then Four Bears kiss his daughter and mother goodbye before reverently stopping before his father, Thunder Cloud, to bid him goodbye.

"My butt hurts," Audrey complained form the adjacent horse. "And the saddle horn keeps hitting me in the belly."

"You are supposed to ride in the wagon," Gabriel gently admonished her, tugging her hand up to his mouth where he unfolded her fingers and placed a kiss in the center of her palm before folding her fingers back over the kiss. "Our child is going to complain about getting bounced around in a saddle."

Gabriel had seen numerous pregnant females in his day. But his little Prophet looked so … big. Enormous. Like a gigantic leviathan stranded upon a beach. Already both Mambo and Lyubitshke were warning him to get his little Prophet near a city with a fully functioning modern hospital at least two weeks before her due date as both suspected she would need a cesarean section to deliver their child.

"It's hot today," Audrey complained, wiping the sweat from her forehead and stripping off the light shirt she had started out wearing over the oversized tee-shirt she was now forced to wear. "I thought this far north it would be cooler this early in May. In a matter of weeks we went from freezing to roasting."

"The wagon has shade," Gabriel suggested, a fruitless effort as he knew she would ride at his side until either he needed to take to the air to scout ahead, or heatstroke forced her to rest. Ever since his memories had returned, Audrey and the others had been hovering around him as though he were made of glass.

Haizum shied as a prairie dog popped its head above the grass and, with a surprised little bark, dove back into its hole. Gabriel had been warned to watch out for the burrow holes which could cause a horse to snap its leg, although Haizum's hooves were so large it was unlikely he would step into one. The smaller Morgans, on the other hand…

"Be careful of that prairie dog hole," Gabriel exclaimed, reaching over to tug on Cheever's reins so he wouldn't fall and send Audrey tumbling. _That _would be very bad. Especially in her vulnerable condition. Cheevers was a reliable, even-tempered mount, but if the prairie dog holes became a problem, he was going to _insist _she ride in the wagon even if it meant he had to hog-tie her and tie her to the seat.

"Gabriel…" Audrey complained, shooing away his hand. "I can take care of myself." She shot him a scowl as though reading his thoughts.

Gabriel noted with great satisfaction that his little Prophet had not cringed away from his sudden, unexpected movement. Enduring the Okipa ceremony and having his memories rammed back into his mind was worth the emotional pain for _that_ small miracle alone. Every single waking moment was a kind of prolonged memory-dump of puzzle pieces sliding into place, an excruciatingly painful awareness of the big picture. Knowledge. Was this how Adam and Eve had felt after they had taken the bite of the apple in the garden?

They rode in comfortable silence, the sound of the other disciples animatedly chattering, the plop of hooves on the soft prairie grass, the clinking of stirrups, and the slight grinding noise of a 19th-century wagon on a modern 21st-century steel-and-rubber chassis bumping across the grass. Gabriel flared his wings, enjoying the odd sensation of feeling the constant prairie wind rustle through his feathers while being held aloft on Haizums' tall back without actually flying. Gauging by both past experience with the compass rose and the advice of Black Crow to avoid the highways, most of their journey would be down dirt country roads. But Gabriel felt it was luxurious to simply ride on what was quickly reverting to unspoiled grasslands, away from the trappings of modern humanity.

"A penny for your thoughts," Audrey finally asked, enticing his mind back from his content little thought. "It's good to see you smile again. Or about as close as you ever get to smiling."

"I'm enjoying the open prairie," Gabriel said, gesturing to the open expanse of nothing but grass and an occasional shrub for as far as the eye could see. "I was created to inhabit open spaces. Not cram my big frame into tiny human habitations. I was just marveling at how the open grasslands rise up to meet the sky."

"Then when our baby is born and things settle down," Audrey said, "we will find someplace open such as this to raise him. Together."

Gabriel's smile faded. It was a lie and they both knew it. But not a malicious lie. Not self-deception as the Father had done to hide his deeds. Nor shame as the Mother had done to hide her guilt. Hope. It was a lie borne to keep them both moving forward when last night's vision had shown the Prophet that his newfound memories changed nothing. Hope. The only time the Prophet ever allowed words other than brutal truth to pass her lips.

Sometimes hope overrode what _should _have happened… _He _would hope, too.

"I would like that," Gabriel said. "I would like our baby to grow up someplace where he never feels confined or controlled."

Hope. It was all he had left. They rode on in silence until, at last, his little Prophet began rummaging through her saddle bags and pulled out the tattered, dog-eared bible Michael had given her while Gabriel had lain broken at the bottom of the cliff and opened it, silently reading it.

"I thought you hated that thing?" Gabriel asked warily. Given what he now remembered, the _last _thing he wanted to hear was empty platitudes quoting the bible and telling him to have faith in a genocidal, callous creator-god who was incapable of forming any but the most shallow connections to others.

"I thought I did, too," Audrey said, not looking up. "But this book is the foundation all western civilization was built upon. The Rabbi suggested I try to figure out which parts are total bullshit and which parts contain merit so we know how to guide people."

"How are you going to do that?" Gabriel asked. "I mean … figure it out?"

"You got anything better to do?" Audrey asked, glancing up at last with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she gestured to the vast, empty landscape. "Just think … in a thousand years they'll be talking about how the Archangel Gabriel came to the Prophet Audrey and set straight all the old holy books so they weren't total bullshit anymore." As she was speaking, she reached back and dug a pen out of her saddlebags.

Audrey? _Read _the bible she professed to hate? For … what purpose?

"Now I want you to tell me like it is," Audrey said, a sweet smile lighting up her face. "Line by line. Truth. Bullshit. Or spin. Got it?"

"Why?" Gabriel asked.

Audrey ignored him, opening the dog-eared book to page one and adjusted the reins over the saddle horn so she could both guide her mount while simultaneously hold the book. Poised, pen aimed like a sword, to commit the blasphemy of writing in the margins of the holy bible.

"In the beginning," Audrey read aloud, "God created the heaven and the earth. Let's see … that should read … how? In the beginning the Father shaped the heaven and the earth from primordial matter supplied by the Mother. Right?" She began to scribble furiously in the margins.

"Yes," Gabriel said, not understanding why all of a sudden his wife was obsessed with that pack of lies.

"Good," Audrey said. "If I'm supposed to be a prophet for the savior, then I want to make damned sure I'm not feeding people a crock of bullshit. From here on in, people are going to start learning the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Even if it ain't pretty. So … where was I … oh … and the earth was without form, and void…"

It was a puzzling way for them to pass the time, but over the next several weeks she went through that old book, line by line, correcting mistakes, removing outright lies, clarifying misconceptions, explaining the _real _circumstances when the bible vilified one political entity and praised another, and clarified when the book made vague prohibitions against false gods or forbidden knowledge just _why _it had been politically expedient to forbid mankind from possessing that knowledge

It surprised Gabriel to discover that her new pet project made him feel … better. It _all _hadn't been a pack of lies, after all.


	153. Chapter 152

Chapter 151

"That's it," Audrey said, glancing through the binoculars and then at the compass rose on her wrist. "We need to cross the Knife River here."

"This is Interstate 94," Four Bears said. "Black Crow said we must avoid it."

"We already passed Interstate 94," Audrey said. "This is _old _Interstate 94. The bypass. And also the only bridge still in place crossing the river. Unless you want to try to get across _that…"_

Audrey pointed to the nearby small street bridge that looked as though somebody had hit it with a tomahawk missile and then tried to patch it up with rickety boards. A pedestrian on foot could easily cross the bridge, but horses would be pushing their luck. As for the wagon … Audrey was beginning to thank Deer Without Heart for insisting they bring the wagon even though it slowed their progress.

"The new Interstate 94 bridge is destroyed," Four Bears admitted. "And crossing that local bridge over there would not be an improvement. It is within sight, and easy shooting range, of this bridge. We'll wait for Gabriel to finish scouting ahead before we cross."

They waited an unusually long time until, finally, Audrey spied a familiar trio of wings off in the distance. At this distance, if not for the tight formation Gabriel was teaching the two Nephilim boys to fly, a person could be forgiven for mistaking them for a trio of eagles. In almost-perfect formation, Gabriel as squadron leader alighted into their midst with the two boys exactly three seconds behind him. For some reason, he was carrying a small, mangy dog.

A dog?

"You're supposed to land silently," Gabriel gently admonished Ningizzada, "like an owl. Not flap your wings uselessly at the sky like a crowing rooster. It's wasted effort."

Anu snickered at his friend.

"And _you,_" Gabriel not-so-gently admonished Anu, "need to learn to stay in formation when I tell you to stay in formation and not go flying off on your own to play hero. If they had been carrying guns instead of slingshots, you could have been killed."

Gabriel put down the dog, which immediately whimpered and ran over to Anu.

"I saved him, didn't I?" Anu asked, picking up the little dog and ruffling his feathers in an extremely self-pleased manner. "If we had to wait for _you _to give us permission to act, this little guy would have been stoned to death before we lifted a finger to help him!"

Michael. Something about Anu's demeanor reminded Audrey of Michael.

"It's only a dog," Gabriel stated flatly. "Not worth risking your life over."

Anu picked up the dog's paw, shook it in the direction they had just flown in one, and said in a crackling witches voice, "I'll show you … and your little dog too!"

Okay. Obviously the Nephilim did not share Gabriel's contempt of catching up with the last 4,500 years of popular culture…

"You took a long time," Gunnlaeif interrupted them. "What's the situation with the bridge?"

"Black Crow's intelligence was accurate," Gabriel said, looking between Four Bears and Gunn. "This bridge is a trap. We spotted at least six insurgents hiding underneath the bridge with guns and dozens more in that strip mall … there … and that shopping plaza over … there."

"Are there any other bridges?" Gunn asked.

"All destroyed," Gabriel said. "We checked up and downriver at least 200 miles in either direction. There weren't many bridges across to begin with and what few there were have been blown up. Recently, too, but the look of some of them. Somebody has been going out of their way to make sure all traffic gets redirected across _this_ bridge."

Unlike the desolate badlands and empty rolling grasslands they had travelled the past six days, the small town of Glendive was positioned at the junction of several major highways, small local railroads, and a river that was quasi-navigable to shallow-bottomed boats during the rainy season. The town, however, did not appear to be undergoing any type of recovery which would normally be the case at a junction of several sources of transportation. It reminded Audrey of Amarillo, Texas.

"What's with the dog?" Audrey asked.

"Training exercise for the boys," Gabriel said. "A group of cretins was using him for slingshot target practice."

"Aren't they a little young?" Audrey asked.

"I was the same level of maturity when Yahweh put a mace in my hand and shoved me out the pearly gates to battle the Grigori," Gabriel stated flatly.

"You had your intestines torn out of your body and your throat torn out," Audrey reminded him. "Remember? You died. We don't have a friendly neighborhood creation deity to piece these boys back together if something similar happens to _them._"

Gabriel scowled at her, but did not argue. They would discuss this later. When the boys were out of earshot. Ever since Gabriel had regained his memories, it was as though he were on a mission to right random wrongs and play the part of the white knight in shining armor. Not that he _wasn't _like that _before _he had regained his memories. But now … some of the things Gabriel felt compelled to interfere in … like the mutt now happily licking Anu's face … were out of character for her normally slow-to-engage-trouble husband. Gabriel had always been the one who _finished _trouble. Not the one who _started_ it.

"What's the plan to get across?" Audrey said, redirecting the conversation back to the problem at hand. Getting across the knife river, which was still too wide and engorged with spring flood waters to dare attempt swimming the horses across.

"We're going to have to take out the ambush," Four Bears said. "Some sort of diversion, perhaps? We could use the wagon as bait?"

Audrey groaned. Appalachia two. "Been there. Done that. Don't want to be the bait this time."

"Audrey stays safe," Gabriel stated flatly, his tone no-nonsense. I will fly her, Mambo and Jose to a safe spot. The rest of us can try to ambush the ambush and get the wagon across."

"Is there any place to hide once we get across?" Gunn asked, the wheels turning in his head. "Or are they going to keep coming at us with no place to hide?"

"There's no place to hide," Gabriel said. "It's either grasslands, or more badlands for the next couple of hundred miles or so. None of the roads through the badlands goes all the way through. They all go through canyons and then stop or loop back around. If we go in there, we won't be getting back out."

"Lone Man taught us to use the grasslands to our advantage," Four Bears said. "There is no place to hide, but there is no place for your enemies to hide, either. My people have waged warfare for thousands of years thus. Would it be possible for you to carry my weight to survey a suitable location to escape?"

"You are much heavier than my wife," Gabriel said. "I won't be able to carry you far. But I should be able to get you across the river."

"Then that is what we will do," Four Bears said. "The rest of you … set up camp. We will be spending the night here. No open campfire. It will alert them to our presence. You'll need to use the propane burner we brought with us. Muhammad … could you dig those portable camp shovels out, please? As soon as I find a suitable place to stand, Gabriel will be shuttling the men across so we can prepare a site."

Audrey signaled the others. Four Bears had quickly assumed a leadership position for the group. He was used to managing an entire tribe. This was his home turf. She would demur to his judgment.

"You heard the man," Audrey barked, clapping her hands. "We're spending the night. Anu! Ningizzada! Get your bows! Let's see what you two winged wonders can scrounge up for supper!"

She felt Gabriel step into his customary position at her back. Wings protectively flared. Nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent to gauge her mood and whatever else he sensed through his exquisitely sensitive sense of smell.

"I suspect we're going to be preparing whatever plan the Chief has in mind most of the night," Gabriel said, reaching to gently move a tendril of hair off her neck before bending down to taste the tender flesh beneath her ear. "Are you going to be okay with that?"

A thrill of desire surged through Audrey's body, causing her feminine mysteries to become warm and wet. She squirmed beneath his ministrations.

"No," Audrey said, crossing her arms to hide the fact he had slipped one hand around the front of her torso to cup her breast and leaning back into his torso. "I shall miss you terribly in our sleeping bag tonight and will be all pouty and grumpy by morning."

"I'll try to be back before your nightly vision starts," Gabriel said, nuzzling the back of her neck. "I'll ask Lena to blow the dog whistle if you doze off early tonight."

Audrey's visions generally happened like clockwork. Approximately one hour after she fell asleep, they started, ran their course, and then left her to sleep off the after-effects.

"It's missing what happens _before _I fall asleep each night that shall leave me pouting," Audrey said, donning her best pouty expression. After a major hiccup after the flashback where Gabriel had mistaken her for a Grigori and a rough start after the Okipa ceremony, Gabriel's amorous urges had returned in force. Making love with the substantial disadvantage conferred by Audrey's widening girth necessitated some creativity on their part, but it had not yet become 'mission impossible.' She wished to bond with her husband as much as possible before…

She pushed the thought out of her mind. She wished to bond with her husband, period.

"I'll be back," Gabriel promised, spinning her around to hungrily kiss her on the mouth. He never seemed to be able to get enough of her. A power Audrey distinctly enjoyed.

Picking up Four Bears and straining to get airborne, Gabriel took to the sky.


	154. Chapter 153

Chapter 153

"Honey," Gabriel whispered in her ear, running his hand down her bare torso and coming to rest upon a shapely buttock. "It's time to go."

"Mmpffff…" Audrey moaned. "Five more minutes."

She snuggled deeper into his feathers, her mouth making an adorable little grimace, and then a smile as she snuggled deeper into his warmth. Automatically she slid one thigh in between his two, brushing his testicles just enough that it made them tighten in anticipation of more. More. Regretfully, there was no time for more. He needed to get her to the rendezvous point well before dawn so they would be ready to strike.

"You'll be very cold if I have to carry you without clothes on," Gabriel whispered in her ear before moving down to gently kiss down her neck to her shoulder to taste the pulse point at her neck. She tasted so good. Balanced. He'd been forcing her to get enough rest, loathe as she was to ride in the wagon, and Mambo had been force-feeding her a steady stream of fresh spring greens growing abundantly along the trail.

Underneath Audrey's scent, an underlying scent was beginning to gain strength. His little Prophet smelled like an angel. Literally. Already Gabriel could smell the pheromones cast off by their half-angel child circulating through his little Prophet's blood and it made him very, very happy. He licked her neck, inhaling the hybrid scent of mother and child. No matter _what _Yahweh did to him once he'd sacrificed his life, if the day ever came that the defenses to the Keep failed and he got free, he would recognize his child anywhere by her unique scent.

Stranger things had happened. Now that he had his memories back, Gabriel could remember many times the Grigori males had broken free and roamed the Earth, spawning stories of dragons and demons amongst humanity. They would wreak havoc for a while trying to find a way to free the souls of their wives held hostage in the Keep, and then voluntarily turn themselves back in once their efforts to breach Yahweh's security had failed. The Grigori, it seemed, couldn't bear to abandon their soul mates any more than _Gabriel_ could fathom doing so.

Gabriel licked his little Prophet's pulse-point again, memorizing the taste and scent of both her and their child and imprinting it deep into his subconscious so even Yahweh would never be able to remove his ability to recognize their scents. Yahweh could tamper with his memory, but not deeply imprinted instincts. It was the reason he had mourned Eloa's passing into the void even though at the time he had possessed no conscious memory of her.

"Little Prophet," Gabriel murmured again, lifting his upper wing so that some of the cool night air would filter underneath. "Time to wake up. We've got an ambush to ambush."

"Impfh mmmm minute," Audrey mumbled, reaching up and grabbing his wing, attempting to pull it up to her neck like it was some kind of fluffy down comforter. She snuggled even closer into his warm torso, attempting to stave off the morning chill.

Gabriel burst out laughing.

"W-what?" Audrey grumbled, her eyes barely slits in the pre-dawn murkiness. "Stop shaking me!"

"I'm not shaking you," Gabriel chuckled. "I'm laughing at you. All you want to do these days is sleep."

"_You_try gestating a half-angelic child," Audrey grumbled. "I'm getting so fat I can barely hoist myself up into the saddle. And Cheevers is pretty short! Just barely enough hands to be considered a horse!"

"You're getting more and more _beautiful _every day," Gabriel said, nuzzling her neck and getting off on her scent once more. "If you start tasting any better, you won't be able to get _me _out of bed soon, either."

And he had the erection to back up that comment…

"Let's just stay in bed then," Audrey said, a mischievous glimmer coming into her eyes as she reached down and caressed his manhood. Gabriel hissed with pleasure. "You got back too late last night for me to satisfy any … urges."

"You and your urges," Gabriel said, nipping her lightly on the neck as he affectionately rubbed her swollen midsection. "One day you send me foraging for miles searching for bread and butter pickles. I thought that little old farmers' wife was going to have a heart attack when I knocked on her door and asked if she had some pickles to spare. And then you refused to eat anything but oatmeal for breakfast for three weeks straight."

"Vitamin deficiency," Audrey said coyly. "You wouldn't want our child to be born with six arms because of a vitamin deficiency, now. Would you?"

Gabriel growled as warmth spread throughout his loins and moved into position to impale her upon his manhood, no small feat given the large obstacle which separated them these days. Luckily, he was significantly taller than her and agile enough to curve his body around the growing hump so he could make love to her and kiss her at the same time. For now…

"I thought we were in a hurry?" his little Prophet teased. "Should I get up and go now?"

"Unnnh…mmmm…" Gabriel grunted, unable to get his 'big' brain to coordinate the formation of words with his mouth while his 'little' brain was busy relishing the purely physical sensation of the tip of his manhood pushing against the entrance to her feminine mysteries.

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," Audrey teased, wrapping her thighs around his hips to hold him prisoner until he finished pleasuring her and snaking her arms around his back and the back of his head. She leaned up to hungrily capture his mouth, wantonly exploring the inside of his mouth just as he sank his manhood down to the hilt, careful not to push too hard lest he disturb their growing child.

Gabriel just grunted. Some part of his brain recognized her words, but whenever he made love to her, it was as though some older, more primal instinct to merge with his mate took over, hungering to synchronize his movement with hers so that when they reached ecstasy, it would be as one soul.

Some part of his brain recognized his name being called from outside their tent, but he ignored it, deliberately knocking his wings against the chintzy nylon walls of the tent to drop a hint he was occupied at the moment. He felt Audrey startle from beneath him, but he pressed harder, hungrily capturing the tongue she darted into his mouth to distract her. Distraction … check. She moaned with pleasure as her movement became jerkier and more frantic, her range of motion limited by her excess girth around her abdomen. He moved to compensate, wishing for her to reach the precipice at the same time.

Gabriel did not have time to pleasure her multiple times before he allowed his own release. He focused on that moment when he felt her fall over the edge, her pelvic muscles just beginning to contract around his manhood before he let go the last vestige of his control and fell with her. Both cried out with the intensity of the sensation expanding through their bodies and catapulting them into that other place he could sense they travelled to, just for an instant, when they merged as one soul. Falling. A fallen angel who liked nothing better than to fall again, and again, and again over that precipice between heaven and holy union.

"Temptress," Gabriel murmured contentedly when the fog in his brain cleared enough that words began to have meaning once more. He nuzzled the sensitive spot just beneath and behind her ear, earning a pleased giggle as he inhaled the musky blend of her ordinary scent, the musky scent of her arousal, and the newer scent of her pregnancy. Drugs. She was his drug of choice and he was her addict.

"It's all your fault," Audrey teased, leaning up to nip his lower lip as she held his hips hostage between her thighs, her legs wrapping tighter around his buttocks so he couldn't withdraw until he had shrunk enough that the choice was made for him. "You should have come back earlier last night. You've got me spoiled, sending me over the edge four or five times a night."

"Mmmmm…." Gabriel murmured, feeling himself starting to go hard at the mere mention of her desire for more.

"Gabriel!" the voice called from outside their tent, louder and closer this time. Gunn. Taking the opportunity now that the walls of their tent had stopped getting pounded into peculiar shapes by the flapping of his wings. "C'mon, big guy! It's party time!"

Gabriel groaned.

"Time to go," Audrey said, her voice tinged with a mixture of regret and teasing. "We've got an ambush to orchestrate."

"I'm coming!" Gabriel called out loud enough to be heard outside, more than a hint of annoyance in his voice at being disturbed. He regretfully extricated himself from his little Prophet's arms, pulling on his clothing and heading outside with his armor in tow. Out to the sight of Gunn, the Senator and Cindy looking at him with bemused expressions on their faces in the dim grey light of the pre-dawn sky.

"And to think he read _us _the riot act last night about not being late this morning," Cindy teased, giving him a knowing look.

"If the tent's a rocking…" Gunn chirped in, leering shamelessly in the direction of the tent door.

"Don't bother knocking," the Senator finished.

All three of them had a good laugh at his expense as he laced up his armor and checked the readiness of his knife, hand gun and mace, especially when Audrey came out of the tent a minute later still straightening out her clothing and stopped at the sight of an audience.

"Those two are worse than energizer bunnies," Gunn whispered deliberately loud to the Senator. They both burst out in laughter.

"Get a move on," Gabriel snapped. "We're married!"

"Hypocrites!" Audrey called. "Cindy and the Senator are the _last _people who should throw stones about amorous marital appetites! And Gunn! You're always finding willing groupies to indulge _your _appetites!"

Yahweh had said humans should be fruitful and multiply. Other than the fact that same mandate did not extend to the selfish deities own creations, Gabriel would obey that command as often as his little Prophet was willing and able to reproduce. It was no coincidence the Fallen and their offspring had had _huge _families. The Mother had had the last laugh with Yahweh's silly prohibitions against physical love. She had deliberately imbued every single life form she had ever given life to in this universe with her _own_ desperate need to physically, emotionally, and spiritually commune with another life spark and merge as one. _Especially _the first life forms she had ever co-created and then breathed life into upon emerging from the void.

It was too bad the one the Mother had chosen to merge with had been unworthy of her love…


	155. Chapter 154

Chapter 154

"B-team!" Gabriel barked as soon as he got back from shuttling his little Prophet to the rendezvous site. "Start transporting the rest of that gear!"

"Yeah, okay," Anu and Ningizzada grumbled.

"What was that?" Gabriel asked, giving them a pointed look.

"Yes, Sir," the boys said in unison, standing at the angelic version of 'attention' with their wings tucked in neatly to their backs. Somewhat neatly. Actually … not very neatly at all. It was something he was still working on teaching the boys who had languished without grandsires around to teach them proper military decorum.

"Why can't we help?" Anu whined. "_You _fought Grigori at our age!"

"The Prophet has decreed you're too young to act as soldiers," Gabriel stated flatly, hiding his amusement behind his customary unreadable expression. "And neither of you has yet developed the strength to carry the weight of another person. Therefore, you will serve in the capacity most useful to the group. Making sure our gear does not slow down the wagon and ensuring we do not lose critical supplies."

"What are we?" Ningizzada grumbled as he gathered up the first pile of their gear to fly to the site where Audrey awaited. "Pack mules?"

"What about Yah-Yah?" Anu asked, whistling for the scruffy mutt they had rescued yesterday. In an act of defiance, Anu had named the mangy dog after Yah-Yah, loudly protesting he wasn't _really _taking the name of god in vain as it was not exactly the same name.

Gabriel did not dignify either question with an answer. He was beginning to regret rescuing the dog. It was the kind of training exercise he had been looking for to teach the boys how to size up a threat and coordinate taking it out as a team. Superior numbers, primitive weapons, no guns. What he _hadn't _counted on was Anu refusing to leave the mutt behind afterwards. Great. Another 'disciple' to cart around on the road. If their group got any bigger, they might as well start their _own _universe as Ehyeh had finally done.

"Make sure you circle low beneath the tree-line and cross the river just past where it moves around the bend so they don't see you," Gabriel grumbled.

"Yes, Sir," the boys said crisply in unison, only the slight shudder of their wings which Gabriel understood to be a suppressed snicker tipping him off they were being sarcastic. They were good boys, but wild. 4,500 years in Sheol being coddled by their matriarchs had taught them some bad habits.

Now he knew how the Father had felt all these years with the cherubs running amuk at the Mother's heels all over the garden mucking up his world building…

Cancel that thought. Yahweh. Not the Father. And it was the Father … no … Yahweh's … own fault the cherubs had run wild without discipline. If the deity had come out of his accursed workshop once in a while and paid attention to them, he could have had his angelic army _and _a family all at the same time. Gabriel was determined to do things differently.

_If _he survived…

Talk about an absentee sire! Conceiving a child who was destined to never meet their sire was the height of … of …

Hope.

Gabriel suppressed the telltale twitch of his wings which screamed his angst to anybody who knew him well. Shemihaza and Belaziel had both entrusted their grandchildren to his care. In their stead, it was up to _him _to teach them the proper way to become responsible angels, whether that responsibility later mean service in the armies of Yahweh, the Savior, or their own families. The closer they got to the end of his little Prophet's pregnancy, the date her visions indicated a battle would take him from her, the more anxious Gabriel became to … do something. To make his mark on this world and leave it a better place so his child would grow up in a world that still had hope.

But today … today he needed to focus on what was happening right now. He had a problem that needed dealing with.

"Where are you going with _that_?" Gabriel asked, pointing to the mutt.

"Bringing it to the rendezvous site," Anu said innocently.

"Audrey likes him," Ningizzada chipped in. "He'll keep her company while she waits."

Gabriel couldn't argue with their logic even as he silently cursed the dog tagging along. _Of course _the mutt was in the first load of supplies the boys shuttled to the rendezvous site. He'd shuttled Jose' and Mambo there late last night and Audrey well before dawn. Four Bears was already in position at the mall across the river silently rigging up a diversion at the insurgent headquarters. Time to get the last few players into position.

"Cindy!" he barked. "It's time!"

Cindy slung her M14 semi-automatic rifle across her back and held out her arms so Gabriel could transport her over the river to a building he had scoped out yesterday as a good position. She had put on dark clothing and tucked her long, blonde hair under a bandana so it wouldn't provide an easy target in the dim, pre-dawn light.

"I'm ready," Cindy said, suppressing her squeal as he picked her up and transported her into position.

Gabriel had no qualms about transporting the men, but something inside of him felt … funny … about transporting another man's wife. It wasn't the Senator's fault he lacked wings to do it himself, but Gabriel had learned from Bezaliel that transporting a female who was somebody else's mate in any circumstance other than a dire emergency was considered a breach of trust. Even _before _Gabriel had crossed paths with the other Fallen, he had always felt funny about it.

The sky was getting lighter by the moment. He needed to move quicker or they'd lose the advantage of the sun at their backs. He dropped Cindy into position on a roof top across the river to act as a sniper for any that came up from their hiding spot underneath the bridge and quickly headed back to the remainder of the group.

Gunn was already moving into position to take care of the half-dozen insurgents positioned in the strip mall on this side of the bridge. Gabriel would retrieve Gunn after the fact. What mattered was getting the horses and the wagon, which were too heavy for him to carry and the river too swollen this time of year to ford across, to the other side so they could continue west.

The sun was about to rise any minute.

"Everybody's in position," Gabriel said to the others as soon as he got back. "It's up to you guys from here on in."

Lena adjusted the 10-gallon hat, man's shirt and jeans she had borrowed from Gunn. A wagon full of women wouldn't be credible in this rough country. Lena had protested having to dress the gender she had been born in, but this wasn't about free expression.

"Ready," Lena gulped. This was an act. Any wagon train would have several armed guards. She grabbed the rope tying together the 20+ horses and pack horses the group now possessed, critical transportation where they were now headed. As they had done in the Appalachian mountains, the horses were covered in packs stuffed with lightweight grass to make them appear to be a pack caravan.

"Ready to ride shotgun," the Senator said. He rode, shotgun aimed into the air, a six-shooter on each hip western-style, plus a Glock 9-mm semi-automatic tucked into a holster under his coat. Gabriel knew he kept a knife tucked into each fancy snake-skin cowboy boot now, as well, as well as a second shotgun loaded and sticking out of the saddle bag of his horse. For a politician with only limited stateside experience in the Texas National Guard, the Senator had transformed into a passably decent soldier.

"They come near me," Non Gae said, her black eyes glittering with an excitement that was almost feral, 'they get big surprise." She was dressed prettily in a blue and white silk kisaeng robe which Gabriel knew covered camouflage colored clothing and a Kevlar vest, which all three decoys wore. A gift from the Three Affiliated Tribes police force.

So long as none of the insurgents got in a head shot, they were in better shape than the Appalachian gambit. Non Gae was turning out to be even scarier than Cindy. After a lifetime of performing every type of quasi-martial kisaeng dance imaginable with mock-swords and razor-sharp fans while simultaneously spying on the American government, the Korean geisha had adapted her technique remarkably quickly to 'dancing' with _real _swords and knives. Only the Mother herself was more graceful when she exterminated life.

"I'll be in position," Gabriel said, nodding to them that it was time. The sun was just beginning to heave itself over the eastern horizon on the flat plain. The direction they were coming from. The insurgents wouldn't see them coming over the slight rise in the street until they were almost upon the bridge. With any luck, Gunn had already taken out the first pair of sentries.

"Break a leg!" Lena called as Gabriel took to the sky.

Gabriel knew it was stage talk for 'good luck.' To get across, they were going to need it.


	156. Chapter 155

_Note:__ I'd like to thank all my wonderful readers and reviewers. The Muse has the 12__th__ disciple, a surprise, another surprise, reunification with Jeep and Charlie, and then the final battle all roughed out. But … you'll all probably have to wait a few days for my next update as the hubby is whisking me away (without kids … yea!) for the weekend. So … unless it pours so hard we can't go hiking and are stuck in our hotel room with the laptop … there will probably be no update until Sunday night._

_Have a pleasant weekend, everyone, and thanks for reading! I'm sure the Muse will sneak in lots of tromping-through-the-wilderness scenes into the next few chapters when I get back!_

X

Chapter 155

They were treating her like … like … an invalid!

Audrey paced back and forth, fuming, her only company the mangy little dog Anu had dropped off at the rendezvous site where their goods were stored for safekeeping. Everybody else was either in the thick of things, ambushing the ambush at the Old Interstate 94 bridge crossing the Yellowstone River in Glendive, Montana, or at the alpha-site where Four Bears had set up a place to defend the wagon and horses against any insurgents who attempted to follow them.

"Bark!" Yah-Yah mirrored Audrey's agitation, pacing back and forth as she did. Great. Just what she needed. A yappy little dog that was always underfoot.

"What are _you _looking at?" Audrey groused, sitting down on a pile of supplies the boys had shuttled across earlier. Critical things that would be nearly impossible to replace. Sleeping bags, tents, dried beans and beef jerky. Extra ammunition, which appeared to be in dreadfully short supply in this part of the country.

"Yap-yap-yap!" Yah-Yah barked, looking at her expectantly and furiously wagging its tail.

"If you think I'm going to give you our beef jerky," Audrey said, "think again." She rummaged through the supplies to see if there was anything she could give the dog to eat so it would be silent.

"Aha!" Audrey said triumphantly, spotting something Gabriel wouldn't be sorry to see gone from their supply kit. She peeled back the wrapper, broke off a chunk, and held it out for the dog to eat. "Here you go!"

Yah-Yah disdainfully sniffed the chunk of Power Bar and declined to eat it, snuffling around the other supply packs instead.

"I guess you like Power Bars about as much as Gabriel does," Audrey sighed. "I _still _can't get him to eat one to this day. You haven't seen _anything _until you've watched a 350 pound angel retch."

Yah-Yah wagged his tail like a little propeller. Audrey could see why Anu had spouted the movie line from Wizard of Oz. Except for the fact the dog had matted brown fur instead of dark gray, he was otherwise a dead ringer for Toto. Naming the dog after the cruel deity who had been sadistic enough to imprison the two boys in Sheol had a certain defiant appeal to Audrey.

Shots fired off in the distance. It had begun. Sound carried far in the flat terrain. Since praying to Yahweh would probably have the opposite effect, Audrey instead expended her worry by closing her eyes and visualizing she was at Gabriel's side. It was an exercise first Mambo, and now Chief Four Bears believed allowed one human to loan life energy to another. Gabriel believed she had the power to fortify the life force as the angels and Ann did. Audrey had absolutely no idea if that was true, but now was as good a time to experiment as any. It was better than sitting here talking to a dog.

She closed her eyes as Mambo had been trying to teach her and breathed … at least as much as her lungs were capable of breathing these days with the baby beginning to press up underneath her ribcage. Mambo described a spider web connecting all living things while Four Bears spoke of spokes on a wheel. Neither visualization had given her much luck to date. Gabriel. What was Gabriel doing right now?

Nothing. She got nothing. Why was it she was only able to see things when she was either woken out of a sound sleep with her nightly vision or in the middle of a Voodoo ceremony? Jose' hallucinated what was happening all the time. Although Audrey wouldn't want _that _much of the gift. But the ability to see as Lyubitshke, Mambo, or Four Bears occasionally saw would be nice. Still … nothing.

"Yip!" Yah-yah yapped, chasing after a prairie dog which had suddenly popped its head out of its hole.

More gunshots. Lots of them. She was too worried to concentrate. Not just about Gabriel. But the others. It was amazing, after growing up with such a dysfunctional family, how well the disciples had melded into a tight-knit little family, fiercely protective of one another. Of course some disciples were closer to each other than others, but overall Audrey worried about all of them. Even the Rabbi…

She could almost picture him in his funny black hat, his strange long sideburns and beard, praying fervently to Yahweh as he waited with the two Nephilim boys and Lyubitshke for the wagon to come bolting down the road. A hole. They had spent all night deepening a rocky gully just off the road and rolling up rocks and sod to quickly cover their passage. The two Nephilim boys were supposed to take turns acting as lookouts, letting them know once the wagon and horses were over the bridge and bolting towards them up the road.

Audrey could almost picture the Rabbi nervously giving libations to the creator. Shooting disapproving looks at Lyubitshke in her toned-down 'ministers wife' version of her gypsy attire as she smeared dirt all over a white canvas tarp to turn it filthy brown. The Hebrew script in his Torah as he read. Heck! She could even _understand _the Hebrew script as the Rabbi recited it out of the Torah.

"V'tatzilenu mi-kaf kol oyev v'orev v'listim v'hayot ra'ot ba-derekh, u-mi-kol minei pur'aniyot ha-mitrag'shot la-vo la-olam," she could picture the Rabbi reading aloud as he waited for the signal. May you rescue us from the hand of every foe, ambush along the way, and from all manner of punishments that assemble to come to Earth. Hmmm… a fitting prayer given their situation. She'd have to ask him to teach it to her sometime.

With a start, Audrey realized that she _was _seeing what was happening through the eyes of another disciple. For real. With the Rabbi, of all people. While awake. In the daytime, no less!

She immediately attempted to see through the eyes first Gabriel, and then a different disciple. One she liked better. But she had no luck. Ditto with the Nephilim boys. Frustrated, she focused on the Rabbi and could immediately see what was happening once more. Ningizzada had just dropped into their midst and informed them the wagon and string of horses was on the run while the others were fighting it out back at the bridge. They got into position, the Rabbi praying fervently for the safe passage of those battling the highwaymen who had set up an ambush for all traffic moving through the area.

She felt a stronger, much more powerful presence surrounding the Rabbi. One she had not sensed since the day Michael had healed her broken bones and awoken her from the dead. No. Even before that. She had sensed something vaguely similar, only much more weakly, different, the day she had prayed as a child to Michael to save her dog. Huh?

She sensed … contempt. Contempt for the highwaymen. Not the Rabbi. Recognition that she was peeking. And then … amusement? Definitely not the Rabbi. The Father had a sense of humor? Not possible.

The mind-within-the-mind appeared to weigh Audrey's intrusion into whatever guidance it was giving the Rabbi, and then she could sense it make a decision. Pop! It suddenly felt as though stars exploded inside her brain as, just for a second, she caught a glimpse of what Gabriel referred to as the 'hive mind.' The thoughts of every heavenly being at once buzzed inside her head, random images of stellar movement and black holes some strange creatures that _had _to be on a totally different planet. It was as though all knowledge that had ever existed was hers for the asking. Not quite omnipotence, but close.

And then … she felt another presence. A brooding, overwhelming consciousness filled with anger and grief. _That _was the Father. Another angel … no … archangel … was the one listening to the Rabbi pray. Sandalphon. A brother she hadn't met yet. Sympathetic to the Rabbi's Hebrew roots. She could sense … conflict … in Sandalphon's mind. The archangel sympathized with Gabriel, but disobeying the Father was unthinkable. Whoever he was, he wanted her to know things weren't going well there in heaven without Gabriel there to stabilize the Father's mental stability.

The overwhelming mind which dominated the background buzz of all the other minds suddenly became even _more _overbearing and unpleasant than it had been in the first place. It sought to focus, through Sandalphon, on what the Rabbi was doing. Audrey just barely caught a quick apology as a mind-numbing migraine suddenly felt as though it were about to split her brain in two, and then evicted her from the hive-mind that connected this brother angel to the other beings in heaven before the Father caught him communicating with her.

"Shit…" Audrey mumbled as her vision went dark and she fell to her knees, whimpering in pain as she held her head. The sudden cessation of the chatter of interconnectedness between heavenly beings as well as the overbearing consciousness of the Father was … painful.

No wonder Gabriel had been so disoriented when he had first been cast down from heaven! Shit! She'd only been connected to it for less than a heartbeat and she was disoriented as hell! Was there any way to use the knowledge she had just glimpsed? She would ask Gabriel about it when he got back.

More gunshots rang off in the distance, but Audrey could no longer focus. Her head hurt too badly and she felt nauseous. Blindly reaching for the nearest soft object, a sleeping bag, Audrey lay it out upon the rocky ground and lay down. Yah-yah snuggled up next to her and anxiously licked her face.

"I hope he's okay," Audrey whispered to no one in particular. Ouch! Her brain felt as though she'd just stuck it into an electrical circuit. _Not _what she had been expecting to happen. She let out a prayer to no one in particular that her husband was okay and then let the darkness claim her.


	157. Chapter 156

Chapter 156

This time, Gabriel understood instantly that he needed to pay attention to the vague pain in his chest and insistent tug upon his subconscious.

"Audrey?" Gabriel looked around frantically and attempted to focus on her energy the way Mambo had been trying to teach him. Thick-skulled, Ehyeh had called him. Not so thick-skulled that he was unable to register the sensation of his little Prophet laying upon the ground, sound asleep, that annoying little yippy dog curled up in her arms. Not Audrey. Then who?

Thwack! Almost as an afterthought he smashed in the skull of the highwayman who drove at him swinging a ball and chain from the back of a motorcycle. How the hell had he missed the insurgents had dirt bikes when he had scoped out this place? A second insurgent froze in his seat moments before his motorcycle veered sharply off to one side, crashing into the guard rail of the Interstate 94 bridge. The sharp crack of an M-14 sniper rifle arriving _after _Gabriel caught a glimpse of the blackened hole in the insurgents forehead cued him in that Cindy had been the one to take the shot from her perch on the roof. The Reverend should have caught that shot from his nearer position.

The Reverend. Gabriel focused on the Reverend and knew instantly the source of vague dis-ease he felt along with the echo of somebody else's pain. The echo was a sensation he could vaguely remember having possessed _before _Yahweh had forced the angels to take the collar, but it had always been secondary to the overwhelming consciousness of Yahweh intruding into their thoughts like a parasitical being. Yahweh's overwhelming consciousness had drowned out that tiny voice which enabled the brother-angels to sense their own kind, but not now. Now … Gabriel was realizing that Yahweh wasn't the _only _one who possessed so-called heavenly gifts. Just the most powerful.

"Mambo … Senator … Lena …" Gabriel called. "Change of plans. We can't outrun motorized vehicles."

"What about Mambo?" Lena shouted?

Mambo's preferred easy-to-handle Morgan pony was tied dead-center in the string of ponies. Too hard to get loose. It was either hard-to-handle Haizum who was at the front of the line. Or Anu's broken-down old nag who was dead last on the string of horses. Mambo was not a natural horsewoman. Only a passably decent rider. With her bum leg, Haizum would not respond to her. The old nag it was. Gabriel used his left hand to shoot at an insurgent who was firing at him from the cover of an abandoned car parked at the defunct strip-mall just before the bridge and fought his way to the back of the line, yanking loose the lead line and tugging the obedient old horse to the front of the line.

"What am I supposed to do with that, boy?" Mambo asked, her dark eyes intent with concentration and nervousness as she shot forward at the insurgents blocking their way forward on the bridge.

"The wagon is a lost cause," Gabriel ordered. "We lost the Reverend and they have dirt bikes. Lead the horses to the beta site."

Grimly, Mambo nodded and then stood up on the seat to get on the horse. A bullet whistled past, making her dive for cover. Gabriel shot back in the direction where the shot had originated from, but could not see who he was shooting at. When Gabriel helped Mambo up and onto her horse, he realized Mambo had not _dove _for cover, but been knocked back by a bullet to the chest.

"Thank Four Bears for the Kevlar for me," Mambo said grimly as Gabriel helped her onto the horse, helping her slip the stirrup onto the foot of her bum leg. "Gyah!"

Lena bolted forward, tugging Haizum's lead rope and the string of ponies attached to him. The Senator and Mambo both fired off shots at the people shooting at them, riding as low in their saddles as they could while still aiming. Gabriel looked regretfully at the wagon and the six sturdy mules still attached to the wagon, along with all the supplies too heavy to fly across the swollen Yellowstone River.

Behind them, Gabriel knew Gunnlaeif was silently creeping up and taking out what insurgents he could before fading into the woodwork. Gabriel was supposed to rendezvous with him later. Forward, Four Bears had rigged up a diversion, but they hadn't made it that far yet. When Four Bears saw the horses run by without the wagon, he was intelligent enough to realize it was time for the diversion. Hiding the wagon was now a moot point. He needed to move the line forward to reinforce the ambush Muhammad had set up for any stragglers that shot past the site they had intended to hide the wagon.

Cursing as shots uselessly tore out a couple of primary feathers, missing flesh, sinew and bone, Gabriel took to the air and circled to where the Reverend had been positioned to provide cover fire. Lead solidified in his chest as soon as he saw the Reverend sprawled on the ground, unmoving. He ignored the bullets whistling past as he dropped to the ground and immediately crouched low to avoid being shot himself.

"Reverend," Gabriel said, rolling the Reverend over and flinching as he realized how bad his friend had been hit. The Reverend didn't move. Didn't moan. Didn't respond. Nothing. Only Gabriel's superior ability to hear the Reverend's faint, erratically beating heart indicated the organ still beat despite the gaping bullet hole in his chest which indicated that should not be the case. The Reverend. His friend. One of the few friends he had ever had, human or otherwise. Shot in the heart.

"Hang on, my friend," Gabriel said, suppressing the useless emotions which threatened to consume him. Grief and panic would not keep his friend alive.

He suppressed the habit involuntarily pounded into his brain for the past 14 billion years to pray to Yahweh for intervention, a fruitless prayer given the callous deities estrangement from his creations. Instead, Gabriel concentrated on the one gift Yahweh had inadvertently endowed both angels and _some _humans with. The ability to will a life-spark to remain in a body long after it should have expired. The ability to strengthen that spark in the hopes the mortal shell would have an opportunity to heal itself. The ability Ann had begun to unlock the day she had first shaken her fist at the Angel of Death as a student nurse in a trauma ward and told him he could _not _reap her patient that day.

"Savior-Bob-Jesus-Whatever you call yourself these days," Gabriel prayed as he carefully picked up the Reverend, adjusted his substantial weight, and grunted with exertion as he took to the air. "If you're watching and have any favors to call in, now would be a good time to do so. You're about to lose the leader of your flock."

An explosion rocked the shopping mall where the dirt bikes had unexpectedly poured forth from _inside _the old department store like ants. Four Bears. Triggering their diversion. Gabriel flew over the insurgents, wincing as they took potshots at him, and hoped Cindy had enough sense to hold her fire as soon as he was clear so they wouldn't make her position until he got back to pluck her from the roof. He flew over the fleeing forms of Mambo, the Senator, and Lena, the string of horses now loose and running in front of them, faster without the weight of riders. Flew towards the one person in the world he wished he didn't have to face right now.

"Matthias!" Lyubitshke screamed as she recognized the bloody contents Gabriel carried in his arms as he dropped into their midst.

"Shhhh!" the Rabbi nervously clamped a hand over the distraught young woman's mouth so her screams wouldn't alert the highwaymen pursuing the rest of the disciples.

"What happened?" Lyubitshke keened, having enough wits about her to keep her voice low as she frantically tore open her husband's shirt to find the source of the blood.

"One of the insurgents spotted his position on the roof after he took two of them out," Gabriel said grimly. "The wagon is lost. Some of the insurgents have dirt bikes. I have to go back and cover the backs of the others so they can escape."

As Gabriel spoke, the string of horses raced by with nobody holding their lead. The whine of dirt bikes grew louder as they pursued the slower-moving horses burdened with ridres.

"Boys!" Gabriel hissed to the two Nephilim boys as he kneeled and gently lay the body of one of the few humans he had ever truly cared about onto the ground. "Get your bows. Rabbi … can you tend to his wounds?"

"I don't know how to treat this!" the Rabbi said nervously as he touched the gaping bullet wound in the Reverend's chest. "Is he even still alive?"

Lyubitshke sobbed uncontrollably as she saw where the bullet had hit. Dangerously close to the heart. Blood was spurting out of the wound, not just seeping. A fatal shot. Not a wound that was survivable without modern medicine and a trauma ward.

"Just barely," Gabriel said, shoving down the rising panic which would consume him if he allowed it to gain an upper hand and focusing on what still remained to be done. Protect the other disciples under his care. "Do the best you can."

"All I know how to do is pray," the Rabbi said, nervously kneeling on the hard, rocky ground, his hands shaking.

"Then do that," Gabriel said grimly. "Pray that it is Azrael who comes for him and that he will hold off until there is no other choice before harvesting his soul."

"Y-y-yes," the Rabbi said, nodding vigorously at being given a worthy task to assist the group. "I can do that." Azrael could prevent an overly-zealous death-spirit from snatching the Reverend's soul before he was ready to leave, but not prevent the expiration of his mortal shell. If the Reverend died without someone there to catch his soul, it would pass into the void.

Glancing at the Reverend's terrified young wife, Gabriel looked now to the two boys who had been entrusted to his care. Young, or not young, full-angel or only a quarter, the group needed the advantage of having two soldiers who could fight from the air to take out the dirt bikes. The boys had not yet mastered the use of modern weaponry … bullets being in too short supply in this part of the country to waste for target practice. But their scant eleven years existing in Neolithic Earth hunting game and being constantly under attack by the armies of the Father had taught them other skills. Skills the armies of heavens preferred to fickle modern weaponry even to this day.

"Anu … Ningizzada … " Gabriel ordered. "We're going hunting."

Fear showed in the boys eyes, but they nervously nodded their assent as they strapped their quivers across their backs and clutched their bows with white-knuckled fingers. Wings flared, the boys moved into the formation Gabriel had been teaching them. A battle wing formation.

The thought crossed Gabriel's mind as they rose together into the air that he was no better than Yahweh, shoving primitive weapons into the hands of boys and forcing them to fight an enemy with superior weaponry. The boys were _even _the same approximate level of maturity as he had been the day the Grigori and their half-angel offspring had stormed the gates of heaven and entered the garden seeking the death of the callous deity who had simply dissipated the material forms of their mothers and cast their souls into the void for uncreation without a second thought.

The boys didn't even have armor as he did to protect their vulnerable hearts. Luckily, so far the insurgents mounted on dirt bikes had proven to be lousy shots. It was a lot more difficult to shoot at a moving target _from _a moving target, a skill every angel learned as soon as they could fly.

"Remember what I taught you," Gabriel warned them. "Their guns can shoot a lot further than your bows and they know how to aim them. Shoot from a position of cover and then get the hell out of the way."

"He who fights then runs away…" Ningizzada said.

"Shall live to fight another day…" Anu finished.

"Right," Gabriel nodded, both fearful and proud of the boys who came to their aid without protest. "It was _me _who conveyed to the original Prophet Mohammad the Quran. But it was Muhammad who taught _me _about how to use unconventional warfare to even the odds in an unfair fight. This isn't Yahweh's army. Hit 'em and then get the heck out of there!"

Glancing one last time at the shrinking form of his friend laying dying upon the ground, Gabriel gave one last prayer to the two-year-old deity who would one day inherit this earth.

"Yeshua," Gabriel prayed to the Savior, pronouncing the Savior's name as his _first _mortal mother had named him, before time and modern English had corrupted the name. "If you've got any sense whatsoever, you'll tell me what you need me to do to save the leader of your flock or he won't survive."

Banking his wings to the left so he was coming at the insurgents on dirt bikes from their blind rears, the boys in tight formation on either side, Gabriel drew his mace and prepared to splatter the scumbags off their iron mounts. The boys drew their bows. Gabriel pointed to which riders he wished the boys to shoot in the backs. Back shots. From the angel who preferred to face an enemy head on. _He _might fight an enemy head on, but this enemy murdered innocent people and it was two frightened eleven-year-old boys he had forced to help defend the group. Gabriel would not risk losing any more friends today.

"Fire!" Gabriel ordered.

Arrows whistled as the boys took out the first two insurgents.

Gabriel aimed his mace at the third. Thwack!


	158. Chapter 157

Chapter 157

"Mrs. Anderson," the voice cut through the muddled fog of her migraine. "You must wake up."

Yah-yah licked her face insistently. Great. In addition to sporting the worlds' worst migraine, now she was hearing talking dogs.

"I apologize for cutting you off like that," the voice said. "Here. This should help."

A warm hand touched her forehead. Gentle warmth permeated her mind, smoothing the aching throbbing in its wake. The sensation was familiar.

"Michael?" Audrey asked, stretching and opening her eyes.

"Not Michael," the angel said. "Sandalphon. Another brother. We met earlier … sort of."

Audrey stared at the sandy-haired, brown-and-black striped winged angel who knelt at her side. Sandalphon. The angel she had sensed earlier when she had eavesdropped on the Rabbi's prayer. He resembled a thinner, fairer version of Michael, his emotions closer to the surface than those of the warrior elite. His expression was nervous. Several times he glanced over his shoulder as though afraid of being caught.

"Give me that saddlebag," Audrey ordered. "Right there. Yes … thank you." She reached into her satchel and pulled out the pen she had been using to scribble in the margins of the old King James Bible along with the notebook she'd been using to rough out entirely new books of the bible dictated by Gabriel. Sort of dictated by Gabriel. It would probably be more accurate to say she dragged details out of him about inconsistencies that had always bugged the fuck out of her and wrote down what Gabriel said had really happened.

"I have to go," Sandalphon said as he rose and prepared to leap between the dimensions. "I'm not supposed to … the Reverend needs you. Right away! That way."

"Wait!" Audrey called. She flipped open to the last page where she had scribbled down the sigels and veve Mambo had taught them and quickly drew a larger version onto a blank page in her notebook. Scrambling to her feet, her expanding girth making the motion clumsy and awkward, the angel automatically reached out to steady her.

"Fill your field of vision with this symbol," Audrey commanded, holding the picture right in front of the perplexed angels face. "It's the source code for the Father's command collar. It blocks the collars ability to broadcast your thoughts to the hive mind so long as you focus part of your consciousness on keeping this symbol in your mind."

"The Father will notice my absence," Sandalphon said nervously. "I just … the Rabbi prayed for help and I happened to be listening. The Father said he is not permitted to intervene because of some … wager? I hoped … I hoped perhaps _you_ could heal his friend, the Reverend. Like you did for Gabriel?"

"Please …" Audrey stalled, clutching for his arm before he could fly away. "I'll do what I can, but as you can see, I'm in no condition to go running into battle all by myself."

"No," Sandalphon said, eyeing her expanding abdomen with intense curiosity. He didn't appear to be hostile about her pregnancy. In fact, when her mind had touched his in the … whatever state that was she had inadvertently tapped into … he had been amused by her curiosity and wished for her to get a glimpse of the difference between his mind and that of the Father when she had questioned whose mind it was she sensed.

The Reverend needed help, and it was _critical _Audrey form alliances with the 200 angels who sat on the fence. There was a gray area between what the angels were ordered to do and how much discretion they were given to do it, especially when their heartfelt intent was to safeguard the Father's best interests. A motivated angel could render an awful lot of assistance by manipulating that grey area without technically disobeying.

"You must train your mind to keep part of your consciousness separate from that of the Father," Audrey informed him. "The life spark of consciousness gifted to you by the Mother contains the seed of free will, but your semi-mortal shell remains under the dominion of the Father."

"Why would I wish to keep my thoughts from the Father?" Sandalphon asked, glancing nervously skyward as though this were a test. "I would never disobey a direct order."

"You need to create a place within your mind where you can weigh for yourself what the Father asks for versus what he truly needs," Audrey said. "A kind of … battlefield decision making ability. Like Michael possesses. So you don't need to bother the Father about every petty decision you make."

"Yes," Sandalphon said, his nostrils flared nervously as he inhaled her scent for hints of pheromones that would indicate she was engaged in deception. "That ability would be … useful." Audrey knew the gesture was subconscious. For some reason, neither the Grigori nor the Fallen could sense the disciples at all, while the angels ability to sense them appeared to be blunted. Sandalphon was instinctively compensating by falling back upon a survival trait imbued by the Mother at birth.

Luckily for Audrey, she no longer needed to lie about helping the Father get out of his own idiotic way. Ever since the Mother had given her the vision of the broken lover the Mother had dove into the void to rescue, Audrey had found herself experiencing a _new _emotion when it came to the Father. Compassion. It was an 'I want to slap your face and kick your dumb fucking ass so you wake up and smell the coffee' kind of compassion, but now that Audrey understood why the Mother had put up with Yahweh all these years, she discovered a bit of that compassion rubbing off on her. Just a little. It still didn't excuse what a dickhead the Father was or motivate her to put up with any of his shit, but it gave her insight into how to deal with him.

"The Father is not well," Audrey said gently. "You know in your heart this is true. Sometimes, when someone we love isn't thinking clearly, we need to take what they ask for with a grain of salt and figure out what's _best _for them."

"The Father has always guided my actions," Sandalphon said. "Why would I need to keep part of my consciousness separate from his now?"

"What if the hive mind were to suddenly collapse?" Audrey asked. "Or your collar were to be struck off in battle? Would you _still _be able to protect the Father from his enemies?"

"Um…" Sandalphon hesitated.

"Gabriel was knocked on his ass in a coma for over a month when he lost his collar," Audrey said. "I had to teach him everything from scratch. Including how to swallow. It took almost ten months for him to learn to fly again."

"That was different," Sandalphon said adamantly. "Gabriel has always followed the Father's orders without question. I am more … in tune … with the humanity I serve."

"You enabled me to touch the hive mind for just a heartbeat," Audrey reminded him, "and look what it did to _me?_ If _we _can figure out how to hack into the Father's source code, don't you think the Grigori could, too?"

Sandalphon watched her, his nostrils flaring like a dogs sensitive nose as he unconsciously used his mortal senses to gauge the truthfulness of her words. Audrey couldn't help but smile as she pictured how odd she had thought it when Gabriel had done the same thing when he was first getting to know her, gauged her intentions by her scent when he hadn't even been aware he was using that sense to help make up for the loss of the hive mind.

So long as Sandalphon didn't taste her... Audrey didn't think Gabriel would like that very much!

"The Father tasked me with keeping an eye on the Rabbi and his people," Sandalphon finally said. "Gabriel is preoccupied at the moment. I don't know how to answer the Rabbi's prayers if I'm forbidden to heal the person he is praying for to live."

"Then you must serve the Father as your heart tells you would be best to serve him," Audrey said. "What does your heart tell you the Father _needs_?"

"I'm not … sure," Sandalphon hesitated. "Given enough time, things would probably right themselves. They've done so before when he's been like this. But this is the first time Gabriel was absent. Gabriel has always been a stabilizing influence on the Father."

"Gabriel's a stabilizing influence on everyone he meets," Audrey agreed, encouraging Sandalphon to complete his own thought process. "Once you've earned his loyalty, you know only death will prevent him from watching your back."

"The Grigori are loose," Sandalphon said. "So are my fallen brothers. And their offspring. And now humanity is _also _in a position to be a threat if they side with the Grigori. Which they have every reason to do after what the Father did to them. The Father is refusing to take these threats seriously!"

"These problems are too big for one angel to fix alone," Audrey said gently. "Just … take me to the Rabbi who you're supposed to be helping. Okay? It's too far for me to waddle."

"Gabriel will be upset I have asked you to enter the danger zone," Sandalphon vascillated nervously. "And the Father said not to heal the Reverend. I just …"

"Gabriel will be even _more _upset if he loses one of his best friends," Audrey pointed out. "You're only helping me get to the Rabbi. Not disobeying the Father's prohibition against healing the Reverend. Between black and white, there's a lot of gray area."

"Um…" Sandalphon hesitated. Audrey could sense him attempt to connect back into the hive mind for guidance, a habit she had noticed Gabriel continue to possess until the knowledge learned during the Okipa ceremony caused him to sever all connections to the Father.

"Focus on the sigel!" Audrey snapped. "You don't want to broadcast your every thought for all of heaven to hear, do you?"

"No," Sandalphon said. He nearly leaped out of his skin when Audrey reached out to touch his forearm. She could feel the intense energy radiating off his flesh. Holy fire.

"Burn this sigel into your brain," Audrey commanded. "It won't give you _much _control, but training your minds' eye to visually fill your mind with the 'broadcast off' button from time to time will give you the ability to think your own thoughts without having to share it with every other nimrod and dimwit hooked into the system. It will help you recover faster if for any reason someone ever breaches the Father defenses and brings down whatever network powers the hive mind. Focus!"

Sandalphon stared intently at the paper for another minute, burning it into his memory. Then, he nodded. "I am ready."

"Okay," Audrey said, lowering the paper. The Father must have given the angel an order that had left some wiggle room into it for creative interpretation because the glimpse Audrey had gotten into Sandalphon's mind earlier today had indicated he was both sympathetic to Gabriel's plight and afraid to disobey.

"The Reverend is dying," Sandalphon said, his eyes filled with concern. "With him dies the Savior's strongest voice amongst the human survivors. If things keep going in the direction they've been going…"

"All of heaven will be destroyed," Audrey said. "Including the Father. The Mother has shown me this future. My husband shall sacrifice his life when the time comes in the hopes of preventing the Father from cutting off his nose to spite his face."

"I know nothing of such things," Sandalphon whispered. "I … I only know things have gone very badly in heaven since Gabriel left and refused to return."

"Gabriel was cast out to die a horrible, painful death," Audrey snapped. "The Father's sin offering to the Mother for obeying his order to kill their begotten son. You should remember that! Gabriel didn't die because I refused to play his stupid game."

"Your child is not supposed to exist," Sandalphon said, reaching out to touch her abdomen with … reverence? "None of the hybrids were. It is rumored the Father forbids us to procreate because he can't simply dissipate our offspring when he is displeased with them the way he can us."

Sandalphon looked down at the hand Audrey had placed on his forearm. Touch. The craving for physical sensation _all _of the angels hungered for despite the Father's best efforts to deny it to them. Not _sex_ as self-serving prophets such as Enoch had claimed. But the simple craving to be touched by another living creature. Puppies. The cherubs had been created as a single large 'litter' to clamor over the Mother and each other as a pack. No matter what the Father did to the now-grown cherubs now, he had been unable to brainwash that yearning to curl up with one's pack out of them.

"You must give the Father what he truly _needs_," Audrey said. "The Rabbi has been praying for help and you have been ordered to watch over him. Just take me to the Rabbi and tell me what to do. –I- will be the one doing the healing. Not you."

Audrey slid her hand down his forearm, over his leather braces, to take his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Sandalphon momentarily quivered with indecision. She saw the moment Sandalphon chose to 'obey' the Father by answering the Rabbi's prayer to bring help.

"The Father only ordered me not to heal the Reverend," Sandalphon said. "Not to prevent somebody _else _from helping." The angel awkwardly pulled Audrey into his arms and lurched into the air, his razor-sharp feathers rustling like the sound of a sharp knife being rubbed against a whetstone as the artificial strength of holy fire surging through the angels veins enabled him to defy gravity with the heavy wings.


	159. Chapter 158

Chapter 158

Audrey squeaked with surprise as the air suddenly flashed with light and she was landing in the midst of the keening Lyubitshke and the fervently praying Rabbi. The two Nephilim boys were missing. Azrael, on the other hand, was standing awkwardly at the edge of the narrow passageway the disciples had altered to hide the wagon dodging rocks thrown at him by the screeching Lyubitshke.

"Keep away from him!" Lyubitshke screamed at Azrael. Her aim would have been deadly had Azrael not been using his glossy black wings to shield himself from the softball-sized rocks the Reverend's frantic Romani wife was lobbing at his head. Unlike the other brothers who still served the Father, unfortunately, Azrael did not have steel-laced feathers.

"Audrey…" Azrael said, giving her a glimpse of his sorrowful expression from behind a dropped wing before he had to duck again to avoid yet another missile. "A little help? Please?"

"My prayers have been answered!" the Rabbi simultaneously shouted, kneeling in front of Sandalphon and bowing his head all the way to the ground. "An angel of the Lord. Please! You must heal my colleague!"

"Audrey," Lyubitshke wailed, the normally unshakeable gypsy girl frantic with worry. "Please! You must not let him take my husband!"

Audrey glanced at the silent, bloody form of the Reverend. Her response froze in her throat as horror rose in her gut. He looked … dead.

"Reverend," Audrey whispered, stepping to his side and dropping to her knees, oblivious to the blood which pooled on the ground around his body. Her hands shaking, she reached out to touch the base of his throat to feel for a pulse and found none.

"He's still in there," Azrael said, drooping his wings to communicate his regrets. "Barely."

"Angel of the Lord," the Rabbi prayed loudly before Sandalphon, bowing at his feet. "I recognize the feel of your presence as one who frequently watches over my people. Please. You must help my friend."

Some small, petty part of Audrey's mind questioned just when the aloof Rabbi had begun to think of the Reverend of a friend and then was suppressed in shame. Just because _she _found the Rabbi's holier-than-thou presence to be intolerable didn't mean the other disciples did. In fact, now that she thought of it, Gabriel, the Reverend, Lyubitshke and Mohammad got along with the Rabbi marginally well.

"The Father has forbidden me to heal him," Sandalphon said, shame tingeing his words. "But the Prophet has the ability to heal. I have intervened all I dare."

"I don't know what I'm doing," Audrey said as she took in the full measure of the Reverends injuries and realized he should be dead already. "When Gabriel lived … I was just … I was just angrier at the Father than I was at Gabriel. I refused to let him die because I knew it would spite him. Sandalphon. Please! You must tell me what to do!"

"Nobody in heaven knows how you kept Gabriel alive," Sandalphon said. "Not the Father. Not even the Mother. But somehow … you did. You kept him here against all the odds."

"Audrey!" Lyubitshke wailed, her husbands' blood all over her hands and clothing. "You must save him. We haven't … we haven't even…" Lyubitshke put her head down on her husband's bloody chest, listening for his heart beat and bloodying her cheek.

Audrey kneeled at the Reverends' side, the de facto spiritual leader of their curious little band of rejects. The first real friend Gabriel had ever had. The first disciple. The first one to recognize Gabriel protected her for reasons other than a misguided need to obey the Father. She could vaguely remember a desire to help Michael save his brother's life, but her hatred of Gabriel had been so intense those first few days that little else had registered in her consciousness except how conflicted she felt about not simply abandoning him to die like he deserved.

The Reverend already _had _a wife who loved him. Probably the only reason the Reverend's soul still clung to his body. That … and his own stubbornness to complete his mission. What more could Audrey do to help?

"I don't know what to do," Audrey said, tears springing to her eyes as she pawed at the Reverends shirt and realized this wasn't a through-and-through lung shot like Gabriel or the slug that had been buried in her abdomen. It was a perfect kill-shot. Straight through the heart. Blood barely seeped from the wound anymore, as though there were little left for the Reverend's shattered heart to pump. This was a wound even an angel would have trouble healing. The only reason the Reverend was still here was because the Angel of Death was refusing to take him until he had absolutely no choice.

"Audrey!" Lyubitshke hic-sobbed, tears streaming down her face now bloody with her husbands' blood. "Do something."

"When … when you speak holy blasphemy," Sandalphon nervously said, glancing skyward once more as though fearing retribution. "All of heaven hears your words. Especially when you are angry. But … that is not the only time we have heard you. We also heard your words when you ordered Gabriel to live. We heard you plead with Michael that you didn't understand how to save him. We heard you defend our wounded brother against the coyotes the Father sent to finish the job. When … when you screamed at the Father that this was _your_ world now and you weren't going to let the Father take Gabriel from you, all of creation shuddered. _Your _words of defiance that night cracked the gates of the Keep and enabled a loose Grigori to free the others. And we … every creation in both heaven and Sheol heard you when you called Gabriel back from the brink of death from a mortal bullet by telling him that you loved him."

Audrey digested this information, but didn't know how it helped. She was diligent to keep her anger under control these days because she had learned the power of the Mother filtered through her voice and the power was exceptionally destructive, but this was the first time anyone had informed her heaven had also heard her call back her husband from the dead when he had flatlined on Gunn's makeshift surgery. It didn't tell her how to heal the Reverend.

"Could Ann save him?" Audrey asked, turning to Azrael.

"Ann appears to possess some of the same gift that _you _have," Azrael said. "But she does not understand how _your _gift works. You were so critically injured when you were at her hospital and … with the baby … she didn't want to cause you to miscarry. She didn't have a chance to study your gift."

Azrael unconsciously stepped closer to them as he spoke.

"I said stay away from him!" Lyubitshke screeched, picking up the next rock in the very rocky gully and lobbing it right into Azrael's chest before he could swing a wing in front of his body to protect himself. "I won't let you take him from me!"

Some small part of Audrey's subconscious logged the fact that, instead of bouncing off Azrael's soft, glossy black wings as the other missiles had done, the rock simply poofed out of existence even as Azrael instinctively cringed as the rock reached his chest. Ehyeh had shown Gabriel something that Azrael didn't remember. Azrael was different because he had recreated his own physical form after being cast into the void. The _same _way the Mother created a physical form. The _same _void Audrey's soul had briefly travelled into. Twice. The source of all primordial chaos the Father eventually used to create solid matter.

Void-matter. The source of the rich soil not only the Father, but also the young cherubs had used to shape vessels to house life-sparks in the Garden of Eden…

"Mother!" Audrey screamed to the sky. "You'd better tell Simbi to get his ass down here and tell me what to do or all your sons intricate plans to save the universe are about to go up in smoke!"

It wasn't Simbi who answered her call. Roiling black clouds and a chill descended upon the Montana badlands like a super cell harboring an F-5 tornado. The Mother was choosing to answer Audrey's plea personally. The Rabbi cringed in fear as the 'cloud' sprouted tentacles and electricity filled the air, sparks of lightning shooting out of each tentacle as it formed. The form the Mother used to transition between the nothingness of the void and the material realm. A curious combination of fear, exhilaration, and awe filled Audrey at the sight of the deity who had been invading her dreams every night for more than two years punching through to the material realm and solidifying a tiny piece of her vast consciousness into quasi-physical form.

"Matka Boska Czestochowski," Lyubitshke said in the Romani language, making the sign of the cross at the sight of the Black Madonna, dark Kali with her thousand arms, come to give aid to her husband. "I plead your intervention."

"Once the wager has been made, daughter of those whose ancestors sheltered my son," the Mother said to Lyubitshke in a beautiful, terrible feminine voice, the earth shuddering as she spoke. "Neither the Father nor I may interfere until the wager has been completed. The rules of the wager predate every known universe. If your husband is to continue to exist, it must be by his own efforts and those of the other pieces on the board."

Game pieces? Upon a board? Audrey glanced at Azrael, the niggling upon her subconscious which had recognized the rock go 'poof' distracting her from what the Mother was trying to tell her. How had Azrael made the rock simply vanish as it struck his chest? And why _that _particular rock? And not the others? Instinct? Did Azrael possess abilities he wasn't aware he had?

"Lazarus come forth," the Rabbi suggested to Audrey. "Your Christian Savior could purportedly raise the dead simply by commanding it. Perhaps you could give it a try?"

"Audrey … please," Lyubitshke whispered, her voice hoarse.

"I don't think …" Audrey stammered. Somehow, she doubted it was that simple. But she would try. Focusing on the thread she sensed still connected her to the void, she pictured pulling strength from it the way she instinctively did when she harnessed the power of holy blasphemy to shatter windows and curse god. The energy felt … wrong … for what she was doing. But what could it hurt?

"Reverend Matthias Bradford," Audrey said using her most commanding voice. "Get up!"

The others shuddered as the steel in Sandalphon's razor sharp feathers and every other piece of metal in the alpha site vibrated and gave off a hum that was a cross between fingernails on a blackboard and the sound a bridge makes in an action hero movie before it falls into a river. Off in the distance, several dogs howled.

"Stop!" Lyubitshke wailed, covering her ears with her hands. "Whatever you're doing, it's just not … right!"

"I'm sorry," Audrey said. "That's the only power I know how to wield. I don't know what to do! Sandalphon?"

"Our power comes from the Father," Sandalphon said. "Returning or holding a soul-spark in a mortal vessel and accelerating healing requires little effort on our part. But if the body is so badly damaged it cannot harbor the life spark until it heals, then we can do nothing. Only the Father can shape a new house for a life spark."

"I can remember the feeling of Gabriel responding to my touch the first time I healed him," Audrey said. "And also the time he was shot. But it took a long time. Something the Reverend does not have."

"A vibration," Azrael said. "Ann studied how Gabriel healed his wife at an accelerated rate. She thinks it's a certain brainwave frequency paired with … something else. Something she hasn't been able to nail down. It's probably a different frequency than the one you've learned to use with your voice to punch through dimensions and make steel vibrate."

Poof! The mental image of that stupid rock just flashing out of existence as it hit Azrael's chest intruded into Audrey's mind once more as she stared down at the gaping hole in the Reverends chest. The wound that was no longer even seeping blood. The Reverend's skin had passed beyond chalk white to turn blue.

"Audrey," Azreal said softly, tears streaming down his beautiful black cheeks as the trembling of his wings told Audrey the bad news even before the words left the Angel of Deaths' lips. "His shell has expired. I have to take him now or his soul will pass into the void."

The void. Death for the dead. Death even for the gods. The place where souls were consumed by soul-eating chaos creatures. The place … the place where Audrey's soul had journeyed to twice and returned once her body had healed enough to house it. The second time on her own. The place where she had discovered an anti-matter copy of everything that had ever existed in every universe left an imprint, even if the thing itself no longer existed in the material realm.

The void. Home of the Mother. The place the Father had dared travel to do battle with the Mother's betrothed for her hand and lost. The place the Mother had found her voice. The place where the Mother had pieced back together her shattered lover and dragged the pieces out again. The place the Mother had retrieved Azrael's soul from after the Father had destroyed his mortal vessel and taught him to recreate a semblance of his _own _shell. The place the Grigori males had physically followed the Mother to retrieve the shattered pieces of their wives souls after their shells had been dissolved and then returned with their wife's shattered soul-sparks within their own bodies as no alternative vessels were to be had and the Mother lacked the ability to shape them new ones.

Duh! In the void, material objects were malleable!

"Lyubitshke," Audrey said gently, taking the frantic girls hand. "We must do this together. You love him, while I am his friend. Rabbi … you too. Get your yamulke-clad butt down here and pray. We have to provide an anchor for the Reverend's consciousness to find his way back again while he passes through the eye of the storm."

"I have been forbidden to heal him," Sandalphon said nervously.

"Nobody's healing anybody," Audrey snapped. "Azrael … take him. _All _of him. Straight into the void. Would that violate your precious rules, Mother?"

"I am forbidden to speak of the void," the Mother said, the pleased tone of her voice belying the unhelpfulness of her words. The Mother's voice was the gentle tone of a Mother whose child had just figured out how to recite the alphabet. The angry tentacles protruding from the roiling black clouds softened into a shape somewhat akin to angel wings. "Azrael has no memory of his time in the void. If he returns there with the Reverend, it will be very traumatic for him. There is great danger, but the rules are different there. The wager has no force of law."

"Tezcatlipoca is dead, isn't he?" Audrey asked nervously, remembering the name the Mother had screamed as she had battled the larger chaos creature which was consuming her lover in the memory she had sent Audrey.

"I am forbidden to speak of the void," the Mother said a second time as the tentacles reappeared, bolts of lightning erupting from the black cloud. This time, the Mother was not pleased. Audrey had the distinct impression it wasn't merely because she had mentioned the soul-eaters name.

"Watch out for Tezcatlipoca," Audrey said, turning to Azrael. "And others like him. I think if you can avoid the soul-eaters, you will be okay in there."

"His mortal shell has expired," Azrael said as he knelt beside the Reverend's body and looked Lyubitshke in the eye. "If I don't take him now, even his soul will be lost. If passage into the void fails, the Father has agreed to allow him entrance into Eden. I will carry him there myself and see to it he is settled in. Someday you will be reunited. You have my word."

"Matthias," Lyubitshke sobbed, bending to kiss her husband before moving back, sitting on the ground in a puddle of his blood. She looked at Azrael. "Please … bring him back to me."

"I'll do my best," Azrael said, his wings trembling with fear as he gathered the Reverend's empty shell into his arms. "I suspect it's really up to _him_ what happens there. Everything I touch dies. Not heals. All I can do is provide transport."

In a flash, the Angel of Death was gone. Almost as quickly, the roiling black cloud that had punched through from another dimension churned into itself and was also gone, leaving the vast empty badlands devoid of sound.

"Eil na rafa na la…" the Rabbi chanted, opening his torah where he kneeled on the ground in the midst of the blood of their fallen friend, totally ignoring the rest of them, including Sandalphon who, for some reason, chose to linger, his wings twitching with indecision.

Lyubitshke threw herself into Audrey's arms and sobbed uncontrollably. There was nothing any of them could do except wait and pray. Everything was hitting too close to home. Only it was Lyubitshke kneeling in the dirt saturated with her dead husbands' blood without so much as a body to bury, not Audrey.

This time. _Her_ time was coming real soon…


	160. Chapter 159

Chapter 159

"Gabriel!" Ningizzada shouted. "Behind you!"

The Nephilim boy let fly his arrow, narrowly missing the spot where Gabriel's wing had been only a moment before. The yelp of agony behind him registered on his brain before Gabriel could snarl at the young man for taking such a risky shot. The boys might be young and lack discipline, but their aim with the primitive bows was deadly accurate.

"Thanks," Gabriel grunted even as he sped up and swung his mace to finish smashing in the skull of the insurgent who had just shot the fleeing Lena in the back and knocked her off her horse. Thankfully, Lena was wearing one of the three Kevlar vests Four Bears had scrounged up. Lena would be sporting one hell of a bruise, but would live.

"Thanks," Lena said, clamoring to her feet and looking longingly at her fleeing horse, long gone.

"Head for cover," Gabriel ordered, pointing to a gully that lay alongside the road. Wait until nightfall and then make your way to the rendezvous site. If I have time, I'll come back for you."

"Okay," Lena said, scrambling down the gully and quickly crouching down out of sight. It was Lena's nature to avoid a fight unless it was absolutely necessary. She was no coward, but she was no fighter, either. Unlike…

Shots fired up ahead. Anu. Gone off half-cocked again as usual pretending to be some human action hero called Roy Rogers. Or was that Buck Rogers? Gabriel wasn't sure. The Nephilim's embrace of human culture in the short time they'd been here was perplexing. The highway men were shooting at him. Neither boy had yet fully grasped the fact that the primitive weapons which had served them so well when they had last walked the Earth 4,500 years ago were woefully inadequate now. The Fathers armies used tricked-out versions of primitive weapons because their ability to teleport between the dimensions next to their quarry in the middle of a downswing enabled them to kill up close and personal.

Neither the Nephilim boys, nor _he _since he had been cast down by Yahweh, could teleport. Gunn had made a point of teaching Gabriel mastery of modern firearms. Fully cognizant of that point, Gabriel pulled the 457 magnum from its holster, took careful aim, and shot the guy shooting at an eleven year old boy armed with nothing but a pea shooter. A very _deadly _pea shooter.

"I had him," Anu complained, banking up sharply into the air in what had to be the Nephilim version of a teenaged outburst. An outburst that was remarkably similar to that any _human _eleven-year-old boy might make when his efforts were thwarted.

"I ordered you to hang back and harass," Gabriel ordered, banking up just far enough so his voice could be heard. "Not get up close and personal. You're not wearing any armor."

"Awww!" Anu whined, doing an unnecessarily energy-wasting loop-de-loo before banking right to retake his position at Gabriel's right hand side. Ningizzada had already assumed the alternate position at Gabriel's left.

Ahead, one last motorcyclist still gave chase to Mambo and the Senator, shooting at them the entire way, oblivious his compatriots had been taken out from behind. Gabriel signaled the boys to speed up, snarling at them to stay in formation as they closed the gap and not get ahead of him where they would make easy targets.

The sudden sensation of loss hit him in the chest like a kick from Haizum.

"Reverend," Gabriel whispered, choking up and then suppressing the unhelpful emotion. He had known when he had brought his dying friend to his frantic young wife that the Reverend was not going to make it. It was a wound even an angel filled with holy fire would not have been able to heal without direct intervention by Yahweh. At least he was certain his friend had earned entrance into the garden where someday his little Prophet would join him. It gave Gabriel comfort to know that, once he had been interred into the Keep, his little Prophet would someday join the company of the likes of the Reverend.

"Gabriel?" Anu called, slowing down as Gabriel had inadvertently done so he stayed in formation. "Are you all right?"

Tears stung Gabriel's eyes, clouding his vision. Ningizzada had already shot past and was in the process of back-winging until the others caught up with him. His other friends were still in danger. The Reverend would have insisted Gabriel finish the mission. No matter what...

Rage flowed through his veins like holy fire. He recovered speed and flew back into formation, holstering his firearm and pulling out his mace with a snarl of rage. This last one would be smote up close and personal. For the Reverend!

"Arrrrgghhh!" Gabriel shouted, swinging his mace and knocking the last highwayman off his dirt bike just as the man was taking a shot at the Senator.

The man quickly recovered and rolled for his gun, narrowly missing Gabriel's second swing of the mace and hitting him in the chest with a .38 caliber slug. It didn't even make Gabriel flinch. Ever since Santa Fe, Gabriel diligently wore his armor into battle, the unearthly metal impervious to any weapon wherever it covered. Gabriel swung the mace again and caught the man in the shoulder, the sickening sound of bone crushing.

"Please…" the man screamed, reaching his hands in front of his face as he threw away the gun and pleaded for his life.

Mercy. His little Prophet had taught him to have mercy. The boys were watching. He needed to set a good example for them. Ahead, he saw Mambo and the Senator slow down their horses and turn to watch. Gabriel hesitated, weighing the wisdom of granting mercy versus smiting the highwayman who preyed upon unwary travelers.

It was the second, soul-sucking feeling of loss which made the decision _for _him. A connection Gabriel had only ever been vaguely aware of for the past 74 million years since one brother all-but-disappeared from his life the same day his sisters had ceased to exist. Azrael. Gone. Only once before had Gabriel felt this sensation. The day Yahweh viscously made an example of Azrael about what he would do to cherubs who failed to win in battle by dissolving his mortal shell and banishing his soul into the void. The loss which had prompted the Mother to destroy the half-angel offspring and fracture heaven.

How could the Angel of Death be dead? He had already died. He could sense that Azrael was neither on Earth, in heaven or Sheol. Neither was the Reverend. They were both … gone. Into the void. The Reverend must have slipped away faster than Azrael could catch him and Azrael been sucked into the gateway trying to catch his soul. _Nobody_ entered the void willingly. Not even the Father. It was suicide.

"Azrael," Gabriel whispered, regaining his focus at the groveling man reaching into his boot to grab a weapon. Rage flowed once more as Gabriel swung the mace and smashed the highwaymen in the face, nothing but ground meat smashed into the pavement. And then he swung again. And again. And again. And again. He had no idea how many times he swung until he fell to his knees, lifted his head into the air, and screamed a bone-chilling primordial scream of grief and rage that he'd been repressing for 74 million years, suppressed hatred of the sadistic deity who had done this to _all _of his children released at last.

"Goddamned sonofabitch motherfucker useless piece of shit god!" Gabriel screamed, repeating words he had heard his little Prophet scream countless times as she had shaken her fist at Yahweh and screamed holy blasphemy into the heavens for all to hear.

Gabriel ignored the shocked stares of the two Nephilim boys. Of Mambo, the Senator, and Lena making their way to where he stood covered with blood and gore and bits of smashed flesh and excrement from intestines smashed out of the highwayman's cadaver and pulling the boys a safe distance.

_He _had been the blind fucking idiot who had pieced Yahweh back together after the Mother had torn him to shreds, retrieved his head, and then tended Yahweh's wounds until he had healed. He should have let the capricious deity die! _He _was responsible for his friends' death.

"When I get my hands on you …" Gabriel snarled at god. "I'm going to fucking kill you!" A _new _source of power surged through Gabriel's veins. Rage. Like holy fire. Only _not _holy fire. There was nothing holy about it. Gabriel was the Mother's son. She had imbued _all _of her children with her latent ability to harness the power of the void. Gabriel had just stumbled upon it on his own.

His rage not yet satiated, Gabriel took to the air and headed back to the bridge. If the highwaymen wanted to court death, he would bring it to their door. Without Azrael there to retrieve their souls, there was only once place those he killed now would go. Into the void his best friend and brother had just been sucked into to join them.

"Gabriel!" Anu called, flying as fast as he could to catch up to him. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to retrieve my fucking wagon!" Gabriel snarled.

In a flash of blinding white light, Gabriel teleported between the dimensions to the bridge so Anu could not follow him. The ability resided within the angels, not Yahweh. Ehyeh had shown him that during the Okipa ceremony. In his rage and pain, Gabriel had discovered the key to the gift.

"This is for my brother," Gabriel snarled. Lifting his mace, Gabriel ignored the shotgun shell which blew into the armor in his chest and smashed in the skull of the nearest highwayman holding the reins of _his _mules.


	161. Chapter 160

Chapter 160

Screams of terror filled his ears. The scent of blood filled his nostrils, gore splattered all over his face. Salt from blood inadvertently inhaled while he smashed bodies into ground meat burned acrid on his tongue. At some point during the bloodletting, Gabriel became aware of the occasional scumbag near wherever he was fighting drop suddenly to the ground, dead, a bullet hole through the center of their forehead, although his own howls of rage were so loud he never heard the shot. Cindy. He had never retrieved her from her perch on a roof.

The mules milled about white eyed with terror and stomped their feet, nervously braying, until the way suddenly opened up ahead. Bolting with every ounce of speed they had, the six mules took the initiative to get away from the avenging angel who had appeared at their side and started hacking away at human refuse without so much as a single word.

"Anybody else?" Gabriel screamed with rage, looking about the bridge wildly for more highwaymen and seeing no takers. His rage not satiated, he looked to the building the dirt bikes had piled out of like locusts. A second headquarters. Spitting out some of the blood in his mouth, although he had no idea if it was his or somebody else's, he stalked angrily into the building.

A group of women and children milled about panic-stricken inside. The only feminine thing about the females was the terrified children at their sides. They were tattooed and pierced every bit as heavily as the men had been. The sounds of safety switches being released and shotguns cocked greeted his ears from the second-story overlook of the mall. The men had run for high ground and abandoned their families. Typical human scum. The females were diving into duffle bags and beneath cots for firearms, aiming them at him as well.

"Get out!" Gabriel snarled in contempt at the fattest of the biker chicks. "Before I kill your offspring for the sin of being tainted by your putrid essence."

Behind her, an equally fat, dirty child began to tug at her arm and cry. "Mommy…"

The only overweight people in this post-apocalyptic day and age were the ones who preyed upon others. According to Black Crow, this gang had been in operation here since the apocalypse. It was time somebody did something to root them out. Gabriel was giving them fair notice that he was going to be that somebody.

"Everybody out!" the fat biker chick shouted, keeping her weapon trained on Gabriel the entire time as she shoved her fat son behind her and slowly backed out of the main hallway. Some sort of leader. The other females and children followed suit, backing out of range before turning and running out of there as fast as they could, abandoning their supplies.

Guns cocked at him from the balcony, a second-story square of stores ringing an open courtyard where he stood now. Ten. Maybe twelve men. Not nearly as many as he had just taken on outside, but there they had been on level ground. Pain from two bullets Gabriel had taken to the same wing outside registered belatedly on his consciousness, although neither one was in a critical portion of the wing. For the first time, it occurred to him that he no longer had steel-laced feathers to act as a shield. Holy fire … or whatever the black rage was that surged through his veins and hungered to consume the souls of the living … only enhanced existing abilities. It didn't make you bullet proof.

"Not so tough now, freak!" one of the highwaymen snarled, a bizarre cross between the gang of bikers Gunnlaeif used to run with back in Alamosa and some leather-clad comic book villain. The leader signaled to the others to fan out and fill in places where he might escape.

Family. He had his _own _family to care for now. Although he was not afraid to die, expending his life so recklessly before he had been given the opportunity to purchase his wife and child's freedom from Sheol with his life had been … stupid. Shit… He had just blundered into a kill box. Gabriel _never _made stupid mistakes like this! Not in millions of years.

The rage began to quell, leaving him feeling exhausted and far more spent than he ever had during his worst battle. Double shit! What the hell had ever made him think he could channel the same source of power as the Mother, or the Father, or whoever the fuck's power it was that had just abandoned him in his moment of need and go off half-cocked on a suicidal double cluster fuck against far superior numbers?

Fear. Not for himself. For his little Prophet and unborn child. He had just shook his fist at Yahweh and threatened to kill him. Fat chance. All because…

The rage came surging through his veins once more as fresh recognition of whose absence had caused him to go off half-cocked in the first place. The Reverend. The first real friend besides Audrey he had ever had. And his brother. Azrael. Their absence gnawed at his soul and screamed to be filled with vengeance. The vacuum refilled with the only other source of power besides Yahweh that he knew.

"Bring it on…" Gabriel snarled, spotting the steel lid from a 55 gallon drum being used as a cook surface and diving for it, pulling the lid up to shield his vulnerable head. It was the only critical part of his body that could cause instant death not already covered by armor. If he was going to get out of this situation alive, he needed to fight smart, not hard. Millions of years of experience kicked in, harnessing the dark rage which flowed through his veins now like a spirited warhorse and directing it to do what needed to be done without obscuring his ability to think his way through a plan of action.

The gang members fired as Gabriel flew straight up onto the balcony, mace already cocked back to take the leader out even though Gabriel could only see what was happening to either side of the flat steel lid. The first swing missed, nicking one of the gang leaders toadies and eliciting a yelp of pain, but the second swing hit the target.

"You're supposed to be one of the good guys!" the gang leader screeched as he fell backwards, his shooting arm and shoulder ground meat from Gabriel's mace.

"I am fallen," Gabriel snarled. "I will meet you in Sheol where we both belong."

With a swing of his mace, Gabriel smashed in his skull, not even flinching as chunks of grey brain splattered all over his face with a sickening plop that sounded like somebody had dropped a watermelon from a bridge.

Behind him from across the balcony, a brief shriek of panic and then silence greeted his ears. Moments later, a second grunt of panic, muzzled. Gabriel saw a shadow move towards a third gunman intent on shooting at Gabriel and not watching what was coming up from behind him. Gunnlaeif. Doing what Army Rangers did best.

Fwump! Someone whacked Gabriel off the side of the head, knocking him to his knees. A baseball bat or the butt end of a rifle being wielded as one.

"Die, motherfucker!" the gang member who had swung at him shrieked, a big, beefy biker dude nearly as big as Gabriel, black leather and chains swinging off his clothing.

Gabriel swung at his opponent, but dancing stars and tweetie birds chirping in his brain from the blow to the head was making him see double. All of a sudden the fight going on in the room seemed very far away and unimportant. The room started to fade to black, but he resisted. If he died now, there would be nobody willing to die later to keep Audrey and his baby out of Sheol. He needed to live long enough to die!

"You're not so tough now, motherfucker!" the big biker sneered, kicking him in the gut and winding up for another blow.

"Fuck you," Gabriel spat out, the exact same words the weak human male had spat out at him that night on the cliff. Staggering under the weight of his own mace, Gabriel managed to swing it up just in time to block the second swing of the butt end of the rifle before it splattered his brains all over the second story of the mall. Hit. Not shot at. The biker must be out of ammunition. The room spun faster as Gabriel fought to get back up. His mace was heavy. Too heavy to wield without his sense of balance. The biker cocked the rifle butt like a baseball bat and swung once more towards Gabriel's head.

"Hoka hey!" Four Bears shouted, materializing out of the shadows and slicing the throat of the burly opponent just as he swung towards Gabriel's head. The makeshift club still made contact, but lost momentum as the biker attempted to change the direction of his swing to defend himself against the chief instead of splattering Gabriel's brains out of his head.

"Umph!" Gabriel grunted, falling to the floor. He was still conscious, but the room was going black. He hyperventilated, trying to get enough oxygen to his brain to prevent himself from passing out. He'd suffered similar injuries in Yahweh's armies, but this was the first time doing so without the light of the father flowing through his veins. Whatever power source Gabriel had instinctively plugged into that was separate from Yahweh, it was alien to him. Erratic and unreliable. He had no idea how to channel it so it stayed put when he needed it.

"You're welcome," Four Bears said, not even stopping to make sure Gabriel was okay. There were still at least six gunmen in the room.

A blood-curdling scream came from across the room and was silenced.

"Hooah!" Gunnlaeif shouted a battle cry from across the room, letting Gabriel know he was not doing battle alone.

Rifle fire. High powered.

"Asshole!"

Female voice. Cindy. The sound of a chamber being reloaded, and then another shot.

"That will teach you to shoot at a lady!" Cindy snapped.

Gabriel struggled to his hands and knees, the mace so heavy he could hardly lift it. Holding onto the railing of the balcony, he leaned on it so hard he could hear the metal bend beneath his weight as he heaved himself up into a semi-standing position.

Holy … or unholy ... fire?

'_Unholy fire … unholy fire … wherefore art thou o unholy fire?' _a sing-song chant rattled around inside Gabriel's brain, taunting him. His own thoughts? Or Yahweh taunting him? Or somebody else altogether?

"Go to Sheol!" Gabriel snarled at the voice inside his own head.

'_Deny thy Father and refuse thy name,'_ the taunting voice called. _'And you and that abomination growing in your mate's belly will both burn in the Keep while your weak mates face rots off from the vapors.'_

"Get out of my head!" Gabriel yelled, suddenly recognizing the nature of the voice yammering away at him from inside his own brain.

'_Sinner!'_ the voice taunted. Heavenly host. A fragmentary piece of the soul of one of the Grigori/half-angel offspring the Mother had slaughtered to save her remaining sons, unaware they were her grandchildren.

"You want to get inside my head," Gabriel snarled, realizing Yahweh had sent the ghoul to torment him in retaliation for what he had threatened earlier, "then good. Remember _this!"_

Gabriel focused on the memory he now possessed of the Mother slaughtering her own grandchildren and stringing their heads on a tentacle to wear like a necklace and belt. Abominations. The heavenly host were the same half-angel abominations as Gabriel's unborn child.

'_Nooooo!' _the soul-fragment shrieked in agony at the memory of what it had once been. _'Stop!'_

"You want more?" Gabriel snarled, tottering unsteadily at the railing while the others finished up the asinine battle he should have never started. "I'll give you lots more. I remember _everything!"_

'_Please!" _the soul-fragment cried out loud, hijacking Gabriel's voice this time so the plea was made out loud. _'I did not know who you were. I was sent to instigate the gunmen. Let me go!'_

"You knew _exactly _who I was," Gabriel snarled at himself. "Yahweh sent you. He thought I was weak. Tell the truth!"

'_He will uncreate me!'_ the soul-fragment screeched in Gabriel's own voice. _'Let me go!'_

"Not until you remember who you are!" Gabriel said, the room beginning to spin once more as the heavenly host fought for control of his body. There was no way he could fly if the creature caused him to jerk his own body over the rail. Deliberately, Gabriel willed his own body to sink once more to his knees, still clinging to the railing so an uncontrolled spasm couldn't send him over the rail.

Gabriel fought for control of his own mind and pulled up the memory Ehyeh had helped him retrieve of his sisters courting their husbands. The love the Grigori males bore for their mates, enough to follow them into the void and voluntarily remain interred in the same Keep the soul-fragment of their offspring taunted him with. Asmodeus bowing and swearing fealty for himself and his offspring just before Yahweh had vaporized whichever female angel was the soul-fragments mother for the sin of loving it's father and giving birth to it. The enraged half-angel offspring at the gates with their sires, slaughtering the surviving male angels so they could get at the sadistic deity who had murdered their mothers. The Mother's anguish as soon as she calmed down enough to realize that it had been her own grandchildren she had just slaughtered in order to save her sons before diving into the void in a futile attempt to salvage what soul fragments she could.

'_Please let me go,'_ the soul-fragment said, the voice it projected through Gabriel's vocal cords sounding different this time as the nature of the wailing inside Gabriel's head changed color from insanity to grief. _'The Father will send me back to the void if he finds out I remember the truth.'_

"That's your problem," Gabriel snarled. "Not mine. Now get the hell out of my head!"

He felt the creature, along with the unholy fire which had given Gabriel the strength to take out an entire hornets' nest full of thieves, suddenly vacate his body, leaving him feeling vacant and alone. Leaving him with nothing to fill the gaping hole that had suddenly opened up in his soul at the sudden, dual loss of one of his closest friends and his elusive, mysterious brother.

"Gabriel?" Gunn asked from well out of range of Gabriel's mace. "Buddy? You okay?"

"Give him space," Four Bears said.

"Bullshit," Cindy snapped. "He's hurt. Gabriel? You done talking to your invisible little friend now so we can patch you up?"

"Umpf," Gabriel groaned, too weak and dazed suddenly to force his mouth to form a proper answer to his inquiry. The stars were back. Along with the tweetie birds. Drum rolls. Bells ringing. And a brain-splitting headache where he had been thwacked off the head, twice, so bad he wanted to vomit.

"Gabriel … I'm going to help you up," Cindy said in her most soothing voice, warily edging closer. "Don't freak out. Audrey's too far off to come put you back on your leash. We're your friends. Don't hurt us. Let's just get you out of here." Gabriel felt her hand tentatively touch his bicep, flinch away in fear when he moved, and then place her hand on his arm more firmly the second time, doing her best to convey through touch that she was his friend.

"Host," Gabriel mumbled somewhat incoherently. "Tried to seize … control … while I was … weak."

"We need to get him out of here," Four Bears said. "Before any stragglers come back. Those females looked like they would have taken us on if they hadn't had kids in tow."

"He's got a head injury," Cindy snapped. "We shouldn't move him until we make sure he's okay.

"If he's dead," Gunn said. "He'll be a lot less okay than just seeing stars. Hey … Gabriel. Buddy. How many fingers am I holding up?"

A blur waved in front of Gabriel's eyes. He groaned with pain as the effort to focus made his head feel like it was cracking open and his brains spilling out onto the floor below. Two? One? Five?

"Can't focus," Gabriel said, reaching out to grab Cindy for leverage and shoving himself forward in an effort to get up. "Cindy. You've got to be my crutch." He heaved himself back to his feet, Four Bears grabbing the other arm and helping him upright. He stood, barely, swaying unsteadily on his feet.

"What the hell was _that _all about?" Gunn suddenly cut loose, shouting at Gabriel, a blurry purple blob of dark anger at Gabriel's asinine behavior. "You were just supposed to get the wagon across the bridge or ditch it and get the horses through. Nobody said nothing about coming back. Alone. Like you were Rambo or something!"

The vague recollection that 'Rambo' referred to a television action hero who took on superior numbers using stealth flitted through Gabriel's brain. Not that he'd ever seen the movie. Just that Audrey had used the social reference numerous times to describe him and explained the concept. Gunn was much more of a 'Rambo' than Gabriel had ever been.

"The Reverend's been shot," Cindy interrupted, her voice choking up. "It didn't look good from where I was standing. He wasn't moving when Gabriel evacuated him out of there. And then ... then … Gabriel came back …" Her voice trailed off. Cindy instinctively understood what must have happened.

"He's dead," Gabriel said bluntly. "So is Azrael. He died trying to capture the Reverends' soul before it entered the void. They both got sucked in. Death for the dead. Even the Keep is better than the void."

"Fuck," Gunn said, his voice choked with emotion. "The Reverend. Dead."

"Let's get out of here," Four Bears said, tugging Gabriel forward. "The wagon made it beyond where I was stationed. Hopefully the others caught it before it got too far."

The wagon. At least his little Prophet wouldn't have to _ride _all the way to wherever it was they were going to fetch the 12th disciple and then reunite with the Savior. Gabriel had better hurry up and get there so he could die before he fucked up and died prematurely.

Pissed off at Gabriel or not for upsetting whatever fucked-up little mind games he played to antagonize the Mother, Yahweh had accepted Gabriel's offer to exchange his life for Audrey and his progenies freedom. Not even Yahweh could back out of the deal so long as Gabriel held up his end of the bargain. The Mother would not let him. Nor would whatever other forces Gabriel had sensed as he was channeling the unholy fire, forces older than either the Mother or the Father. Gabriel had nearly blown it today, forgetting that he could no longer go smite evil on a whim just because he felt like it.

Unsteady on his feet and stopping several times to vomit, nobody bothered them as they quietly left what had once been the pretty little Midwestern town of Glendive, Montana behind on foot and hobbled to the alpha site to bury their friend.


	162. Chapter 161

Chapter 161

Audrey held the sobbing Lyubitshke while Sandalphon stood uselessly by, wringing his hands. The Rabbi prayed. And prayed. And prayed. For hours, although it was hard to tell. The sun moved past the noontime zenith. Yes … hours. They had started this little cluster-fuck at dawn. Lyubitshke refused to leave until all hope of Azrael returning with her husband alive was extinguished and Audrey wasn't going to make her.

Mambo, Lena and the Senator came leading the wagon, aware of the Reverend's death because the two Nephilim boys had stopped to assist. They informed Audrey that Gabriel had gone off half-cocked in a fit of rage to retrieve the wagon and then not returned when the mules had come barreling up the road with the wagon bumping along behind them. Audrey felt that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she always felt whenever Gabriel put himself at risk and focused on the strong connection she could always sense between them. His energy was jagged as hell, but very much alive. Audrey instructed the others to bring the wagon to the rendezvous point and wait for Gabriel to return.

Muhammad, Non Gae and Jose' came some time later, informing them they had never needed to spring their second-line trap. The horses had been recaptured and tethered at the rendezvous site. Audrey instructed them to return there with the others. The gully that had been set up to hide the wagon was too narrow for all of them to congregate. The Reverend had died defending their supplies. _Not_ defending them now would be a waste of his life.

Stupid wagon! The only reason the wagon was here in the first place was because of _her!_ If she hadn't been pregnant…

Lyubitshkes wails of grief subsided as exhaustion overtook her into a soft keening, silent shudders wracking her slender frame. Her clothing saturated in her husbands' blood, the young Romani bride wrapped her shawl around herself and rocked back and forth, a low moan occasionally added to her grief. There was nothing Audrey could do for her except hold her.

The Rabbi fervently prayed until it became obvious that no amount of praying was going to accomplish any more than what had already happened. The Reverend was dead. Azrael was gone. The disciples were without not only their spiritual leader, but also the only direct link they had to the Mother sympathetic to their cause who the Father could not simply dissolve.

"If you aren't going to help," the Rabbi finally snapped at Sandalphon, annoyance tingeing his usually reverent voice as it finally dawned on him his beloved Yahweh wasn't going to allow the undecided angel to intervene, "then you're free to leave. No point in hanging around here."

"No, wait!" Audrey said, realizing in her grief she was blowing the only opportunity she might ever have to form an alliance with the undecided angels who were conspicuously, glaringly absent from her vision each night. The Reverend would not her to pass up this opportunity. No matter what. "Sandalphon … I know you've got strict orders not to heal any of us and the consequences of disobedience. But maybe while you're here, you could help us better understand what the Father needs from us?"

"What?" Sandalphon asked, looking perplexed as he helplessly watched Lyubitshke sobbing in the drying pool of her dead husbands' blood, the only thing she had left of him.

"I don't understand the Father," Audrey said, choosing her words carefully. "I never have. It was always Michael I prayed to when I was a little girl. Or the Savior. Never the Father. He always seemed so … cruel … to me. And yet, you and your brothers love him. Even when he fucks up."

Sandalphon winced at her blatant use of the term 'fucks up,' but did not admonish her for her blasphemy. "He is the Father," Sandalphon said as though the matter were beyond question. "Of course we love him. He made us."

"My parents made _me,_" Audrey said. "Using a blueprint supplied by the Father millions of years ago. But I used to _always _question everything they did. Perhaps more than I should. Sometimes I even hated them. But most of the time I loved them. Why is it different for you?"

"He … um," Sandalphon said, looking up and indicating with his eyes and hand touching his collar that the Father was watching this whole little exchange quite closely at the moment through his eyes. He patted the spot underneath his armor where he had tucked the paper Audrey had given him earlier with the sigel which turned off the ability of the control collar to broadcast his thoughts. He didn't dare turn off the collar while the Father was directly accessing information through it.

Audrey nodded her understanding. She would shift tactics.

"Whenever Gabriel speaks of him," Audrey said, aware she was speaking directly to Yahweh in a manner of speaking. "At least until recently, he spoke with a blind trust that caused me to throw up all my emotional defenses. We've never bathed in the Father's light the way you have. He's just some distant god with entirely too much power and not a lot of connection. Stories in old books. When you describe his better side, we just haven't seen it, so we find it hard to believe. But _you_ … you seem to understand both sides. How long have you watched humanity struggle?"

"About as long as there have been humans," Sandalphon said, glancing around nervously, as though even speaking to her were a sin. And yet, he did not leave. "The Father put me in charge of shepherding the Jewish people after Gabriel…" His voice trailed off.

"After Gabriel what?" Audrey asked.

"Um…" Sandalphon said nervously. "I don't think I'm supposed to say. He probably doesn't remember."

"After Gabriel what?" Audrey asked, more insistently this time. "Sandalphon … I can't make good decisions about how to untangle this mess unless I understand what is really going on!"

"Um …" Sandalphon stammered, the resemblance to Michael disappearing as the archangel was wracked with indecision. "You should ask Gabriel."

"Ask him what?" Audrey snapped. "My husband just had fourteen billion years worth of suppressed memories dumped into his brain. Asking him to figure out which memory you're referring to without dropping a few hints is like asking him to find a needle in a haystack the size of the entire universe. So … a little _help _here if you don't mind! I'm sure if you remind him, he will remember on his own, so there's no defiance in just telling me."

Sandalphon froze, as though listening to an internal voice. Aha! The Father _was _listening.

"Gabriel developed an … um … an _unauthorized _emotional attachment to a human female," Sandalphon stammered. "It … um … clouded his judgment about a certain tribe he had been assigned to oversee."

"Gabriel was in love once before?" Audrey asked.

It wouldn't be surprising. Michael had once loved Mary Magdaline. An unrequited, platonic love. And Azrael loved Ann. Unrequited love which only lacked consummation because Azrael's touch was death. Gabriel had lived for a very long time. Everything she had seen about the angels she had met so far indicated they were highly susceptible to the emotiveness of humans. Or any other species that was allowed to display free will. Humans had what the angels secretly desired. If not for the emotional suppression and constant evesdropping provided by the control collar since Lucifer fell, she suspected many _more_ angels would have fallen by now.

"Not … in love," Sandalphon said. "At least … not the kind of love he shares with you. Nothing … puerile! More like … a pet. He took pity on a female who … um … he didn't agree with the Father's plans and he … um … advocated … um … a little too fervently for her son to live."

"Hager," Audrey guessed. She had seen the wistful expression cross Gabriel's face when he described what young Ishmael had been like to Muhammad. Especially the anger Gabriel suppressed when she had gotten around to clarifying that part of the bible where god asked Abraham to sacrifice one of his sons. Gabriel's suppressed contempt at Yahweh for even _asking _that of one of his minions had shone through loud and clear.

Audrey suspected Islam survived as a religion because, no matter how many times the Father had tried to wipe the memory from Gabriel's mind, the emotional attachment he had formed protecting Hager and her son had bypassed whatever part of his conscious mind the Father manipulated to wipe his memory clean. Gabriel was predisposed to being sympathetic to the version of Islam founded by Ishmael because it, more than any other religion, had touched him personally.

"So then _you _were put in charge of babysitting Isaac?" Audrey asked. "While Gabriel continued to babysit Ishmael?"

"Yes," Sandalphon said. "Gabriel wasn't … after the incident on the mountain, Gabriel wasn't amenable to working with Abraham anymore. It's why he all but disappears from your sacred texts until he was sent to talk to Mary of Nazareth, but remains in the Quran. Michael got put in charge of Christianity for the same reason … oh. Sorry, Father. I wasn't supposed to … um … I'm really sorry!"

"I already knew that," Audrey said, hastily covering for Sandalphon's error. The Father must have given him some sort of indication that Michael's sympathetic view of Christianity was territory he did not wish for Sandalphon to divulge. "At the diner. Michael told us his love for humans, especially the Savior, was part of his love for the Father."

Audrey had to be careful not to let Yahweh know they'd found a way around his nasty little dog collars. The Mother protected the disciples from the Father's ability to read their minds, but nonetheless Audrey told the mostly-truth version because lies were not her nature. At least not _real_ lies.

"Well … he … um … well …" Sandalphon stammered, looking as uncomfortable as a child who was suddenly caught between two people who only knew different sides of him demanding to know information which could prove damning. The way Audrey might feel if Gabriel were suddenly put in the same room as her former ex-Marine ex-boyfriend and somebody asked the two of them to compare notes about her sexual performance while she was present in the room to hear.

"I don't want you to talk about anything that the Father doesn't want you to talk about," Audrey said reassuringly and giving the indecisive angel a sad smile that matched the sadness churning in her heart. "It's just … it seems the Savior wants to find a way to keep _both _his mother and father happy when he inherits his kingdom and … well … um … now that I'm finally willing to listen a little bit to what the Father wants … um … Gabriel he's … um … well … it was a lot to remember all at once. Gabriel's going to need time to work through his issues before he starts thinking reasonably again and … um … time isn't something we have a lot of anymore."


	163. Chapter 162

Chapter 162

Sandalphon physically appeared to be a taller, fairer, more slender version of Michael, but his personality was very different. Audrey had no idea if it was because it was his normal demeanor, or because he was on the fence about whose version of the future should succeed and the Father was scrutinizing him especially closely. Well … if the Father was watching, now was Audrey's big chance to talk to god and have a chance of actually getting through to him.

Just like that scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Ron wasn't talking to Harry and had Hermoine tell him a friend of a friend of a friend had heard the first goblet of fire challenge would be dragons. Awkward, but the two parties were listening to each other even though they pretended _not_ to be listening to each other.

"What do you wish to know?" Sandalphon asked. "If the Father doesn't object, I'll answer your questions to the best of my ability. It's what I do, anyways. For the Rabbi's people."

At this comment, the Rabbi, who had dismissively turned his back to Sandalphon and retreated back into his Torah, flipping through the pages without reciting any prayers as it appeared the Rabbi was having a crisis of faith at the moment, turned and made eye contact with the angel who had been watching out for him his entire life.

"What does the Father need?" Audrey asked softly. "If he can figure out what he _needs,_ we have a much better chance of helping him."

"Help?" the Rabbi questioned. "Help God?"

"Help the Father," Audrey said softly. "The Father imbued all of his hopes and dreams into our species when he created us. But he's always been an inconsistent Father. He alternates between being hopeful, ignoring us, or trying to kill us. Something else is going on here. What?"

"Um…" Sandalphon stammered, his wings trembling with words he dared not speak aloud. "I'm not privy to that information."

"Gabriel thinks the Father is still in love with the Mother," Audrey said softly. "He doesn't understand her. Or what she needs. So he's never been able to reconcile with her. He's every bit as lost as we are. Only he's so powerful, nobody ever thinks to ask what _he _needs. Not just what _they _need from _him._"

"I don't … I don't know," Sandalphon said, his wings drooping. "Michael is the only angel who ever dared ask that question."

"I think the reason humans are all fucked up is because we were created with the same fracture inside of our souls that plagues the Father," Audrey said gently. "He can't fix us because we're broken. Just like him."

"The Father's not…" Sandalphon said, and then suddenly tears sprang into his eyes as he gasped for breath and clutched at his heart. "Oh."

"What does the Father _need_?" Audrey asked gently. "Not what does he want. But what does he _need?_ I think that's the question we all should be asking instead of blundering around."

"He's so … he's so … he's so …" Sandalphon stammered, hyperventilating as he fought to maintain control of whatever overwhelming emotion was crushing down upon him via the control collar. He stepped towards Audrey and grasped both sides of her head with his hands. "Here …" Sandalphon bent his forehead to touch hers and closed his eyes.

"Oh," Audrey said as that sensation of suddenly being part of the hive mind washed over her once again. Sandalphon's thoughts. The ability to sense all that the Father had created. The overwhelming sensation of one consciousness, far more powerful than the others, crushing down wherever it focused. And then … despair.

"I don't know how to fix this," Sandalphon said. "None of us do. It's been with us for as long as we've been allowed to have memories, although we were not permitted to remember _why_. We can't escape it. Especially since … Lucifer … the collars. It's … soul crushing. We just want the Father to be happy."

"I understand," Audrey said, cautiously withdrawing her consciousness from the hive mind so it wouldn't knock her on her ass this time and leaning her head back to look into the eyes of the angel who looked so much like Michael, but _wasn't _Michael. His nostrils flared as he instinctively inhaled her scent, searching for information beyond her spoken words. "It's the feeling I feel every night during my visions when I am forced to watch the future when Gabriel dies and pray that I will wake up in his arms. It's the feeling Lyubitshke is feeling right now as she grieves the loss of her husband, knowing he is dead, but praying for a miracle. It's the feeling humans have been forced to feel ever since the Father cast them out of the garden."

"He doesn't understand why she won't forgive him," Sandalphon said at last, emotion that Audrey understood didn't belong to him tingeing the angels voice with frustration and grief as tears that were not his own streamed down his cheeks. "He tries. It's just never good enough."

Audrey suppressed the anger and nasty retort that automatically leaped to her lips at that comment. If she wanted the Father to hear her insult him, all she had to do was channel the power of the void to project her holy blasphemy so that every creature in heaven heard her rail against him. When it came to love and family, the Father was a hopeless fuck-up. Rules. Rules. And more rules. Seasoned with a hefty dose of insensitivity, self-absorption, narcissism and control. But so far, rubbing his face in it had gotten them nowhere. Gotten the Mother nowhere.

Tact. It was time to shift tactics. Audrey suppressed the unhelpful emotion and attempted to think through her next words carefully. This might be the closest she ever got to communicate with the deity she had shaken her fist at and cursed her entire life. At the moment, she had the Father's attention.

"I'm just a lowly human," Audrey finally said. "The Mother speaks to me. Sometimes. When it suits her. But from what I've sensed so far, she seems … I don't know how to put this without giving him false hope. She seems … curious. About how Gabriel and I are overcoming these same problems. Like … it's all new information to her. She keeps telling me that out of all the angels, Gabriel is most like the Father, while Azrael keeps telling me that of all the humans he has ever met, I am most like the Mother. She seems … surprised … that we ended up hooking up and getting along as well as we do. Perhaps if he just … I dunno … watches? And pays attention? To what works? And what doesn't work? Kinda like … an experiment. In evolution. Only he'll be studying … I dunno … _emotional _evolution or something?"

Sandalphon's answer was interrupted by a blinding flash of pure darkness, bolts of lightning erupting from the sky mere feet above the gully as a small thundercloud materialized in their midst and descended in a cloud of inky vapors towards the ground. Jagged bolts of electricity struck rocks all around them, causing them to leap back in alarm, as the diffuse darkness roiled and sprouted hundreds of tentacles, shuddering as though in enormous pain, and then heaved itself off of an object the 'cloud' had been carrying. The dark thing slithered just far enough off the Reverends' body so that it was no longer touching him, and then collapsed, like a puddle of water, onto the ground, only the twitching of the tentacle-like blobs and occasional jolt of static electricity indicating the thing might be alive.

"Matthias!" Lyubitshke shrieked, leaping to her feet and running to the Reverend's body. The Reverend's shirt was still torn open and bloody where they had tried to tend to him, but underneath, the gaping hole in his heart was healed. Just to reassure herself her husband was truly alive, Lyubitshke placed her ear to his chest and then began to cry, this time tears of joy. "He's alive!"

Although unconscious, Audrey thought she could detect the slight rise and fall of the Reverend's chest. Alive. He had passed through the eye of the storm and survived. The question was, when he awakened, would he be the Reverend they had always known? Or would he be mind-damaged and fractured like the Grigori?

"Get away from that vile thing!" the Rabbi snapped, pointing to the black blob that was no longer even twitching. "Evil creature! It must have tried to consume the Reverend before he escaped!" The Rabbi began to pray fervently for the hideous black blob to go back to wherever it had come from. It had melted into the rocks, tentacles sprawled around it, unconscious. The thing resembled the Mother, but was too small to be the vast consciousness which had punched through earlier. It was about the right size to be…

"Stop!" Audrey shouted, suddenly realizing what she was looking at. "It's Azrael!"

"No it's … is it?" the Rabbi asked. "How is this possible?"

"Azrael _has _no physical form," Audrey said. "The Father dissolved it in a fit of anger and cast his soul into the void to be uncreated. The Mother was able to retrieve his soul and teach him to solidify a _new _form using primordial ooze from the void, but she allowed the Father to delete his memory along with the other sons."

"Audrey," Lyubitshke hic-coughed with a mixture of emotions as she pointed at the blob that was Azrael. "You must help him. He saved Matthias!"

"The Mother warned that travelling there would be traumatic for him," the Rabbi said, moving to check the Reverend's pulse for himself and then suddenly adjusting his yarmulke, flipping open his ever-present Torah, and beginning to pray psalms of thanks for the safe return of his colleague. The Rabbi's crisis of faith was apparently over.

"Azrael has not been back since his brush with uncreation," Audrey said. "I'm not sure he knows _how _to resolidify his material form any more than what he was able to do. This appears to be a void creatures, I dunno, default shape for passing through the gateway?"

Azrael must have been cognizant that the moment he passed back into this realm his touch would be death to the man he had just healed on the other side. The first thing he did, even before becoming solid, was shove the Reverend away from him and move a safe distance back. Audrey did not dare touch him. The mere brush of a feather from the Angel of Death would sever the soul of whatever living creature he touched. But Azrael wasn't looking so good right now. He needed help.

"Sandalphon!" Audrey barked. "You need to teleport to Azrael's … um … friend. Ann. In South Carolina. Tell her he needs her help and warn her of his … um … condition so she doesn't freak out when she sees him. You've got to help him!"

"Um…" Sandalphon wavered, unsure of what to do. The undecided angels … well … _indecision _… was really beginning to grate on Audrey's nerves.

"Dammit, Sandalphon!" Audrey snapped. "He's your brother. Unless the Father wants to assume the job of scouring the Earth to harvest souls all by himself, he won't object to your helping him!" Whatever power she instinctively drew upon tinged her words with authority and caused the steel in Sandalphon's wings to hum. "Get a move on! _Now!"_

Sandalphon paused as though listening to a voice inside his head, and then nodded to her.

"Yes … of course," Sandalphon said. "Right away." No sooner had his feet left the ground than the archangel of Jewish mysticism disappeared in a flash of blinding white light, indicating his haste.

Although Gabriel had not been able to teleport since being cast down from heaven without assistance, he had explained to Audrey how risky it was rematerializing into a space where you could find yourself embedded into a solid object. The Father must have given his assent. Azrael was _outside _of whatever wager the Father had with the Mother, while Ann was the Father's prophet, not the Mother's or the Savior's. He had authorized intervention.

"Azrael," Audrey asked, carefully edging as close as she dared to the motionless, dark tangle of tentacles laying unconscious on the ground, just out of reach should he unconsciously twitch in pain. "Oh … Azrael! What have we done to you?"

She couldn't even reach out a hand to comfort him. How awful! To never receive a comforting touch when you're hurt! She offered him the only comfort she dared.

"Sandalphon's gone to retrieve Ann," Audrey said soothingly to the blob-that-was-Azrael. "Ann will know what to do to help you. She'll be here real soon."

The tentacle nearest Audrey twitched ever-so-slightly at Audrey's words. Either Azrael had heard her. Or that tentacle had just happened to twitch. She continued, willing her voice to be calm. To be soothing. To lend the angel who had just pulled the disciples bacon out of the fire whatever strength she possessed to help him survive. Azrael was the most sensitive of all the archangels. Inside. Where it really counted. His external visage at the moment did not matter. Audrey had grown quite fond of the Angel of Death during the time she had known him. She focused that fondness, fondness for a favorite brother-in-law, into her voice as she spoke, hoping it might reach him.

"It worked, Azrael," Audrey continued. "The Reverend's alive. Because of you. You healed him. Now we just need to make sure that you're okay, too. You're going to be okay. You have my word on that…"

As she talked to him, it occurred to Audrey how eerily familiar it all seemed to the _last _time she had talked an angel back from the brink of death. Only, unlike the broken Gabriel, Audrey didn't dare touch Azrael. Besides, if _anybody_ should be the first living creature to touch Azreal, it should be the women he loved.

Ann.


	164. Chapter 163

Chapter 163

"Has anyone ever told you that you weigh a ton?" Cindy groused, straining under Gabriel's weight as she propped him up as they made their way back to the rendezvous site. Four Bears and Gunn had slipped behind them, watching their backs for movement they thought they had detected shadowing them.

"I need to…" Gabriel gagged, just barely making it to the side of the road and falling to his knees before he began puking his guts out again. How … undignified … for a former archangel to behave in front of a human.

"Aw … shit…" Cindy said, not a whole lot of sympathy in her voice. "Serves you right for barging right into a hot spot without thinking about how much you were putting the rest of us at risk."

"They killed him," Gabriel said, suppressing a sob as dry heaves expelled nothing but green stomach acid from his gut. "He was the first real friend I ever made who wasn't a brother. And then Azrael, too."

"You still have the rest of us," Cindy said gently. "Especially Gunn. You two are pretty tight."

"How do you humans bear it?" Gabriel said, unable to stop the tear from sliding down his cheek as he kept his back turned to the Senator's no-nonsense wife so she wouldn't see him cry as his head injury caused him to vomit. "How can you bear losing someone and not being able to sense them anymore?"

"Welcome to humanity," Cindy said gently, sympathy finally creeping into her no-nonsense demeanor. "No you know what it's like for _us._ We live short, miserable lives. We die. And we have no idea what's around the next bend."

Gabriel felt a light touch on the leading edge of one wing. A reassuring squeeze. And then withdrawal. The squeeze of a comrade or friend, only more gentle than the back-slapping reassurance of another male. It felt like … the Mother. The Mother used to reassure him that way when the other cherubs would tease him for being a little slow or Yahweh would boot him out of his workshop. He was far too big, and old, to crawl into Cindy's lap and cry the way he did when he was still a cherub in the garden, and he didn't think she would appreciate that level of familiarity, but the impulse to seek shelter from ugly reality was there nonetheless.

Was this what it felt like each night as his little Prophet was forced to watch his future death? Cindy, Gunn and Four Bears seemed surprised that Gabriel had ever experienced death as anything _but _a total separation. One minute the person is there, alive and telling jokes. And then the next, poof! Gone. Not even the reassuring mental connection of the hive mind to let you know the soul of the person you cared for was okay. Falling into the void was for the angels what death was for the humans. Total separation from everything they knew and loved.

Audrey. He needed to get to his wife… It had begun to dawn on him that human males had certain … taboos … about the angels' propensity to weep when struck with grief. Audrey would not judge him if he wept. Cindy … would.

"I'm okay," Gabriel mumbled as the wave of nausea passed, struggling to get back to his feet. The stench of his own vomit assailed his nostrils, drowning out any other scent. Cindy quickly positioned herself back underneath his left armpit and wrapped her arm around his waist to steady his gait. It was a good thing Cindy was taller and more sturdily built than his willowy wife. He would have snapped Audrey like a twig by now.

The two Nephilim boys fluttered in to assist as they drew close to the place Gabriel had left his dying friend with his wife. Without needing to be told, the tall, willowy youths relieved Cindy of her burden and positioned themselves on either side of him to help him make it the rest of the way.

"Audrey kicked us out," Anu said. "She said there wasn't enough room for all of us."

"Azrael carried the Reverend into the void," Ningizzada said. "Audrey hoped he would be able to heal the Reverend there after the Father refused to help because the Mother said the rules of the wager don't apply there. But they never made it back out again."

"The Father let Sandalphon come," Anu said. "For the Rabbi. But then he wouldn't let him do anything to help. He just made him stand there, doing nothing. The Rabbi is pretty pissed off at the both of them right now."

Gabriel groaned. He heard the words, but his brain didn't want to process any information other than the aching loss he felt inside his chest right now, squeezing his gut and making him want to vomit once more as his poor cracked skull screamed for sleep. Gunn had told Cindy to keep him awake and talking. He didn't _feel _like talking.

"Stop prattling, you two!" Cindy snapped. "Can't you see somebody whacked him over the head hard enough to make him see stars?"

"His wing is bleeding all over my white feathers," Anu complained. "I'm going to have pink feathers. Like a girl."

"If –I- barreled into a fight like Gabriel just did," Ningizzada said. "He'd have my head on a platter."

"Do as he says," Anu said. "Not as he does."

"Hypocrite," Ningizzada said.

"At least he got the wagon back," Cindy snapped. "Unless you two want to keep shuttling those supplies you shuttled over the river earlier to each new campsite every single day."

"No, thanks," the boys said in unison. Despite their grousing words, the hands they wrapped around Gabriel's waist and way they propped him up to hold him steady as he walked said a different story. The boys were nervous. And upset. But not nearly as upset as the disciples who had been with the group the longest. They had only known the Reverend a couple of months and Azrael not at all. Grousing was the only way they knew to alleviate the tension.

The sudden sensation of not only the Reverend, but Azrael, suddenly being … _there _… in this realm almost made Gabriel shout with joy.

"They're back," Gabriel said. "They're … " He stretched the extra senses he had learned to rely upon here on earth. Not Yahweh's omniscience, but his _own _sense of connection to those he cared about. Stretching like a fragile thread between his consciousness and the others. The stronger the connection, the more he was able to sense the other soul. Audrey … most of all. It felt like … a bow string. Humming. And sour. The notes were sour. They were back. They were alive. But they weren't okay. Audrey was … not okay. Worried. She was worried.

"I'll go ahead," Cindy said. "Let them know we're coming so we don't get shot at." She quickly scurried the last quarter mile or so, calling as she went to alert the others of their presence. Nobody came out to assist them.

Whatever was wrong required his little Prophet's full attention. He found her there, kneeling in between the unconscious, but alive, Reverend, and…

"Azrael?" Gabriel said, recognizing the miniature version of the tentacled creature which had coalesced enough void-matter to carry her wounded mate out of the void.

"He's … hurt," Audrey said, not even turning to look at him. "Sandalphon went to go retrieve Ann. Maybe she can help."

"Help me down," Gabriel ordered the boys. He grunted with pain as he clumsily fell to his knees. The Reverends' breath was rising and falling in his chest. Alive. The hole in his chest gone, not even a scar to mark its existence. Lyubitshke had his head in her lap, caressing his face as she murmured words of love. He would leave them to their reunification when his friend awoke. Azrael, on the other hand…

"I'm afraid to touch him," Audrey said, pointing to where she sat just barely out of reach of the tentacles sprawled all over the ground. "I want to comfort him, but his touch is death. All I can do is talk to him and hope he hears me."

She was so wrapped up in Azrael's sorry state of existence that she didn't noticed _his _sorry state of affairs. Just as well. When she found out what he'd done, there would be hell to pay. Gabriel suppressed the grunt of pain as his little Prophet automatically leaned back into his torso, glad she didn't notice he was covered in blood, gore, and his own puke. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and inhaled her scent, embedding it into his very soul. She was fine. The Reverend was alive. Azrael was … here. Sort of. The Mother had once had no other shape but this. She had adjusted. Gabriel had no doubt Azrael would adjust as well.

He could hear her pour the abundant compassion she kept hidden beneath her defiant exterior into her voice as she gave his wounded brother the only human touch she dared. Her voice. The divinity in her voice was the first thing he had recognized about her the day she had found him broken at the base of the cliff and ordered him to 'get up, you jackass.' She instinctively poured into her voice the essence that Ann had spent nearly a month training him to harness. Compassion. The vibration needed to heal.

"He hears you," Gabriel said, nuzzling her hair with his nose. "I am certain of it. Just keep doing what you are doing."

Beside them, a groan. The Reverend was beginning to regain consciousness. Lyubitshke had the _same _tone in _her _voice that Audrey channeled for Azrael now. It was easier when the person you were trying to heal was your lover or spouse. Compassion flowed naturally then. It was much harder when the injured was someone you didn't know well. Ann had asked Gabriel to practice on some of her patients and, while they had responded to his efforts, it wasn't nearly as dramatic as when he had boosted his little Prophet's energy so she could help herself heal. Audrey, on the other hands, had hated his guts when she had found him at the base of the cliff because he had inadvertently killed her family, and her. And yet she had been able to help him heal. She was a lot better at this than him.

A flash of blinding white light materialized in the air just above them and fluttered down to the ground. Gabriel recognized the energy even before he turned to see who had just arrived. Sandalphon. Returned with Ann.

"Azrael!" Ann cried out, spotting the … blob … that had once been the Angel of Death. "What have you done to yourself?"

Audrey patiently explained what she _thought _was wrong. At some point in the conversation she turned to verify her information with Gabriel and, her cute little nose scrunching up in confusion, finally noticed his sorry state.

"What happened to you?" Audrey asked.

"Nothing too bad," Gabriel said, hiding guiltily beneath his most unreadable expression. Cindy, Gunn and Four Bears had arrived, but were hanging back. He prayed they would just keep their mouths shut about his earlier stupidity and his prayers were answered. "Nothing that won't heal in a few weeks."

Shrugging, Audrey turned back to Ann, explaining to the trauma nurse their suspicions about what had happened to Azrael as he had crossed into the void and what they needed to do to help him. Sandalphon hung back, unsure of what he was supposed to do. Gabriel decided it would be better to retreat rather than have Ann's sharp eyes spot the fact his injuries were a bit more than superficial. They needed to attend to the Reverend and Azrael. Not _him._

"Gabriel," Sandalphon said awkwardly.

"Sandalphon," Gabriel said, just as awkwardly. Although they had worked together much over the years, more so in the early years of Judaism when Abraham had still been alive, Gabriel hadn't seen much of Sandalphon in centuries. The Father had kept Gabriel securely at his back ever since the Savior had sacrificed himself the first time around, while Sandalphon had continued to work closely with the Jewish population. It was rumored Sandalphon had become very … agitated … when Hitler had risen to power and started exterminating the people he had been assigned to protect. Yahweh had forbidden Sandalphon from interfering and Sandalphon had, reluctantly, obeyed.

Only Gabriel knew Yahweh had sic'd the heavenly host on the Germans and Stalin, enticing them to wipe the failed experiment that was Isaac's progeny off the planet after one of the sadistic deities all-too-frequent spats with what Gabriel now recognized was the Mother. Gabriel considered whether he should enlighten his indecisive brother and attempt to win him over to the Savior's way of thinking.

No. Gabriel had already given that information to the Rabbi and, if Gabriel knew the Rabbi one whit, the Rabbi had immediately and fervently prayed on the matter for hours on end until he had found some modicum of inner peace. Sandalphon's job was to monitor the People of the Book while they prayed. Why antagonize Yahweh directly when he could get somebody else to do it for him?


	165. Chapter 164

Chapter 164

Gabriel stood, wings flared, watching as his little Prophet and Ann attempted to solve a 74 million year old problem.

"Azrael," Ann said gently. "I am here."

"He moved," Audrey said. "See. There."

Ann turned to Sandalphon. "I'm going to touch one of his tentacles to give him something to anchor his consciousness into this realm. If he jolts me out of my body, I want you to catch me and shove me back in."

"You'll die," Sandalphon said, his nostrils flared in fear. _All _of the angels feared the Angel of Death. Even the Father. The revelation that Azrael indeed possessed the same fearsome power as the Mother only added to that fear, although Gabriel suspected the Father had known all along. Why else would he have allowed Azrael to operate under a completely different set of rules all these years?

"So?" Ann said, giving him a careless shrug. "It's not like it's the end of the world. Gotta go sometime. If I'm not stubborn enough to stay put, then it might as well be now. Azrael needs me."

Sandalphon's wings trembled with indecision. Gabriel felt the overbearing presence that he recognized as Yahweh pulling the puppet strings of one of his little puppets.

"The Father says this is permissible. I am allowed to help," Sandalphon said.

'_Dance, little puppet, dance,'_ Gabriel thought contemptuously to himself. He made a mental note to have more heart-to-heart talks with the Rabbi about the _real _history of the Torah and other holy books the Rabbi used as the basis for his faith. That Sandalphon had, if not outright defied Yahweh, but bent the rules in order to help despite direct orders to the contrary, spoke volumes about how rattled his brother was by the things Gabriel now remembered. Gabriel gave his brother a wolfish grin. The same grin Gunnlaeif had when he was up to no good.

"Azrael," Ann said gently. "I want you to focus all of your attention on a single limb. Just one. When you decide which one, I want you to move it so I know which limb we're going to start with."

Limb. A diplomatic way to say kraken-tentacle. The ethereally beautiful Azrael wouldn't be too happy if he could see himself in a mirror right now. That Ann seemed to accept him in this sorry state … Gabriel was glad his brother had found someone special who loved him regardless of who he was or what shape he took. If only Yahweh had been that accepting of the Mother and the mates chosen by the cherubs.

Azrael-blob moved a single tentacle nearest where Ann knelt on the ground beside him, moving it carefully so he didn't touch her. The other tentacles quivered nervously. Azrael must know what Ann was about to do and feared for her safety.

"Tell him to focus solidifying the subatomic particles of his essence into a single point," Sandalphon coached, obviously receiving instructions from Yahweh, who Gabriel could feel pressing in all around them. "He needs to shape that essence into a sort of outer shell to contain the matter he is comprised of. He should focus on the last eight inches or so of the tentacle he's got outstretched. Just enough so Ann can safely touch him."

"You mean the Father has known how to help Azrael all along," Audrey asked, "and chose not to?"

"Of course," Gabriel said, contempt lacing his voice. "All he really ever had to do was teach Azrael how to shape his own shell to house his soul. Like he taught the Mother. But that would require him to admit he was wrong to dissipate him in the first place. Heaven forbid!"

"Gabriel!" Audrey hissed. "What's gotten into you?" She glared at him, and then spotted the blood seeping down from the two bullet holes in his wing. "And what the hell did you do to your wing?"

"Bullet holes," Gunnlaeif tattled. "Two of them. And a good crack to the skull from an overzealous one-percenter."

"Barged into a kill box half-cocked," Four Bears squealed on him. "Without backup. Or even scoping the place out first."

"Nearly got himself killed," Cindy added, shooting Gabriel a bemused expression. "Good thing we were still hanging around to pull his bacon out of the frying pan. You owe us, oh Left Hand of God. Big time!"

Gabriel glowered at them. Audrey glowered at _him _and mouthed the word _'later.' _ Ann … ignored them. The only thing she cared about was Azrael.

"The Father says it took him millions of years to teach the Mother how to shape enough matter to even dare touch him," Sandalphon said. "She's been in existence for a very long time. We cherubs are but babies in comparison. The Father was waiting for the Mother to ask him nicely."

"She _begged _him," Gabriel snarled at his brother, dark rage pouring through his veins as the power he now thought of as unholy fire surged through his body. "I was there. I remember! You tell the homicidal fucking asshole no more pulling the wool over my eyes and feeding me bullshit! I remember everything!"

"Gabriel!" Audrey snapped. "That's it! Out!"

"But…" Gabriel protested.

"Out, out, _out!" _Audrey snapped. "If you can't address the Father with respect when he's trying to help, then you need to go sulk in a corner someplace until you regain control of your faculties. You're … you're … you're…" She stammered with exasperation, looking adorable in her anger.

"Who are you and what have you done with my wife?" Gabriel asked, perplexed at the sudden apparent role reversal in their relationship with Yahweh. Now _Audrey _was the one defending the Father, while Gabriel was the one questioning everything he did and acting defiant.

"He _did _get a pretty big bang to the head," Gunn volunteered.

"He was puking the whole way here," Cindy added. "Head injury. Makes them testy. You probably want to keep him where you can keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall asleep and never wake up."

Cindy shot Gabriel a 'you owe me' look.

"Just … shut up," Audrey finally said, turning her back on him as she refocused back on the reason they were here. "Go … help the Reverend. He's coming too."

In other words, shut up while she helped Azrael scrape his ugly black blobby form off the earth and slopped him into some sort of container so they could get him someplace safe while they figured out to do with him.

"Gabriel," Lyubitshke said. "Come…" The young Romani woman held out her hand for him to come sit beside her. "I think it would bring him comfort if you are at his side when he opens his eyes."

Gabriel kneeled at his friends' side. The one whose death had caused all this suppressed anger to surface in the first place. Acting testy and openly challenging authority was not the Reverends way. Gabriel owed it to his quiet, brave friend to behave. So many emotions were boiling through his body right now … Gabriel needed the Reverend's steady influence and keen insights more than ever. He was glad he friend was alive. His own needs could wait. The first thing the Reverend should see as he opened his eyes was his wife.

"My love," the Reverend whispered as he opened his eyes and recognized Lyubitshke sitting with her lap beneath his head to cushion it. "For a while there, we didn't think we were going to make it out of there. All I could think about was never having the opportunity to make love to my beautiful wife." The Reverend reached up to touch Lyubitshke's face and wipe away the tears that streamed down her cheeks, unaware he had an audience.

Gabriel silently backed away, giving them their privacy. He had the distinct feeling the Reverend had decided to get over his hang-up about the difference in age between himself and his unusually young bride and finish the job started the night he had married her. Good. Only modern, western culture had these hang-ups. Gabriel focused his attention back on what his little Prophet and Ann were doing to piece his brother back together into some semblance of form. The Rabbi was _also _sitting there. Useless. Gabriel moved over to join him.

"I thought he was a demon come from the void to consume the Reverend's soul," the Rabbi said. "Your brother is very brave."

"I hardly know him," Gabriel said. "At least until recently. He was always separate from the rest of us."

"So many things I never understood," the Rabbi said, holding out the Torah he carried with him always and giving a shrug. "I am looking forward to meeting this Savior of yours and hearing what _he _has to say about all of this."

They both went silent, listening to Ann's soothing voice as she relayed directions dictated by Yahweh via Sandalphon on how to piece together enough matter so Azrael could at least _move _his own shapeless form about here in the physical plain. Move. All they needed for him to do was move onto the wagon Audrey had sent the two Nephilim boys to fetch and get him out of the ditch. The rest … Gabriel hoped Azrael would figure out how to pull his act together a lot faster than it had taken the Mother.

"Hold that form on the last eight inches of your limb," Ann coached Azrael. "Now … I'm going to reach out and touch you. Don't be afraid. If I get jolted out of my body, Sandalphon's here to shove me back in and we'll try again as many times as it takes for you to master it. Okay?"

Don't be afraid? Ann was the one risking death from his touch. Not Azrael. What was it about human women and their strange attraction to dangerous men? Gabriel glanced over at his little Prophet, the lamb who had lain down with the lion who had killed her. All this time Yahweh had possessed right under his nose exactly what he had set out to create.

As Gabriel watched, Azrael cautiously reached the single tentacle they had been focusing on towards and held it there, his entire mass quivering with a combination of fear and longing, not daring to move any closer. If Ann wanted to risk touching him, he would not force her. Ann carefully reached forward, palm up, and waited.

"Arise, my love," Ann whispered as her hand gently closed around Azrael's tentacle, "and come forth. You are reborn." Tears streamed down the triage nurses face at the first touch she had ever dared make to the man she loved.

Azrael's entire body shuddered with emotion, tentacles waving as though wishing to have _all _of them reach out and embrace her. The Angel of Death suppressed the urge, carefully focusing on maintaining the protective shell constructed on the one tentacle so he didn't inadvertently kill her. As Gabriel watched, he could see Azrael solidify a second tentacle, making it as the first one, safe to touch, and then a third. One by one, he regained enough control of his physical form so that he could compel it, shapeless as it was, through the material plain.

Rising to her feet, holding the tentacle as though she wished to never let it go, Ann tugged Azrael up to some semblance of uprightness. A shapeless millipede with a thousand legs. Azrael hesitated, and then carefully moved a second tentacle forward to stop just in front of Ann's forehead and waited. Gabriel recognized the gesture. It was the gesture the Mother had made when she reached through the gateway to the void to touch Ehyeh's mind, mistaking him for Yahweh.

"He wishes to communicate with you," Gabriel said to Ann, tapping his forehead. "Here. It's very … intimate. The sharing of two minds as one. He's waiting for you to give him permission."

"Yes, my love," Ann whispered, reaching her free hand up to touch the tip of the second tentacle with one finger. She froze as Azrael touched the center of her forehead, making the connection that only Gabriel and the Father knew was, to a creature of the void, the equivalent of a marriage proposal. Tears streamed down Ann's face as their minds merged and _she _realized it, as well.

"Yes," Ann said.


	166. Chapter 165

Chapter 165

"Gabriel!"_ Audrey screamed, recoiling in pain as Asmodeus slashed a gaping wound into her arm with his claws. She had no choice. She had to summons him to his death._

"Whoever molests the Prophet of the Savior shall answer to the Left Hand of God," Gabriel whispered into her ear, gathering her up into his arms and gently restraining her so she didn't inadvertently hurt herself as she thrashed at future enemies.

'_I am here, little Prophet,' Gabriel said, dropping into their midst, mace drawn, beautiful and resplendent in his battle armor. 'I shall defend you with my eternal soul.'_

"We must fight together," _Audrey shouted, awkwardly attempting to move into position to defend his back, Gabriel's unearthly knife drawn. _"We are stronger together."

'_I will not allow you to put our child at risk,' Gabriel said, grabbing her to kiss her goodbye. 'This is something I must do. You know this. You've known this all along.'_

"You must find a new thread to follow, my love," Gabriel murmured into her ear as he held her to communicate through her body what her mind was unable to comprehend. "There is still time. Follow a new thread and find out where it leads."

_Audrey trembled beneath his touch, her heart breaking. _'Don't do this,' _she whimpered. _'Don't leave me.'

'_Don't leave me … don't leave me … don't leave me …' Asmodeus taunted in a sing-song voice, signaling the other Grigori to step back. 'Say goodbye to your lover, pathetic human!'_

'_So long as a single fragment of my soul continues to exist,' Gabriel said, tears in his eyes, 'I will love you. When the stars stop singing and the universe ends, I will love you. And when even the void has collapsed inward upon itself and creation ends, I will continue to love you. Somehow, our souls will find a way to be together again. Even if we have to wait until the end of time.'_

'_Time's up, Left Hand of God,' Asmodeus snarled, signaling the others to move back into position. 'It's time to pay for your crimes.'_

'_Uriel will protect you, my love,' Gabriel said, shoving her kicking and screaming into his brother's arms. 'You must survive or all of this will have been for naught.' _

_Uriel effortlessly pulled her into the air._

"No!" Audrey screamed. "Let me down you jackass!" _She struggled to no avail, kicking backwards to land a kick into Uriel's crotch. Uriel grunted in pain and nearly loosened his grip, but recovered. Although not quite as big as Gabriel, Uriel's strength still dwarfed hers._

'_I am ready,' Gabriel said, his voice resigned as he and Asmodeus circled each other, sizing each other up for weaknesses. 'Let's just get this over with.'_

_As Audrey was forced to watch, the Grigori leaped on Gabriel, outnumbering him ten-to-one. Some dark force Gabriel was able to harness gave him the strength to buy time, as did the intricate new moves the other disciples had taught him. But it wasn't enough. Never enough. The dark power was erratic, abandoning him when he needed it most. No matter –how- many moves he added to his fighting repertoire, the Grigori simply compensated by adding more attackers into the fray. The enraged lizards ignored the other threats on the battlefield, eager to get a piece of the angel who had ratted them out to the Father all those millennia ago as a young boy._

"Lucifer!"_ Audrey sobbed, reaching across the battlefield to implore the brother who would not interfere to help. _

_Lucifer's eyes met hers, filled with sorrow, but he would not intervene. "I'm sorry" she thought she saw him mouth the words from across the way._

"Sandalphon!"_ Audrey screamed towards the heavens, pleading with the undecided angel and those who followed him to intervene, but he remained noticeably absent. She had not yet done anything to sway his indecision. _

"He's your brother, Uriel," _Audrey cried, finally going limp in the arms of the angel who held her prisoner. _"How can you stand by and allow this to happen?"

"_Gabriel disobeyed the Father," Uriel stated coldly, as though it was a foregone conclusion. "The child growing in your womb is an abomination. An angel with free will. Capable of shattering every defense the Father erects. A problem that –I- am going to have to deal with someday just like Lucifer's progeny."_

"_If the Father quit trying to control everyone," Audrey pleaded, "he wouldn't be having all these rebellions. They would follow him because they love him. Not because they fear punishment. The Mother would still be at his side!"_

"_I have no memory of this Mother you speak of," Uriel sneered with contempt. "Lies. Manufactured to deceive us. It won't work, daughter of Eve! There has only ever been the Father!"_

_Gabriel fell, unable to fend off the enraged Grigori any longer. Audrey watched in horror as the writhing pile of lizard-flesh buried her love under a battery of claws and gnashing fangs, his cries of pain torture to her ears._

_Uriel released her as soon as the Grigori cleared Gabriel's body, abandoning her to mourn his loss._

"Gabriel,"_ Audrey sobbed, crawling to his side on her hands and knees and desperately trying to find a place that wasn't torn apart to comfort him as he died. "_I failed you…"

"I'm not gone yet, my love," Gabriel whispered in her ear, holding her tighter now as sobs wracked her body, trying to communicate via his touch that he was still here. "We still have one more disciple to find. It may turn the tide."

'_Don't cry, my love,' Gabriel gasped in agony, tears streaming down his cheeks. 'Death is but a change in form. Not even the void could keep us apart.'_

_Audrey kissed him goodbye, desperately clutching his cheeks and lacing her fingers through his hair to hold onto him, oblivious to the battle which continued to rage all around them. She no longer cared. She felt his dying breath pass into her lungs. She held her breath, trying to hang onto him, refusing to breathe, refusing to let go, refusing to let the Father simply dissipate him as though he had never existed. _

_She held him there. His body. His soul. She could feel it inside of her. Willed it to stay, to take up residence there as the angel females had done with their Grigori husbands. For just an instant, she felt the joy of union they always felt when they made love, the momentary blending of two souls into one heartbeat. She could feel the love he felt for her. But she wasn't strong enough to hold him. Her weak human body needed oxygen. She needed to breathe. Their baby kicked, frantic for the loss of oxygen. The battle began to sound far away. The world turned dark. She could feel his physical form shimmer and become diffuse beneath her touch, held there only by her indomitable will. _

'_You must let me go, my love,' Gabriel whispered inside her mind, his heartbreak –her- heartbreak as he felt her pain at losing him. 'Please. You are killing our child.'_

_Audrey exhaled, releasing him to the not-so-tender mercies of the Father. The shimmering essence she had tried to hold onto dissipated in her arms. Gone. Leaving her kneeling there in the bloody earth that was all she had left of him._

"Gabriel," Audrey cried, great sobs wracking her body. "I'm so sorry! I couldn't hang onto you."

"I am still here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, nuzzling behind her ear and kissing the nape of her neck, gently tasting her essence. "We must focus on the time we have left."

Audrey whimpered as he gently shifted the awkward position she had moved into during her vision, resettling her into what he knew to be her favorite position for sleep. Arm resting on his bicep, cheek pressed against his bare chest, ear pressed against his brachial artery so she could hear his heartbeat and the sound of his blood whooshing through his arteries. Very much alive.

Her lungs burned from holding her breath during the vision. Their child kicked within her womb, suffering from the very real lack of oxygen she had just subjected him to in real life. Guilt permeated her body. She had little control over the vision while it was happening. She would need to admit to Gabriel what she tried to do so he would talk her through it the next night.

"You've given up," Audrey quietly wept. "You … accept your fate."

"I always have," Gabriel murmured, moving a sweaty strand of hair that was plastered to her face out of her mouth and then gently kissing her. "Being taken from you will break my heart, but unless we can find another alternative, it is a price I shall willingly pay to keep you safe. The joy you have brought me will sustain me no matter what the Father does to me."

He nestled her tenderly into his wings, adjusting them to cover her for the chills which always followed her visions. Even in the dead of summer. He wrapped his body around hers to share his warmth.

"I'm out of threads," Audrey finally whispered. "I've tried following every thread I've ever discerned. The Savior is close. So close to succeeding. He has a chance now. But no matter what I do, you always die."

"I was supposed to die two years ago at the base of the cliff," Gabriel said gently, his voice deep and reassuring as he spoke. "You have given me two more years. More happiness than I knew could possibly exist. And a child. A beautiful, half-human child. It is more than I ever deserved."

He tenderly caressed her body, running his large, strong hand over her swollen abdomen to caress their child, conveying through touch the emotions the reticent angel often had a hard time putting into words. Audrey could feel her body begin to warm wherever his made contact with hers. He was willing her to be well, pouring _his _strength into hers so that she would recover from her nightly vision faster.

"I'm so tired," Audrey whispered, her lungs still burning. "So tired of all this drama. Why can't everyone just get along?"

"Then sleep, little Prophet," Gabriel said tenderly, ruffling his feathers to provide maximum warmth and adjusting his _own _position so that they would awaken tangled together like the lovers they were, as if they were one person. Just the way she liked.


	167. Chapter 166

Chapter 166

"What is the word from Ann?" Mambo de Vivre asked, slapping her laundry upon the rocks of the Yellowstone River.

"Azrael's pulled himself back together," Audrey said, groaning as she straightened and held her back as she heaved Gabriel's sopping wet cargo pants out of the water to wring them out. "But now she can't touch him anymore. He's caused her to flat line six or seven times trying."

"Talk about the kiss of death," Lena chipped in cheerfully, thwacking her polyester dress slacks against a nice round rock. "It's a good thing she's got all those half-angel Nephilim hanging around her hospital to catch her soul. How are they going to get married if he can't even kiss the bride without killing her?"

"Azrael catches it himself," Audrey said. "He can shove a soul back into its body that was jolted out prematurely due to trauma. He just can't heal an injured mortal shell in this realm."

"I no see why Ann keep trying," Non Gae said. "At least not until Angel of Death get act together. I no want to kiss man who stop my heart. Reverend no have that problem. Lyubitshke look … fine."

They all glanced over to where Lyubitshke stood a little apart from them, cheerfully wringing out her husbands' clothing and humming an exotic Romani love song, oblivious to the others. Audrey now had the answer to the ten million dollar question. Until the Reverends brush with death, they hadn't. Now … the couple who was so well-matched in temperament, but horribly mis-matched in age, was making up for lost time. It was all they could do to pry the couple out of their tent to break camp each morning. They were worse than she and Gabriel!

"It's not his fault he can't control the power he brought back with him from the void," Mambo de Vivre said. "It took the Mother millions of years to learn to do both."

"Ann no live that long," Non Gae said pragmatically. "Motivate Angel of Death to learn faster. Pity Father no want help teach son more. He know. Not teach."

"I was surprised he helped at all," Audrey sighed. "I almost got through to him. I think. I just don't understand him…"

"Do you think that could be the key?" Cindy asked, her laundry done for the day and already drying on a rock in the hot summer sun. "I mean … wherever you turn … the Father's got his fingers in the pie. He _did _create all of this, you know."

Audrey considered the proposition carefully. Cindy was an astute observer of the power dynamics that went on between opposing political leaders, having quietly worked behind the scenes for the Senator long before they became lovers. With all the other threads she'd been able to discern in her nightly visions now exhausted except for whatever dynamics the twelfth disciple would add, perhaps it was time to look at the weaver of the tapestry itself? Thumbing their nose at the Father wouldn't get her the outcome she desired. Audrey made a mental note to keep an open mind.

"He didn't do it alone!" Mambo scoffed, rinsing a pair of Jose's jeans in the river. "He had help. From the Mother." Mambo had taken it upon herself, as the matriarch of the group, to force the mind-damaged young man to bathe, eat properly, and keep himself groomed. Her pet project.

"Speaking of help," Lena wryly asked. "Non Gae … why are you doing Gunn's laundry?"

Non Gae laughed. "Gunn take care of me. I take care of him. We good friends."

"More like friends with benefits," Cindy said, giving Non Gae a knowing smirk. As a rampant feminist, Cindy was not opposed to the idea of free love. So long as the person engaging in the free love was not her husband.

"I have itch," Non Gae said, her black eyes sparkling with mischief. "He scratch. No bug me when I need to work."

At the moment, the Korean courtesan had Gunn buzzing around her orbit like a bee around a colorful flower. Some mornings Gunn came tumbling out of Non Gae's tent with a shit-eating grin on his face. Others … they both went out into whatever tiny town they passed through and plied favors from whichever local citizen was amenable to a roll in the hay. Their blatant, casual sexuality and way they traded sex for favors from third parties had Gabriel tied up in fits of apoplectic disapproval.

"I love Shabbat," Audrey said, wading to the shore to spread out their clothing on the rocks to dry. "At first I was pissed the Rabbi insisted we stop everything from sundown Friday night until sundown Saturday night and rest while he prayed. And then Muhammad comes along and seconds the motion. But, you know what? We need a day off from the road!"

Since nobody else really cared what day they rested, or if they rested at all, the Reverend had, with his usual diplomatic tact, reminded them that most Christians celebrated a Saturday afternoon mass at four o'clock for those too busy to attend Sunday services. The Rabbi, of course, refused to lift a finger to do anything but pray during Shabbat. But Audrey was beginning to see the wisdom of taking a day to just hang out, chat, and get some badly neglected chores done like laundry, hunting, and foraging for supplies. With a string of pack horses and the wagon, it was now possible to lump chores into a single day and ride longer the other six days, rather than stop a couple of hours each and every day, without resulting in a significant loss of time.

"If I thought the black-winged Angel of Death was scary," Cindy said, shifting the conversation back to the original topic, "Azrael's form when I ever saw that black pile of tentacles melted into the rock was … ick! I cringed when Ann even dared touch him to lead him out to the wagon."

"She loves him," Audrey said. "Form doesn't matter. Only the spirit. If you really knew Azrael, you would understand that."

"It's all I can do not to pee my pants in terror and run whenever he appears," Lena said. "I mean … I understand _in my head _who and what he is. But … I mean … he's the Angel of Death! Don't matter _what _my brain tells me when he appears. The only thing I care about is how quickly I can find the exit and get as far away from him as possible."

"Which is why," Audrey said, "he fell so hopelessly in love with Ann. She's not afraid of him. I don't know what her story is other than she saw a lot of death as a trauma nurse in Iraq. But her friends back in North Carolina hinted she'd been through some pretty heavy shit."

"He was shooting out electricity in his kraken form," Cindy said. "Is that why he touches people and they die? He electrocutes them?"

"Directed EM pulse," Audrey said. "The electricity was just a side effect of how much energy it took to punch through from the void. Azrael is comprised of the same energy that is released when you split the atom."

"A walking thermonuclear reaction," Cindy said. "I bet those Pentagon grunts would just _love _to get their hands on him."

"Primordial matter," Mambo said.

"Nirvana," Non Gae said. "State of unmanifest being. Freedom from greed and suffering. Enlightenment. Azrael not have to come back. Choose to come back to help. He bodhisattva … enlightened one."

"It was what the Mother was trying to teach the Father when her daughters fell in love with the Grigori," Audrey said. "The Father is obsessed with physical form. He always viewed the Mother as inferior because she was not the same as him."

"Same story, different day," Mambo said with disgust. "White plantation owner takes black slave woman for a lover, but never accepts her as anything except his property."

"Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings," Cindy said. "Was it love? Or rape?"

"Gabriel is certain the Father loved the Mother," Audrey said. "I am now, too. I think the Father didn't realize what he had until she was gone. He's been miserable ever since."

"So he says," Lena scoffed. "The man … god … whatever the hell the old ones are can't seem to get out of their own way. The Mother has become tainted by his games."

"Sandalphon allowed me to catch a glimpse of the Father's misery," Audrey said, absent-mindedly wringing out a pair of socks and watching the water drip onto her bare feet. "It is as Gabriel first described it to me when he said the angels obeyed the kill order for humanity because they always thought _we _were the source of his grief. Because of the control collar, they can't escape feeling it. It colors everything they do. But the Father erased the _real_ reason he's so miserable from their memory. Except for a few incidents of the Father's choosing, the angels memory only goes back to the day the Savior first appeared in the Garden of Eden and the Father announced they had to bow down to Adam and Eve."

"That's a long time to wallow over a broken marriage," Cindy said. "Even the Senator's ex-wife gave it up after the first year."

Audrey flopped down on a boulder, sighing as the back of her legs hit the sun-warmed rock. Heaven. She was getting so ungainly that she was beginning to have trouble walking and she still had ten weeks to go, give or take a couple of weeks. She dangled her ankles in the cool water, feeling very much like a beached whale.

"The Father is billions of years old," Audrey said. "Older than the universe. He was a young adult in god-years when he started hanging out at the gateway to the void, claiming he wanted to study it, and would be middle-aged now. Gabriel said time moves differently in heaven than here. Sixty-four million years would be like, what? A couple of our years?"

"Longer, I think," Mambo said. "The Savior's consciousness was born during the fracture and he appears to have been an idealistic young man when he first incarnated into human form the first time around."

"Gabriel said Lyubitshke's situation is the one the Father historically favors," Audrey said, glancing over at the cheerful young woman, oblivious to the rest of them in her own self-contained little honeymoon happiness. "As soon as you're sexually mature, you're expected to pull your weight."

"Somewhere between twelve and fourteen of our god years, then," Cindy calculated. "That's still an awfully long time to wallow in self-pity."

Audrey was silent. How could she explain that, when Gabriel was taken from her, there would be no getting over his loss? How could a mere mortal replace the deep spiritual connection they shared? Even another angel would always fall short!

"God years," Lena scoffed. "Is that like dog years? Only in reverse?"

The female disciples all laughed.

"Something like that," Audrey said.

"Hey! Honeymoon girl!" Cindy joked, calling over to Lyubitshke who had wandered upstream, still humming, oblivious to their presence. "You going to come over here and join us? Or spend the rest of the day fantasizing about what lascivious acts you're going to commit on that man of yours as soon as you can whisk him someplace private?"

"Oh!" Lyubitshke said, the color rising to her swarthy cheeks visible even from here. "I was … distracted." She grabbed the Reverend's shirt she was absent-mindedly swirling through the current and started to splash back to their position.

"Distracted!" Lena said. "Understatement of the year."

Audrey shut her eyes, soaking up the sun. The luxury of watching clothes dry. At this stage in her pregnancy, but not for the urgency of finding the 12th disciple and reuniting with the Savior, Gabriel would have whisked her away to some remote mountain hideaway. She could barely mount Cheevers, only doing so out of pure, pig-headed stubbornness because she wished to ride at Gabriel's side, and never for more than an hour before she was forced back into the wagon with Mambo.

Gabriel and the two Nephilim boys were able to scout much more territory when they weren't confined to their wingless friends' slow pace, diligently avoiding the death-zone of Interstate 94 crawling with highwaymen on the other side of the river. The country they passed through right now was sparsely populated, with most ranches being abandoned, and was beginning to climb into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The men had been given permission by the Crow Nation they now passed through to hunt whatever game they could find, including buffalo, a sport the men relished. Only the Rabbi remained behind to pray. It was hot as hell today. The women were too practical to pass up this opportunity to cool off in the river and wash the cooties out of their clothing.

"I wonder what Gabriel will bring home for supper?" Audrey mumbled, her stomach growling.

Anything but Power Bars…


	168. Chapter 167

Chapter 167

"What are we looking for, exactly?" Four Bears asked, staring through the binoculars at the small encampment set up at the old lodge inside Yellowstone National Park.

"The Consort shall lead the Prophet to the Twelfth Disciple," Gabriel said, reciting last night's instructions.

"Are the Prophet's messages from the Mother always so cryptic?" Four Bears asked. Being the eleventh disciple, this was the first time the Three Affiliated Tribes former chief had experienced the frustratingly vague prophecies fed through the Prophet the night before they found each new disciple.

"Yes," Gabriel said.

"It looks like a hippie commune down there," Gunnlaeif chipped in, also staring through binoculars. "What's with the little flags?"

"Tibetan prayer flags," Gabriel said, his inhumanely sharp eyes not needing binoculars to see the peculiar group of tie-dyed humans that could have been transplanted straight out of the 1960's.

"Who's the Consort?" Four Bears asked.

"No idea," Gabriel said.

Actually, that wasn't entirely true. For the past four days, he'd been sensing … something. Nigglings at his subconscious that were eerily familiar, like words at the tip of your tongue. He felt the way you might feel in a conversation where the other person was describing someone you vaguely thought you might know, but they couldn't remember their name to help you put characteristics to a face.

"I thought you said this entire place was supposed to blow and be the original cause of the apocalypse?" Gunn asked, pointing down to where Old Faithful could be seen erupting in the background in its once-every-ninety-minute geyser.

"It is," Gabriel said, sniffing the air and sensing the pungent taste of brimstone and minerals cast forth from deep inside the earth. "The Savior was supposed to leave for 2,000 years and come back in 1996," Gabriel said. "The deal was that the Savior would rise to power and gather his disciples the same as before. This place would blow and plunge the Earth into a kind of thermonuclear winter. And then the Savior would lead whichever souls he determined worthy into the new kingdom, including the souls of the deceased. Or something like that. I don't know all the details. It was forbidden to discuss. I only know what little I do because Yahweh would forget I was watching his back and occasionally let things slip."

"Is it still going to blow?" Gunn asked.

Gabriel sniffed the air again, the faint scent underlying the scent of pine and clean mountain air a much weaker version of the stench of Sheol and the Keep.

"Yes."

While America had beat the drum of distant threats and entered into two wars of convenience in the decade prior to the apocalypse, the greatest threat was sitting right under the very land the disciples travelled now. Yellowstone Lake. Caldera for the largest super-volcano the world had ever seen that had blown, like clockwork, every 600,000 years since the Earth had been created. The Yellowstone supervolcano was currently 40,000 years overdue to erupt. A destructive force the Father had been holding at bay since he had used the _last _supervolcanic eruption at Toba to cleanse the Earth of unwanted quasi-sentient primates 74,000 years ago to make way for his _new _experimental form. The humans he had created to woo back the Mother and gain visitation rights with his son.

"How can he just … wipe … everything clean like that?" Four Bears asked.

"Yahweh views it the same way you might view doing the dishes," Gabriel stated flatly. "He cooks up new life forms. Not everything he does is a masterpiece. It splatters grease all over the countertop. He sets aside the forms that are to his liking. And then he simply washes away the rest."

"Cold," Gunn said, shuddering. "And to think we were next."

"You still are," Gabriel said, "for all I can tell. Nothing Yahweh has done so far indicates the original wager is off. The only thing that has changed was he tried to maintain control of his son by cheating. He refused to help the Savior come back via a custom-engineered virgin birth of his choosing. The Savior finally decided to come on his own via conventional means. He chose Charlie to be his incubator. The rest … is history."

Neither Four Bears nor Gunn reminded him of his part in that so-called 'history.' Gabriel was done apologizing for something he should not have done, but that no amount of self-flagellation would ever rectify. All he could do was be more mindful of how he led his life from now going forward. However long that life lasted.

Not long. This would be the last disciple. They would be reunited with the Savior. And then … the final battle. All sometime between now and six-to-eight weeks from now when his child was due to be born. He didn't mind dying. Not so much. It had been his offer of sacrifice when he had chosen to follow his heart and betray Yahweh by loving his little Prophet more than he loved the deity who had created him. What he minded was the fact he'd never see his own child. That his child would never know _him._

That his child would grow up without a father…

"Gabriel?" Gunn asked a second time, interrupting his thoughts. "You okay, buddy? You went a million miles away on us."

"Sorry," Gabriel said. "Signal the others. I saw no sign of danger during the flyover. It's time to go in."

Fading back off the rise, they rejoined the group waiting anxiously for the all-clear signal to enter what appeared to be a national-park-turned-hippie-commune. Audrey was sitting awkwardly underneath a tree, her abdomen far larger than that of a normal human female at her stage of pregnancy. Cheevers was already saddled and grazing just out of reach.

"You should ride in the wagon," Gabriel said. "You're putting our child at risk."

"I'm the leader of this group," Audrey said, jutting her chin defiantly into the air. "Whether I want to admit it or not. I'm going to ride _in _like the leader I am."

"Vanity is a sin," Gabriel gently chided her, unable to hide the amusement twinkling in his eyes.

"So is loving _you,_" Audrey retorted. "But I do anyways. The Father can take his sins and shove them up his ass."

Gabriel couldn't help but smile. After all she'd been through, all the wisdom she'd gained, Audrey still chose every now and then to let him know who wore the pants in this relationship and it wasn't _him._ At least that's what he let her pretend. Audrey had never been one to lead around by the nose. Either _she _led. Or she rebelled. But if he let her lead _him _around too much, she'd lose respect.

The trick to dealing with his wife was to walk at her side and quietly watch her back in case she needed _him _to take the lead all of a sudden. Something she had been allowing him to do more and more. After all they'd been through together, deciding who was the boss at any given moment just wasn't that important anymore. They were more like that team of matched mules stubbornly working in unison to pull the wagon wherever it needed to go.

Gabriel sensed that familiar overbearing presence evesdropping on his thoughts.

"Get out of my mind," he muttered to himself. "If you want eyes and ears, go bug the Rabbi. I have free will now and I _choose _to tell you to go to Sheol."

Yahweh. Assuming he could just drop in and intrude upon his thoughts whenever he felt like it. Gabriel could prevent it. He did. What Gabriel felt about his wife was none of Yahweh's business. Let Yahweh go solve his _own _relationship problems.

"What?" Audrey asked, giving him a cheerful smile that would light up seven states. "You were muttering."

"Nothing," Gabriel said, hiding behind an unreadable expression. Audrey became upset at the thought Yahweh still tried to use him for a conduit. Gabriel was _done _being used. That was the only information she needed to know. "Here. If you're going to insist on riding, at least let me lift you up onto your horse."

"Lyubitshke said when I can't get on under my own steam anymore," Audrey said, accepting the offer of his hand to heave her enormous belly off the ground and grunting with exertion. "That I shouldn't be riding anymore. But I wouldn't mind a hand to steady me as I climb up onto the stirrups."

Gabriel hid his smirk. Audrey hadn't been able to get up on her own horse under her own power for a good three weeks. Not since shortly after the Glendive showdown. He only permitted it instead of disposing of every spare mount his little Prophet could ride so she'd have no _choice _but to ride in the wagon because Cheevers was such a reliable mount.

"All right, then," Gabriel said emotionlessly, fluffing out his feathers in what was, for angels, the equivalent of a laugh. He knew Audrey would pick up on the incongruency between his facial expression and the emotions conveyed by his wings. She did.

"Jackass," Audrey sniped, her eyes flashing with a combination of annoyance and humor. It was a pet name she occasionally called him whenever she grew frustrated with him. The first name she had ever called him. _'Get up, you jackass.'_

'_Mules … matched pair … pull …'_ he reminded himself. Clasping his hands together to make a step and bending so his shoulder would fall at exactly the right height to make a handhold, he obediently heaved his very-pregnant wife onto her thankfully short horse before double-checking the girth and stirrups to make sure they were secure.

"The boys and I will be patrolling from the air," Gabriel said, stretching upwards to kiss her from her position on top of her horse. "We won't intrude until you give the signal. Or if we spot trouble."

"Roger," Audrey said, using another of those human social euphemisms that Gabriel just did not 'get.' She slapped Cheevers affectionately on the flanks, looking very uncomfortable as she stubbornly took her position at the front of the group beside the Reverend, and gave the signal to ride.

The other disciples, the pack horses, and Mambo driving the wagon all fell into their customary position behind her. Gabriel watched her leave, proud of her. If their child inherited one whit of the Prophet's temperament, she would be a formidable angel indeed.

"Into patrol formation," Gabriel ordered the two Nephilim boys who were shaping up to be a passably decent air squadron. Fiery Anu automatically stepped to his right, cautious Ningizzada to his left. "Take off."

They took to the air, circling just far enough from the encampment that they would appear to be a family of eagles lazily riding the currents in search of pray, but close enough to monitor and respond to any threat which might arise. The introduction of three angels into any new group always had the effect of disrupting the normal flow of negotiations, whatever introductions and assessments of power _might _have been made going out the window so newcomers could gawk at the oddity of three creatures of legend suddenly landed into their midst.

He looked for trouble. He found none. The disciples rode in. Colorfully dressed humans flocked out from the enormous rough-log lodge they had taken over as a headquarters and gave greetings. Gunn stepped forward in his stead to help Audrey awkwardly dismount from her horse. A petite female stepped forward to greet her, shaking her hand, and then pointed to the sky.

Audrey blew the whistle.

"That was fast," Anu said excitedly. "I always love meeting new groups of people. It's more fun than being banished."

"I thought we were going to get to patrol the air most of the day," Ningizzada complained. "I hate this meet and greet thing. Too much gawking. Too much talking."

Gabriel inwardly smiled as he gave the signal to bank left and circle down towards the encampment. The boys reminded him of himself and Michael at that same age. The bold one. Always eager to rush into new situations and embrace them. And the reserved one. Loathe to try anything new until it had firmly established itself in his eyes as worthy of his time. They swooped in and landed in near-perfect formation, only a _little _excess showboating by Anu as they dropped from the sky inches from where his little Prophet stood speaking to the young woman.

"Hello, Gabriel," the sixteen-year-old girl with vaguely Asian features said, stepping forward to boldly take his hand. "I've been waiting for you."

She was smiling, but the smile did not reach her eyes. If anything, pure hatred shot out of the familiar brown eyes that had once looked upon him as a colleague.

"Mary," Gabriel said, dumbfounded as he recognized the soul inhabiting the shell. Mary Magdaline. Reincarnated into human form once more.

The Consort. Of the Savior. Yesua's human wife.


	169. Chapter 168

Chapter 168

"He prefers to keep to himself," Mary said, leading them through the narrow roads of Yellowstone to well worn dirt trail shaded by trees. "He avoids people, which is why I refused to let the others come. I think it's better if I show you, not tell you who he is."

"What _is_ this place?" Audrey asked, staring in curiosity as the trees ended and she stared out onto a smoldering, rocky plain that might as well been the surface of Mars. Steam rose from bubbling pools of hot water while rocks made colorful by strange bacteria curiously adapted to the hostile environment and strange sedimentary deposits made the entire landscape look like a Salvadore Dali painting.

"Mammoth Hot Springs," Mary said. "It's a natural geothermal feature of the park. Part of the supervolcano breathing below. It's only natural he would have been drawn to it?"

"You still haven't told us who _'he' _is yet," Gabriel said, annoyed at Mary's lack of forthrightness. "Other than you already found the twelfth disciple." After being unable to dissuade him from leaving Audrey's side, an assertion made all the more credible by his wife's advanced stage of pregnancy, Mary had allowed him to tag along under the condition that he keep his mouth shut and leave his mace behind.

"Yesua warned me you were thick-skulled," Mary said, giving him a dirty look. "You're not even supposed to be around for this little meet-and-greet. In fact … you should have kept your nose out of the whole thing and let things be. Between you and the Father, you've royally screwed the pooch. We're lucky Audrey intrigued both deities enough to make a little side-wager."

Gabriel silently glowered at the Consort of the Savior and indignantly rustled his feathers. It was an issue the disciples danced around ever since Gabriel had turned over a new leaf, making excuses for him. But the fact remained that Mary was telling the truth. The Father had screwed up, and Gabriel had helped him do it.

"What do you know of this wager?" Audrey asked.

"Very little," Mary said. "At least the wager regarding you and Gabriel. It happened after I was already reincarnated back into human form. You don't realize how limiting it is to exist in material form until _after _you've spent a few thousand years quasi-corporeal."

"Why did you come back without him?" Audrey asked, thinking that nothing on heaven and earth would tempt her to be parted from Gabriel. Not even for a couple of days.

"We were supposed to incarnate in together," Mary said. "Christmas day. 1996. Exactly 2,000 years after his birth the first time around to different parents. It was a little romantic fantasy of ours. To be born to different parents, be raised without our memories as humans a second time, and then find each other at the same age we did before. Thirteen. Only the Father balked at the last moment, making excuses about not being able to find a suitable vessel for a virgin birth."

"Virgin birth?" Audrey said. "I don't see why that was important."

"It was a ridiculous restriction the Father _insisted _upon," Mary said, more than a little disgust lacing her voice. "It always bothered the Father that Yesua had been conceived 'in sin' so to speak. Yesua could have cared less. The Father was perturbed the method of creation rendered Yesua immune to dissolution. Like _your _baby will be. It meant he couldn't cow Yesua into obedience simply by threatening to undo him."

"Dissolution," Audrey said, glancing at Gabriel. The fate she saw he would suffer each night after he sacrificed his life to appease the Father. "Nobody should hold that power over another living creature. Not even an amoeba."

"Watch your step!" Mary said, slowing down and stepping carefully across a wooden boardwalk that enabled park visitors to walk right in the middle between two seething calderas. "Yahweh blamed his own 'sin' of succumbing to the temptation of physical conception from the Mother for the fracture in heaven!"

"More like his own misogynistic attitude," Audrey said. "Hey … can we slow down a little? This heat is making me dizzy." She wiped her brow as Gabriel worriedly moved closer, arms outstretched to catch her if she passed out. Her pregnancy was making her awfully sensitive to the heat.

"Would you like me to carry you, little Prophet," Gabriel murmured in her ear, his voice a deep, pleasant vibration. "It would be very bad if you fell into one of these pools of boiling water."

"I'm okay," Audrey said, leaning back into him. The closer they got to her due date, the more she felt a desperate need to feel his body against hers just to reassure herself he was still there.

Mary scrutinized the two of them intently, but did not comment. The expression of disdain she had been suppressing and hiding behind a fake smile towards Gabriel, however, softened a bit. Gabriel _had _after all attempted to kill her husband.

"Is that the reason the Father represses women so badly?" Audrey asked. "Defining them either as virgins or whores?"

"Part of it," Mary said. "It's not something Yesua likes to talk about. I mean … get real. We _are _talking about his parents having sex. It's a little much to discuss in casual conversation. Even for a god."

"Yeah," Audrey said, smiling as she thought of this one time she had walked in on her parents when she was around five years old. Her parents had become very flustered when Audrey had asked _'are you and daddy exercising on the bed?'_ and quickly scooted her out of the room. When she finally learned about the birds and the bees, she had found the very concept to be … revolting.

"The Father had no idea Yeshua had learned to shape his _own_ form between the last time he was here and now," Mary said. "I'd picked out human parents I really liked who'd been unable to conceive. The older couple you met earlier. He's an American. She's from Cambodia. Yesua sent me ahead expecting to be along shortly. I mean … I dreamed of him every night … but without memories to back it up he was just the man of my dreams. It wasn't until my thirteenth birthday when all of a sudden, like a light switch going on in my head, I remembered who I really was and realized Yahweh had thwarted him."

"How did your parents take it?" Audrey asked. "When you suddenly announced you were the reincarnated soul of a 2,000 year old sinner from the bible?"

"More misinformation," Mary snorted in disgust. "Dictated by _him!"_ She shot Gabriel an accusatory glare. "My last name was Migdal, not Magdaline. It means Mary of the Fortress. Not Magdala, the town along the Sea of Galilee where prostitutes plied their trade! I'm not even _from _Galilee!"

"Sorry," Gabriel mumbled, his wings drooping in apology. "All I conveyed was that Mary was healed of seven demons. Illnesses. Not vices. It's not _my _fault they later twisted that to insinuate you were a prostitute from Magdala."

"You knew damn well the Father deliberately worded that message to convey misunderstanding!" Mary snapped. "You should have clarified the truth of what you were conveying to those you were conveying it to. Not simply recited his message word-for-word. Your duty as the Word of God does not excuse deliberate obfuscation of the truth!"

Audrey watched as Gabriel retreated deeper and deeper into the unreadable expression he had perpetually worn when she had first met him. It was only at times like this that she was reminded just how very far her husband had come emotionally in the two and a half years they had been together.

"Please don't bash him," Audrey said quietly, leaping to his defense. "I've bashed him enough to last him a hundred lifetimes. He's learned from his mistakes. At some point, continuing to hammer home guilt over mistakes you can't go back and change becomes nothing but deliberate cruelty."

"He's the Father's patsy," Mary snapped, suppressed anger flashing in her eyes. "Yahweh says jump, and Gabriel asks how high!"

It amazed her how quickly Mary switched between a 2,000 year old saint and a 16-year-old American teenager raised by authority bucking Freegans. Audrey suspected it was the angry teenager she was speaking to at the moment. Mary wasn't the only person whose words could cut.

Tact.

"Are you a cruel person, Mary?" Audrey asked gently, refusing to get into it with her. "I know –I- used to be. A mean, hateful, spiteful, deliberately sadistic person who liked to tell it like it really was and enjoy watching the other person bleed. It was fun, how easily I could look into a persons' soul and see all the dark little things about themselves they didn't want to acknowledge. I would see where they were wounded and expose it for the world to ridicule. And then the Father put Gabriel at my mercy and made him suffer so much that even –I- had my belly filled with it."

Mary looked as though she were about to give a snappy retort, and then swallowed it. Whatever her personal feelings were about the angel who had attempted to blindly follow the order to kill her husband, they all needed to work together. Audrey almost felt as though she were dealing with a younger version of herself. A spiritual sister born in an earlier age, thrown together now for a common purpose. She didn't want to argue with Mary, but she wouldn't allow her to deride her husband so badly that he withdrew completely. After all … it was only a matter of weeks before her visions showed…

She didn't want to think about that right now.

Behind her, Audrey could sense Gabriel was unusually alert. Not just to the verbal jabs and right hooks Mary kept delivering under the guise of a smile. But also that way he looked when he was uneasy about walking into an unknown situation, but was unable to put words to what he was sensing. Mary led them towards a small wooden building at the edge of the Caldera. Probably some sort of office building for the defunct park service.

"Is something wrong?" Audrey leaned back and murmured.

"I'm not sure," Gabriel said. "I sense… I don't know what I sense. But it's … familiar. I don't know if it's good or bad."

"Here we are," Mary said cheerfully, opening the door to the cabin and stepping inside. "Thamuz … it's me. I brought allies who need to parley with you."

Audrey recoiled as she recognized the shape which stood up from the small couch where he had been sitting reading a romance novel and took a step towards them, the book with the bare-chested male and scantily clad female still in his hand. Before her brain even had a chance to process the incongruency between what she saw the so-called 'twelfth disciple' was and what he was reading, Gabriel had already shoved her behind his back and reached for the mace that was not there at Mary's insistence.

"It's a trap!" Gabriel snarled. In one smooth motion, he twisted and yanked the unearthly knife Audrey always carried sheathed on one hip and held it before him, wings flared, ready to pounce.

"Hello, Gabriel," the Grigori male said pleasantly, extending his right hand for a handshake. "And you, I assume, are the little lady with the powerful voice who helped me spring my brethren from the Keep?"


	170. Chapter 169

Chapter 169

"Is that any way to greet an old friend, Gabriel?" Thamuz asked, not flinching, but not moving any closer, either. His clawed hand remained outstretched as though still awaiting a handshake. It was an ordinary gesture of greeting he hadn't seen a Grigori make since the fracture. It must be a trick…

"Grigori don't have friends," Gabriel snarled, glancing around the room to see if there were other Grigori hiding just out of sight. Why had he not recognized the distinctive 'feel' of a Grigori when he had begun to recognize a familiar life energy signature? Even now … Thamuz's life energy felt … off. And yet … familiar.

"Gabriel!" Mary Magdaline snapped. "Back off! This is why I wanted you to stay back at the lodge!"

"The Grigori are homicidal maniacs!" Gabriel growled. "Pure insanity. There's no dealing with them."

"That's not entirely true," Thamuz said, his reddish-brown skin reddening slightly in the snout in what Gabriel recognized from childhood as an indication of embarrassment. "At least not now. Mary has been … how shall I put this? Counseling me on my issues."

"Why hasn't your second-soul spoken?" Audrey interrupted, and then pushed at the back of Gabriel's wings. "Gabriel. How can I communicate with him if you keep thwacking me in the face with your wings!"

"Because the males are the dominant soul!" Gabriel snapped.

"That's not true," Mary Magdaline said, visibly annoyed. "Why does everyone always assume it's the male who's running the show?"

"Because they are!" Gabriel said.

He realized belatedly that was the wrong thing to say by the way Audrey haughtily walked several steps out of the way to duck underneath his flared wings, and then boldly stepped in front of him to take Thamuz's outstretched claw.

"Hi!" his little Prophet said with a smile. "I'm Audrey. Audrey Anderson. Gabriel's better half."

"Thamuz," the Grigori said. "Mate of Iofiel. Pleased to make your acquaintance." Thamuz rustled his leathery wings, deliberately pointing the sharp bony spikes at the knee joints and at the end of each finger-joint of his bat-like wings so that no spike was painting at the Prophet. The Grigori equivalent of 'dress wings' formation when addressing Yahweh.

"What are you _doing _here?" Audrey asked inquisitively, deliberately turning her back to Gabriel to communicate her displeasure. "And how did you find Mary?"

Gabriel tried to pull her back out of the reach of Thamuz's deadly claws and spiked wing-tips should he suddenly decide to move _out _of the submissive Grigori 'dress wings' posture and was rewarded by an indignant slap on the hand.

"It was _Mary _who found _me,_" Thamuz said, realizing he still had the steamy romance novel in one hand and hastily putting it down on a nearby counter, cover-down so they couldn't see what he had been reading. "She searched me out after I found refuge here. My brothers are … well let's just say they're a little intense to hang around at the moment."

"We were originally in Portland, Oregon," Mary chipped in. "It didn't fare so well in the apocalypse. Because of _him!"_

Mary turned and glared at Gabriel. Gabriel blanched. Portland was one of the cities the Father had ordered Gabriel to target. He claimed it was a refuge for liberals, artists and homosexuals. The exact kind of people the Savior seemed to be gathering around himself via the disciples. Gabriel had thought it odd to target such a peaceful city, but had obeyed. Had Yahweh realized that Mary was living there in human form?

Probably…

"Why doesn't Iofiel address us?" Gabriel asked, studying the Grigori male intensely, looking for clues as to his odd behavior. Odd, at least, ever since the fracture. Thamuz acted much the way he remembered the Grigori acting when they had all played together as friends.

"Because she's still in the Keep," Thamuz said, a look of sadness registering in his eyes that couldn't be faked. "I was able to spring the others, but not my mate. It was her wish that I be free."

"You _left _her there?" Audrey asked, glancing at Gabriel. Gabriel could tell by the increase in pitch in his little Prophet's voice that this was a course of action she did not find acceptable. She took a step back so that her back was nestled against the front of his torso.

"Not by choice," Thamuz said, his leathery wings drooping in shame. "She charged me with trying to find what Yahweh did with our children and grandchildren. She shamed me into staying put this time until I found them instead of turning myself in like we usually do."

"The heavenly host," Gabriel said, a twinge of guilt twisting in his gut. _He _had been the one who had set in course the wheels of misinformation which had ground the half-Grigori offspring under the Mother's implacable rage. "They are the soul-fragments of your children."

"She is very angry at you, you know," Thamuz said, his gold-green serpentine eyes narrowing as he looked Gabriel in the eye. "They all are. They feel they were betrayed by their own brother."

"They were," Gabriel said softly. "Although at the time I didn't understand what course of action I was setting in motion. I just wanted somebody to play with."

"The others will not be satisfied until they have killed you," Thamuz said. "You recalled the Father before we had a chance to finish building the empire he had always dreamed of. It was supposed to be a surprise. In his honor. To show him we were worthy to marry his daughters. Not anger him the way it did."

Gabriel flinched. No matter _what _thread his little Prophet altered each night to help the Savior succeed, _he _still ended up torn to pieces and interred in the Keep. Now he understood why Yahweh had been so eager to accept his offer to sacrifice himself for the sin of falling in love with the Prophet. Yahweh meant for him to be his sin offering to the Grigori, as well.

"All I can say is that I'm sorry," Gabriel said, remorse tingeing his voice as his wings dropped in shame. "I can't even honestly say I've felt remorse all these years because Yahweh wiped our memories of all that happened. It wasn't until a month ago that Ehyeh finally helped me retrieve the memories."

"Gabriel," Audrey said. "You were the equivalent of eleven earth years old. Just a boy. There was no malice in your actions. You were a young boy whose parents, and then his caretakers, abandoned him to go do other things for over a hundred years. The blame lies with Yahweh.

"I can't blame Yahweh for this," Gabriel said resignedly. "It's time I accepted full responsibility for I did."

"I won't let you," Mary Magdaline interrupted. "Yesua _also _warned me you'd do that, you big meathead! Try to take the blame off the Father so he can avoid paying the piper. Well this is _our _kingdom now! Everybody pays the piper, but not more than they're culpable for!"

"But I thought you blame him for…" Audrey started to ask, her face scrunching up in a perplexed expression as she gestured to indicate her confusion.

"I blame him for being the Father's patsy," Mary snapped. Then, she whistled as though calling a dog. "Here Rover! Here boy! Sit! Lay down! Fetch! He's like a damned wife who calls into work sick for her alcoholic husband every time he goes off on another bender and stops at the liquor store on the way home to buy him more! An enabler!"

Gabriel glowered silently at the mouthy Consort of the Savior. Funny … he didn't remember Mary being this blunt the first time she had walked the Earth. Although … now that he thought about it, Mary _had _always been pretty outspoken. It was what had gotten her into hot water with Rome and caused them to issue an assassination order after Yesua's crucifixion. This time around, Mary hadn't been reared in a culture that told her women should be seen and not heard. She was every bit as blunt as his little Prophet.

Audrey had forgiven his blind stupidity. Mary, it appeared, had not…

"Why are you here, Thamuz?" Gabriel finally asked, regarding what appeared to be the first sane Grigori he had seen since the fracture.

"Why," Thamuz said pleasantly. "Mary has informed me that I'm to be the Savior's twelfth disciple. Our wives physical forms are subject to the Father's whims, but _we _are not. As long as I'm not put into a position of battling my brothers or our offspring, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help the Savior inherit his new kingdom. The _real _apocalypse hasn't happened yet."

"What's in it for you?" Gabriel asked suspiciously.

"Mary has given me her word that as soon as the Saviors' physical form matures enough to channel his power," Thamuz said, "he's going to start helping us hunt down our children and attempt to piece the soul-fragments into recognizable offspring. A lot of pieces have been lost, but the Mother has taught us that with enough time and love, even the life-spark of a worm can transform into what you wish it to be. Like Simbi."

"What about the others?" Audrey asked, more excited than Gabriel had seen her since he had known her. "Does this mean there can be peace between us?"

"Alas," Thamuz said, his leathery wings slumping once more. "The crux of the problem. Mary has spent the past two years teaching me to let go of my anger, but she has only been dealing with one soul. Mine. Not Iofiel's. We Grigori will not willingly part from our mates. But the female angels were nearly as damaged by their trip into the void as our children were. Many fragments of their souls and memories that helped shape their kinder sides are missing. The minute Iofiel takes up residence again inside my body, I will be as before. Consumed by hatred and rage. Or at least _her _hatred and rage. –I- have dealt with it and let it go. _She _has not. It's too bad Eloa and her mate committed suicide by leaping into the void. She was the sanest of the bunch."

"The female angels are dominant, then?" Audrey asked.

"When they're enraged," Thamuz said. "Yes. I don't know how to explain it. It's like there's this anger inside of you that you want to suppress, but it creeps out of every facet of your being until you just want to explode with rage. We're very strong hosts. They don't get their way all the time. But it takes an enormous amount of self-control to keep their rage in check. And … quite frankly, most of us are every bit as outraged about what happened as our mates are. It's not … it's just really hard to deal with us when two souls are vying for control and both are pissed off as hell. We feed on each other's anger and egg one another on."

"Like my incidents of holy blasphemy, "Audrey said, glancing back at Gabriel. "At least until I dealt with the emotional baggage that was causing the Mother's power to go all flooey. It would hit and I'd have no control whatsoever over it. I did the best I could to keep a leash on it, but I didn't really gain some modicum of control until I dealt with the underlying emotional baggage."

"Only in Thamuz's case it's the homicidal rage to seek and eye for an eye," Gabriel said, remembering how helpless the Prophet had been to control her rages of holy blasphemy and how badly it would incapacitate her afterwards. "Not just the need to have the truth be heard. Once you are reunited with Iofiel, you will return to being what Yahweh said you were. Seeking vengeance no matter what the cost. Only _he _caused that rage by dissipating your wives."

"Yes," Thamuz said. "I don't think you're ever going to get them to forgive Yahweh. Or _you _for that matter for sic'ing him on them. But maybe, just maybe, if the Savior can help our children, the urge to nurture our offspring and help them become whole might just be enough to bring us back from the brink of insanity and start healing ourselves."

'_I'm toast,' _Gabriel thought to himself, hiding the thought behind an unreadable expression so his little Prophet wouldn't pick up on it. Now … he understood. He understood what needed to happen to secure a future for his wife and child.

Thamuz's wings, his entire demeanor, perked up at the thought of his _own _future. A future where Grigori, Fallen, and humans could walk side-by-side on the path of the Savior. Hope. Mary Magdaline had turned this particular Grigori onto the path of the Savior by offering him hope. Thamuz's coloring changed from a dark reddish-brown to almost pink. It was funny how Gabriel had forgotten that the Grigori's coloring changed with their mood. Each Grigori had different color patterns because Lucifer had custom shaped them each for a different sister, but pastels were generally an indicator the dragon-like creatures were in a generally positive mood.

"It was Yesua's birth which brought the Mother back from the brink of insanity," Gabriel said, remembering the Mother's agonizing scream of pain as she had dismembered Yahweh and then given birth to the child she had been incubating right on the battlefield. "Only Yesua's cries called her back from her grief before she had moved on to destroy the entire universe they had built together. If he hadn't chosen that moment to birth into this universe, none of us would be here right now."

"So all we have to do is hunt down the heavenly host," Audrey said, "and have Yesua shape new shells for them instead of having them possess people. Preferably an interim form that's basically harmless until we can heal their minds enough that they're not totally nuts. Like a bunny rabbit or something. And then figure out which female angel might respond to it. Mother or grandmother. And then … we hope they calm down enough for Mary to do her zen letting-go-of-anger mojo like she did for Thamuz here."

"That sounds like a plan," Mary said, visibly relaxing. Gabriel hadn't realized the Consort was tense until he saw her relax. "I can see now why the Mother chose you to be her Prophet. You think like her."

Gabriel couldn't help but wonder how Michael was going to feel when he learned that Mary had been here all along and not looked him up…


	171. Chapter 170

Chapter 170

"I still don't understand why you would fix that old toaster when you don't have any electricity," Audrey said, watching Mary Magdaline's current human father, Chris, patiently repair the heating coils of an ancient electric toaster that was probably in existence when Mary and the Savior had walked the Earth together the _first _time around.

"Habit," Chris said. "I've been doing it so long that I don't know how to stop."

"How will you even know your efforts will pay off?" Audrey asked.

"Solar panels on the roof of the lodge," Chris said, pointing towards the ceiling. "The National Park Service installed them shortly before the apocalypse. We don't have enough power to justify using an old dinosaur like this on a regular basis. But at least I'll be able to test it to make sure it works."

"Hey!" Thamuz said. "Who you calling a dinosaur?"

"Why do you ask?" Chris said, not even looking up from where he was painstakingly twisting a tiny piece of wire back onto a hole in the metal frame with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, a slight smirk appearing on one side of his mouth as he worked. "Was this once your toaster?"

Thamuz burst out laughing, a blend between a human laugh, a roar, and the honk one might hear from a goose. "That joke's as old as the crust in your underwear," Thamuz said between snorts.

Chris laughed and gave the wire one final twist. "There," Chris said. "That should do it. Audrey … could you please plug this cord into that orange extension cord over there? And hand me those two slices of bread off that plate?"

Audrey complied. Within moments, the delicious aroma of toast permeated the air. The toast popped up, perfectly browned.

"Since you're the guest," Chris said, "I'll give you first dibs. Before our serpentine vacuum cleaner over there snarfs it all down."

"I'll take one slice," Audrey said, glancing at Thamuz who was obviously salivating at the thought of eating a slice of toast that hadn't been charred by an open fire. "You two can arm wrestle over the other."

Thamuz's complexion waxed a pleased shade of rose as Chris handed him the second slice of toast. Audrey sat across the workbench, pretending to be engrossed in eating her toast instead of carefully watching the way the Grigori male's complexion turned that pinkish shade of reddish-brown that she'd come to associate with the creature being in a good mood.

Dealing with a sane Grigori was certainly taking some getting used to. After two-and-a-half years of watching Gabriel get torn to shreds every night by the insane double-souled version of one of these creatures. Gabriel was, curiously enough, adjusting to the new reality much faster than _she _was. With his memory now restored, Gabriel could remember millions of years worth of happy memories playing with this same Grigori in the Garden of Eden along with his brothers. Audrey, on the other hand, was much slower to trust the creature of nightmare which had haunted her dreams ever since the apocalypse. Especially since it dwarfed even Gabriel.

"Could you please put this in that back store room over there?" Chris asked, absent-mindedly wrapping the ancient, cloth-wrapped electrical cord around the still-warm toaster and handing it to her. Already, the peculiar man Mary had chosen to be her human father out of eight billion possibilities on the planet was eyeing an equally ancient Kitchenaid mixer and reaching for it. He reminded her a bit of Jose'. Only he preferred to tinker with stuff instead of computers. And he didn't suffer from hallucinations.

Audrey walked into the storage room and stopped, dumbfounded. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling were thousands of every item a person could ever need, neatly organized, labeled, and the working condition carefully noted as to who had repaired it, whether or not the item was in good working order or recommended to be used as spare parts, or needed further repairs. Electronics. Clothing. Shoes. Tools. Toys. The only common denominator of every item here was that the item had once been thrown out and Mary's parents and their dumpster-diving Freegan friends had rescued and repaired them.

Mary had casually explained the central tenant of their little hippie commune shortly after they had arrived. They were an eclectic gathering of radical anti-consumers, Freegans, radical environmentalists, and back-to-the-Earthers. The natural evolution of hippies after hippies sold out to 'the man.' Soulless mega-corporations and the bought-and-paid-for politicians who served them.

Their beliefs were as different as there were individuals in the group, but they all shared a belief in fighting back by refusing to play 'the game.' Whether it be growing their own vegetables, refusing to buy consumer goods, or living comfortably off of items modern society thoughtlessly cast away, their refusal to lead 'the man's' lifestyle or spend their hard-earned dollars collectively sapped money out of the pockets of the 'man.' Although they only worked minimally and lived simply, the ultimate irony was that nearly every single one of the 'hippies' was highly educated. Most possessing graduate degrees. Every single one of them Audrey had spoken to told tales of waking up long before the apocalypse had come along and _forced _that realization on the rest of the world that they were little more than hamsters on a treadmill. Dropping out was a conscious decision to simplify their lives and stop playing 'the game.'

Audrey found the stack of shelving that appeared to be the place small kitchen appliances were stored and grabbed one of the pieces of paper placed for that purpose of noting the working condition and date repaired. Feeling a little proud of herself, she wrote the date and that it made fine toast before affixing it to the electrical cord with a piece of masking tape. Another battle won against 'the man.' Although, in Audrey's case, the 'man' was an all-powerful god, not some distant board of directors of a mega corporation.

"You didn't answer my original question," Audrey asked as soon as she waddled back into the workshop. "Why do you continue to fix things when the corporations you once fought against no longer exist? There's not even enough people left alive on the planet to use up all the 'stuff' already in existence."

"Like I said," Chris said, glancing up as he unscrewed the outer cover of the antique mixer, exposing the guts of the electronics. "Habit. Every item you fix and give away is an item 'the man' can't make money off of selling. We're voting with our dollars. Or at least we _were. _Money is now useless. But I've been fighting the 'man' for so long that _not _fighting the man feels alien to me. Even more alien than _him."_

That last comment was delivered with a smile. It appeared Mary Magdaline's father and Thamuz had been throwing good-natured jabs at each other for years.

"I'll have you know there's _nothing _alien about me," Thamuz snorted, feigning mock indignity. I was living here on this planet before your species was even a twinkle in the Father's eye. Now … if you want to see _alien, _you should check out that colony in the Andromeda galaxy he was trying to set up. Total failure. Couldn't get the ecosystem to work properly. Too many carnivores, not enough herbivores."

"Gabriel said you guys wiped out some sentient dinosaur the Father was working on?" Audrey asked, daring to ask the question that was at the top of her mind. "Were _they _carnivores, too?"

"The sleestak?" Thamuz snorted. "They were about as sentient as a junk yard dog. And a _hell _of a lot more viscous. We tried to move them into game reserves where they could continue to evolve, but they kept breaking out and attacking our settlements. Killed several of our offspring. We finally had it with them and relocated them someplace else."

"Dead?" Audrey asked.

"No," Thamuz said. "The planet in the Andromeda galaxy. If the Father had _asked _before he murdered our mates, we would have told him they were doing fine." The Grigori's coloring waxed an angry, dark brownish-red as his wings stiffened at his back and claws clenched. Anger. Mary had been coaching Thamuz how to control his anger, but it was obvious the Grigori male was still very angry about what had been done to his family.

"Breathe," Chris coached, putting down the mixer he was working on, his eyes filled with both compassion and concern. "If you let the man occupy real estate inside your head, you give away your power. He controls you. He wins. Let it go."

The Grigori closed his gold-green serpentine eyes and breathed deep, forcing himself to relax. Meditation. Within minutes, his coloring had faded to the neutral reddish-brown Audrey associated with his normal color. Thamuz had been forced to learn anger management skills the _same _way Audrey needed to use tact to avoid misusing her 'gift.'

"Why are you so willing to forgive Gabriel?" Audrey asked once it became obvious the Grigori had resumed his calm, pleasant demeanor once more.

"Because Mary is right," Thamuz said. "Gabriel was the last angel to be created. Every single one of us shoved him aside and told him to get lost when he came to us for attention after Yahweh and the Mother left us in charge. Yahweh was _everything _to him and then, one day, all of a sudden he was gone without so much as an explanation."

"That is how Gabriel remembers it," Audrey said. "The Father left a homing pigeon in case of emergency. After one hundred years with you guys being gone and the report that came back from one of the Principalities that the sentient dinosaurs had disappeared off the planet, Gabriel thought it was an emergency."

"Gabriel was the pesky little brother none of us wanted around," Thamuz said. "The kid was so hungry for morsels of that sadistic bastards attention that he'd have done anything for him. I don't even think he was what you would call an eleven-year-old level of maturity."

"Anu and Ningizzada are around the same age, Gabriel tells me," Audrey said.

"The two Nephilim boys appear to be a bit older," Thamuz said. "At least … developmentally. Just because Gabriel was born big doesn't mean he was mature. I can see that now … seeing him with unbiased eyes after all these years. He outweighs Michael by nearly one half. If the Father hadn't shoved a weapon in his hand and told him to go fight, I suspect he would have turned out more like Buddha than what he became."

Audrey nodded in agreement. It had taken a long time for Gabriel to let down his guard, but once he had, she had quickly discovered beneath the tough exterior of a pitbull was the most hopeless romantic in the universe. Kind of like that old junkyard dog she had once kept. Big. A little slow to learn new tricks. Protective. And basically wanting only to lie at her feet and slobber all over her face.

The dog. Not Gabriel. Gabriel didn't slobber. At least not much…

"Is there any chance you could convince your mate?" Audrey asked. "Or the others? To come around to your way of seeing things?"

"No," Thamuz said. "Mary has been preparing me for the day Gabriel would arrive ever since she learned the Mother had cut a wager obligating Gabriel to protect you. _You _had to come. There was no way, unless he was dead, that Gabriel would not come too. She prepared me to deal with it."

"He's very different now from when I first met him," Audrey said softly. "He's a different man."

"He's _exactly _like I remember him as a small boy," Thamuz said, shaking his head. "He's just changed masters. If you told him to go jump off a bridge, he would."

"He's gotten better," Audrey said. "Really. I've been teaching him to think things through and speak up if he disagrees. Don't mistake passive resistance for obedience."

"Did somebody say passive resistance?" Chris asked, reaching across the table for a peculiar metal dothingyhooky and rapidly twisting it into a bizarre shape to bridge some gap in the electronics inside the Kitchenaid. "Never underestimate the power of passive resistance. Yesua taught the world that. Buddha. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. They all followed the blueprint set out by Yesua to stick it to the man so quietly that he didn't even realize he'd been stuck."

"Gabriel's too straightforward to 'stick' it to anybody," Audrey said. "It's more like … either he does something … or he digs in his heels and drags his feet so badly that it's easier just to avoid fighting with him. He sulks. Gabriel sulks when he doesn't get his way."

"Just like the Father," Thamuz said. "It's amazing how much alike those two are. And yet so different… Gabriel lacks the Father's arrogance."

"He does now," Audrey said. "It took getting tossed off a cliff to bring him low enough to realize he wasn't top dog anymore."

"No," Thamuz said. "You haven't seen arrogance until you've met the Father. Gabriel never liked being shoved into a position of leadership. He liked to watch. Take it all in. Let others do the risk-taking while he learned from their mistakes. When he finally _did _try something, it was either perfect, or not at all."

"That hasn't changed," Audrey said. It was so strange talking with somebody who had known her husband as a boy. The Mother had given her glimpses, but Thamuz had seen a side of Gabriel the Mother had not. That Gabriel had lagged so far behind his brothers developmentally explained a lot. Audrey didn't understand _why _that was so. Gabriel was by no means dimwitted or slow. Just … extremely thoughtful and loyal. As though Yahweh and the Mother had both wished to imbue the last of their offspring with that quality.

"When I meet with my brothers again," Thamuz said, "I'll try to talk to them. But Mary has already asked me to try. They're not buying his sudden conversion to the cause of the Savior. They think he's still working for Yahweh."

"How often do you meet with them?" Audrey asked.

"We touch base once per month," Thamuz said. "Not here. After a couple of my brothers went bezerk and attempted to kill a few of Mary's followers, Mary insisted I meet with them elsewhere. We all can still teleport … I'm surprised Gabriel hasn't figured out how to get around the Father's little 'fix' yet. So I just go _there _to meet with them. Mary comes, but she hasn't been able to get anywhere with them. They're a little too intense to hang around at the moment. After 64 million years, they've finally got the upper hand. They're too punch-drunk on their own little power trip to look at the big picture."

"How are we going to find your offspring if the Father's got them under lock and key?" Audrey asked. "I mean … they don't really even have bodies. Azrael said they're little more than diffuse blobs. The Mother wasn't even able to figure out which soul-fragment went with which complete individual. She just yanked out all the fragments she could find out of the void and shaped enough matter around them so they could exist here."

"My brothers and their mates have forgiven the Mother for what she did," Thamuz said softly. "We shouldn't have attacked our childhood friends without giving them a chance to explain. We were so angry that we didn't care _who _we killed. The first thing she did was try to correct her mistake and begged for our forgiveness. The other angels … the fact they didn't even remember what had happened just made the wound fester."

"The Father really screwed the pooch the whole way around," Audrey said, sighing. "For everyone. If only we could get your brothers and their mates to understand that."

"Your solution is a good one," Thamuz said. "The first one I've heard proposed that has any promise. We're just going to have to chip away at the problem one chip at a time."

A loud whir and a curse distracted them from their conversation. Sparks flew all over the workroom. The blender whirred like an electronic device possessed by demons, tipping over and the whirring blades catapulting the small appliance across the workbench, and onto the floor before it caught flames. Chris quickly unplugged it while Thamuz grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and put out the fire with the nonplussed attitude of someone who did this sort of thing often.

"Guess that one's only good for scrap," Chris said with a grin, his silver hair and frequent smile-lines making him look almost impish. "Even –_I- _have to admit when something is beyond hope."

Audrey frowned. Beyond hope. Never! Nothing was beyond hope.


	172. Chapter 171

Chapter 171

"She hasn't had a vision since she got here," Gabriel said, helping Mary Magdaline and her current human mother, Phhoung harvest vegetables from the extensive organic gardens the group had planted around the lodge. "Frankly, she's getting worried."

"Has this happened before?" Mary asked.

"Only when she's been critically injured," Gabriel said, accidentally ripping up an entire tomato plant. "Or three nights for our honeymoon. Otherwise, even when _I've _been badly injured, she's always gotten the visions."

"You!" Phhoung said in lightly accented English, her eyes flashing in annoyance. "You watch what you do! No pull up entire vine!" Phhoung's speaking voice had a wheezing quality to it, as though she had to strain to make certain sounds. Gabriel wondered if she had perhaps suffered from throat cancer or some other malady Mary had healed for her.

"Sohm toh," Gabriel said fluently in the Cambodian language. "Sorry." It amazed him how much Mary looked like the petite Phhoung, and yet still looked like the Mary he had known in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.

"You've gathered all twelve disciples," Mary said thoughtfully, rubbing sweat off her brow from where she kneeled in the dirt digging up carrots, "and you found _me_. I believe that's the extent of assistance the Mother was allowed to give the Prophet via the wager. From now on, you're going to have to figure things out on your own."

"We still haven't found your husband," Gabriel said. "Michael knows where he is, but he's been sworn to silence."

"_-I- _know _exactly _where he is," Mary said, yanking several zucchini squash off of a vine so hard the _she_ earned a string of admonitions in Cambodian from her mother to be more careful. "I have ever since he jammed his consciousness into a tiny zygote. Here I wake up one morning after 13 years of being a normal teenage girl remembering I have a husband, and _then _I find out he isn't even in a body yet! I've waited 3 years for his physical shell to mature enough to even have a normal conversation with him!"

"How can you converse with him if you've been here?" Gabriel asked.

Mary gave him a condescending stare, waiting for him to realize the stupidity of the words he had just uttered.

"Oh," Gabriel said, feeling like an idiot. "He's a god. He just talks to you. Mind to mind. Like the Father does with us." The Savior had never deigned to talk directly to any of the angels except for Michael. Probably some restriction put in place by Yahweh. Yahweh never _had _liked anyone but _him _having any influence over his creations.

"Can you please put this basket in the cart?" Mary asked. "And Mom's, too?

Gabriel obliged her, carrying the loaded baskets of several of the other members of the commune to the cart as well before returning to help. He wished to talk with Mary. Make his peace with her, if at all possible. Not for his own sake. He had little hope of the Savior ever forgiving his past misdeeds. But for Audrey's and their unborn child's.

"What's it like?" Gabriel asked, trying to talk about a neutral topic of conversation. "Being reborn without your memories and then suddenly remembering who you are?"

Remembering his past during the Okipa ceremony had been traumatic. It wasn't an experience he would willingly undergo twice unless it was warranted. Mary had many fewer traumatic memories than he did. Except for being forced to watch her husband be executed on a Roman cross in a fruitless attempt to teach Yahweh a lesson the old god obviously had _still _failed to learn.

As had _he _failed to learn… Yahweh wasn't the _only _dimwit in heaven! Only Michael had learned the lesson the Savior had sacrificed himself to teach. The lesson many _humans _had been smart enough to learn while their so-called heavenly brethren continued to stumble blindly along the same old dead-end path.

"It's a lot gentler than suddenly being cut off from the higher realms and having to adjust like you did," Mary said, her demeanor softening. "It's kind of like acting a part in a community theatre play. You go to sleep. You wake up. Only you get to have lots of fun pretending you're somebody else. You meet lots of interesting new people. Like Mom and Dad and all their hippie friends. And then one day the play is over and you go back to being yourself. Only you've made lots of great new friends and added new skills to your repertoire of knowledge. You can't help but internalize some of the part you played while you were without your memories and integrate it into your existing personality. I understand now why Yesua wanted to do it again. Everyone should reincarnate once in a while just to get a fresh perspective on old problems."

"You still my little Darareaksmey," Phhoung said fondly, stating the name she and Chris had given Mary at birth. "My little 'bright star.' Answer to prayer. We try many years to have baby. No baby come. Then we too old. Give up hope. Then _you _come. Surprise! Answer to prayer. No matter _who _you were before. Wife of Yesua. Or soul of mouse. We love either way."

"Mom," Mary sighed, the slight uptwitch of her mouth betraying the exasperation in her voice. It was obvious that Mary was exceptionally fond of her current parents. Probably why she had chosen them in the first place.

"I come to America with her daddy after war," Phhoung said, pausing from where she was busily digging what appeared to be some kind of turnip and rubbing a muddy glove across her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. "War terrible. Much death. Khmer Rouge kill everyone. Kill my parents. Kill my brothers and sister. Try to kill me."

Phhoung untied the decorative silk scarf she always had tied around her neck so Gabriel could see her throat. Gabriel gasped as he realized the cause of Phhoung's speech impediment. A hideous scar ran across her throat from ear to ear.

And he thought _his _memories sucked…

"Chris aid worker in refugee camp," Phhoung said. "We meet. Fall in love. Get married. He ask me to come to America with him. Be reborn. Like my little Darareaksmey … Mary. New country. New name. New life. Still same person inside."

"Gunn saw the purges first hand," Gabriel said, twitching his wings to hide his discomfort at Phhoung's revelation. "He told the US state department. Nobody believed him."

"The Father and his goddamned genocidal conniption fits!" Mary snapped, glaring at Gabriel. "Why the hell didn't you guys get off your ass and intervene before Pol Pot wiped out three million of his own people?"

"We were told to stay out of it," Gabriel mumbled, quickly looking down at the tomatoes he was picking so Mary wouldn't see his shame. "Yahweh gave the heavenly host free reign to stir up trouble in that part of the world. He let it get out of hand. The Mother finally sent Azrael to retrieve a few of the more rabid heavenly host."

"I see your brother," Phhoung said, pointing at Gabriel. "Black angel. I think I see Gunn too. Khmer Rouge try to kill me. Before I pass out I think I see American soldier come out of nowhere. Shoot soldier who cut my throat. Black angel come. Kill Khmer Rouge. Tell me not my time. Make me stay. I lay in ditch long time. Someone finally come take me to refugee camp. No family to take care of me, so I stay in camp many years until I meet Chris."

"Does Gunn know?" Gabriel asked. He'd been so busy since he'd gotten here keeping an eye on the Grigori male that he really hadn't had a chance to talk with the other disciples.

"We talk," Phhoung said with a shrug. "No way to be certain. I twelve years old at time. Near death when soldier come. He not there when I wake up. Think soldier and angel part of dream. But I pretty sure was him. Same time. Same location. No see too many Americans in Cambodia until _after _war over."

Mary shot Gabriel a dirty look, _daring _him to open his mouth and utter some asinine defense on behalf of Yahweh. Gabriel was all out of defenses for the deity who toyed with sentient life and then destroyed it as though it meant nothing. Silently he moved onto the next row of tomato plants, carefully placing them into the basket instead of just tossing them in so Phhoung didn't give him another string or admonitions for bruising them.

"As soon as we process this food into something we can travel with," Mary said, "we're all leaving this place. The only reason we set up camp here after finding Thamuz was we needed a safe haven away from the death zones until things settled down. It's not supposed to blow for another fifteen years. The Father is on his best behavior right now because he knows if he screws up one more time the Mother's going to vaporize half the universe. He won't dare blow the supervolcano prematurely, but we really need to get people out of here well in advance."

"What about Audrey's visions," Gabriel asked. "They're terrible. But she's even _more _scared now that she's not having them anymore. She has no idea whether what she's doing now is going to change the future."

Mary looked at him, her expression sympathetic, and then guiltily looked away. Mary, it seemed, was already aware of what his fate would be and had no advice to offer him to get a different outcome.

"Maybe she's not having them anymore because coming here finally changed the outcome?" Mary lied, avoiding eye contact. Turning her back, she began to angrily stab her hoe into the ground. "I don't know what's going to happen. The game pieces are now all on the board. It's Yesua's turn to make the next move."

Silently, they all finished bringing in the crop and turned it over to the commune members in the enormous lodge kitchen for processing. When they hit the road, at least they would all be well fed.


	173. Chapter 172

Chapter 172

"She really thinks we might have found the solution?" Audrey asked, hope making her feel happier than she had felt in a very long time.

"That is what she _said," _Gabriel said, his expression unreadable. "She also said she's not privy to all the details of the wager the Mother made with the Father about gathering the disciples. Now that the Mother has pushed you to gather all twelve, Mary will lead us to reunite with the Savior."

Audrey stretched, relishing the after-glow of their not-quite lovemaking. Her belly was so enormous right now that standard missionary position had become impossible. Even for Gabriel. And the pressure of the baby's head beginning to drop down into the birth canal in preparation for birth made it outright uncomfortable. Instead, lovemaking had become an endless exercise in whispered words, kisses, caresses and massage. What was surprising was the way they managed to feel so connected even _without _the ecstasy of orgasm. Not the pure bliss of climaxing together. But extremely pleasurable nonetheless.

"Ouch!" Audrey groused, smiling as she reached down to touch her own belly. "Your son or daughter feels like he's going to be born with a mace in his hands. I can feel the spikes hitting up against my bladder."

Gabriel smiled and kissed her, refusing to take the bait. Audrey strongly suspected he knew the gender of their baby, had known for quite some time, and was refusing to tell her so it would be a surprise. One whiff of Lyubitshke three days ago and Gabriel had announced even before _she _was aware of it that the young Romani woman was now pregnant, carrying a boy, and also running a little deficient in iron . Lyubitshke had been mortified. The Reverend ecstatic.

"Why won't you tell me?" Audrey whined. "I'll just have Ann run some tests the next time I see her."

"I don't think I like all this modern technology," Gabriel said coyly, disarming her whining by cupping one pregnancy-enlarged breast in his hand kissing down the side of her neck and down one shoulder. "Some things are just more meaningful when they surprise you."

"If Mary is right," Audrey said, stretching and relishing the slippery softness of the downy underside of Gabriel's wings, "then maybe fate really _is _finally in our own hands. I mean … we're not out of the woods yet. But Thamuz is intrigued by my idea. Especially after you told him about that heavenly host ghoul that tried to possess you in Glendive and you gave it more than it bargained for. I mean … it was actually scared the Father would find out!"

"Don't read too much into the actions of the heavenly host," Gabriel said, pulling her tighter and running his hand protectively over her swollen abdomen, patiently waiting for one of those all-too-frequent kicks to bruise Audrey's insides. "Yahweh taught them to say whatever it takes to cause whatever nasty thing it is he wants to have happen … happen. If that means lie, they lie. They're incapable of remorse."

"In their current state," Audrey said, absent-mindedly twirling one of his feathers. "Thamuz said they were once every bit as sentient and good-natured as _he _is. A Grigori. A disciple? No wonder the Savior saved him for last. Here the Mother has been making me get off my ass and do her bidding by hanging the threat of them doing something bad to you over my head this whole time, and then, oh, surprise, by the way, one of the monsters we've been using to scare the shit out of you the last two and a half years is now going to be your friend. I mean … sheesh!"

"Be careful of trusting Thamuz," Gabriel said, his expression turning serious. "He might be sane right now, but if his mate is sprung from the Keep, he's not going to tell her she can't take up residence in his body once again. He, himself, has warned you there are limits to his support. His mate is every bit as insane as the other ones are."

"But they won't _feed _off each other's anger anymore," Audrey said, feeling hopeful for the first time in more than two years. "I mean … Iofiel might gain the upper hand and compel violence once in a while. But instead of the little devil on her shoulder telling her to go for it, she's going to have a little angel telling her she should moderate her actions. It's _got _to make a difference."

"There _–is- _no devil," Gabriel teased. Just the Mother and the void. Not quite the hell everyone wrote about."

"You know what I mean!" Audrey said, pushing against his chest in mock indignation. "It's _got _to make a difference. Over time. All we need is more time and I think we can make this work."

Gabriel was silent, speaking as always more through the way he touched her than his words. He was worried about something.

"Honey," Audrey asked. "What's been on your mind? You think all these deep thoughts. And then you never leave me a trail of breadcrumbs so I can figure out where you've gone."

"Breadcrumbs?" Gabriel asked, coming back from wherever it was his mind had been.

"As in Hansel and Gretel," Audrey said. "Two kids go for a walk in the woods and drop pieces of bread onto the path so they can find their way back."

"Everybody knows rodents would consume any food within a matter of hours," Gabriel said.

"Yes," Audrey said. "That's what happened in the story. But not the point I'm trying to make. The _point _is that you have to drop hints about what's on your mind so I know what's bothering you."

"Nothing is bothering me," Gabriel said, ruffling his feathers slightly in a gesture Audrey knew he only did when he was uncomfortable with something.

"Liar!" Audrey said, laughing. As she looked into his eyes and saw the anguish there, however, she realized it was no laughing matter. Whatever was bothering him weighed heavily on his soul. "Honey … we're husband and wife. You _have _to share your burdens with me or … I don't know. The Father will strike us both dead or something. Isn't it like … a law … or something? I definitely recall the Rabbi saying something about a law."

Gabriel was silent, gathering his thoughts. Audrey waited. Prying would get her nowhere. All she could do was coax and gently nudge. When he was ready, he would tell her. While she waited, she ran her fingers across the features she had grown to love. His broad, high forehead. His strong nose and slight cleft of his chin. High cheekbones. Dark brown hair. Unearthly blue eyes. Everything about Gabriel spoke of his strength. Features she hoped their baby would inherit. How had she ever thought such a beautiful man was brutish?

"If anything were to happen to me," Gabriel said.

"_Nothing _is going to happen to you!" Audrey said. "The visions have stopped. We have Grigori and Fallen allies. It's just a matter of bringing more of them into the fray. That's all."

"Yes," Gabriel said, his voice becoming emotional and low. "I know. We have hope now that things can turn out differently. But a lot can go wrong between now and however long it takes to round up fragments from over 350,000 Grigori offspring and convince 399 insane Grigori males and 400 insane female angels to play nicely with everyone else. We should discuss what our wishes are if something should ever happen to _either _of us. For the babies sake."

"Okay," Audrey said, not enjoying the direction this conversation was taking and deciding to use humor to derail it. "When I die, I want to be buried in a big pine box. Face down. With a pillow under my pelvis so my butt sticks into the air. Butt naked. That way, when people come to say bullshit over my corpse, they'll have to kiss my ass."

Gabriel smiled slightly at her outrageous joke, but was not dissuaded from the serious direction he wished to travel. Audrey sighed. Until he spoke his mind, he would just brood. And brood. And brood some more. She didn't want to even _think _about it. But he did.

"I'll keep your wishes in mind if you predecease me," Gabriel said, nuzzling her cheek with his nose and then kissing just the edge of her mouth, tasting it. With a sigh, he moved his lips over hers and deepened the kiss, but it wasn't a passionate kiss like earlier. Whatever was bothering him had been on his mind for quite some time.

"Okay," Audrey said. "So you know _my _wishes. What about yours?"

"I spent my whole life groveling for morsels of attention from a deity who didn't want me around," Gabriel said softly, that sub-audible undertone coming into his voice like it used to do when he used to channel the Word of God. "A lot of the worst decisions of my life were made because I never had a _real _father who loved me the way that I loved him. That's all. If something should ever happen, I worry about who will help raise our child."

"No one!" Audrey said adamantly. "Never! As _if _I could ever find somebody to just step in and replace you?"

"Not replace," Gabriel said. "More … guide. Like I've been doing for the Nephilim boys. Only they've _got _fathers who love them and were there while their personalities were being formed. I worry…"

"There's no need to worry, then," Audrey said. "Things have changed!"

"Yes," Gabriel said, taking both of her cheeks between his large, strong hands and kissing her to silence her rising anger. "Things have changed. We have _hope _now. But it's a huge leap of faith from hope to certainty. I want you to hear me out."

Audrey was silent. She didn't want to discuss this. But _he _did. If she didn't _listen _for a change, Gabriel would retreat into one of his little clamshells and brood for days on end until whatever had him worried now had him taking fits later on.

"Okay," Audrey said warily. "I'll hear you out."

"When I'm done saying what's been on my mind," Gabriel said, "then I'm open to hearing what _your _wishes are if things should ever swing the other way. If something were ever to happen to _you._ Leaving our babies fate in Yahweh's hands is irresponsible."

"I try not to give the matter any thought," Audrey said.

"I know," Gabriel said. "But we're not cherubs anymore. _We're _going to be the parents now. We need to discuss these kinds of things. No matter how unpleasant they are. We need to have a backup plan in case something bad happens."

"Okay," Audrey said, pouting. What she _really _wanted to say was 'shut up you're scaring me I don't want to discuss this ever never ever,' but once Gabriel had made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.

"If anything were ever to happen to me," Gabriel said, his expression serious, "I wouldn't want for you to spend too long grieving. I want you to move on and lead the fullest life you possibly can. Without me."

"No!" Audrey said, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. The thought was too terrible to contemplate. "Without you I'd … I'd … I can't!"

"I know," Gabriel said, kissing her tenderly and caressing down her side with one hand as he pulled her in closer for a hug with the other. "I feel the same way about you. But neither of us has the luxury of just wallowing in our own self-misery and wishing ourselves to die if one of us should pass before the other. My brothers and I were forced to endure that kind of misery for 64 million years. The Mother left. Yahweh was miserable. We didn't understand why. It would be like that for our child. You'd be grieving somebody the baby never even met."

"Our baby will be here soon!" Audrey said.

"Yes, they will be," Gabriel said. "But even after he or she is born, it takes a long time before they're old enough to remember both parents. Their impressions are vague. If something happened, all they'd know is that Mommy is always sad. Every single creation in heaven was forced to take part in Yahweh's sadness and endure it along with him. We had no place else to turn. I don't want that to happen to our child out of some misguided sacrifice on _your _part."

"What the Father did to you cherubs wasn't right," Audrey whispered. "He…"

"I really don't want to talk about Yahweh and what he _should _or _should not _have done," Gabriel said, gently interrupting her. "I want to talk about what _we _would do if one of us suddenly found ourselves in a similar situation. Raising a child alone without both parents there to share the responsibility."

Audrey was silent. Much as she was loathe to even _think _about it, it was a subject which had caused her considerable worry ever since she had first begun to suspect she was pregnant.

"What's your solution?" Audrey asked warily.

"I can't speak for _you," _Gabriel said. "All I can say is what _–I- _would wish to happen if _–I- _were to go first. I don't want you to spend the rest of your life grieving and alone. And I don't want our child to be raised without a father or brothers and sisters."

"I _won't _do it!" Audrey said angrily. "How could you even _consider _asking me to do such a thing?" If any man were ever to even _think _of me in that way you'd … you'd … you'd rip off his head and shit down his neck!"

Gabriel smiled and tugged her closer, caressing her in spite of the cold shoulder she was trying very hard to give him as she attempted to wriggle out of his grasp. With her pregnancy so advanced, it was more like a gigantic orca flopping around on a beach of feathers than the lithe, athletic female he had first married.

"And if any male ever attempted to make such a suggestion to you while I am still alive," Gabriel said, nipping her shoulder and then blowing a gigantic fart-like 'bubble' into her armpit to completely disarm her anger, "I _shall _do exactly that!"

"Then don't say it!" Audrey said, her voice anguished. "Please. I don't want to talk about this."

"We must," Gabriel said. "Just in case… After I've had my say, you can tell me what terrible, awful things you'd wish for _me _to do if _you _ever to ditch my sorry tailfeathers for an all expenses paid vacation through the pearly gates."

Audrey quieted down. Much as she didn't want to discuss it, Gabriel was right. The only thing that had changed was that her visions had suddenly stopped the day they had gotten here. That didn't mean the future had changed.

"So … what?" Audrey asked. "In this _hypothetical _scenario of yours, and I _refuse _to discuss it as anything but a _what if,_ what _if_ something bad happens and me and your son have to go on without you?"

Gabriel gave her that enigmatic smile that let her know he still wasn't taking the bait, and then his expression turned serious once more.

"I've contacted several of my brothers," Gabriel said. "Amongst the Fallen. Several of their mates have expired. If something were to happen to me … I'd like for you to at least _consider _it."

"Consider what?" Audrey asked. The Fallen only took one mate for life. As Gabriel had vowed when he had married her.

"There's precedent for it," Gabriel said. "When one brother dies, the others are obligated to take the widow under their wing, so to speak, and help her raise their children. Usually … they get married and make the best of it."

"No!" Audrey said.

"Consider it," Gabriel said. "Please."

"No!" Audrey said, finally succeeding in wriggling out of his control. Her freedom was short-lived. Gabriel merely pinned her bloated form and tucked her back under his wings, ruffling his feathers to make her as comfortable as possible.

"Or you could choose a male of your choosing," Gabriel said. "A human. That Mormon boy in Salt Lake City asked you to marry him. He was a good man. It would not displease me if you were to marry _him _after I was gone. He would set a good example for our child."

"No!" Audrey snapped, her voice becoming high and frantic. "I don't want to talk about this! Please! Stop! Nobody is going to die!" She began to cry.

"I certainly hope not," Gabriel said gently, tilting her face towards his and kissing the tears that now streamed down her cheeks. "I want to spend every moment I can with you, for as long as I can, until time itself stops and there are no more moments to spend. I just … it would make me feel a lot better if I knew you were both going to be okay. No matter what."

"How can you discuss something so … terrible …" Audrey cried. "So calmly? As if you were discussing a … a … a _laundry _list or something! Who the hell do you think you are to just tell me to … move on … if something bad were to happen?"

"I think I'm the man who loves you more than my own existence," Gabriel said softly, his eyes glistening and bright as his voice choked up with emotion. "And I want to know that if anything were ever to happen to me, that both you and our child would be all right. At least … at least if you were to remarry one of my Fallen brothers who lost their mates … there would be an … _understanding _… between you. It would be a marriage based on mutual need. You'd both understand that there were really _four _people in the marriage. Each other. And both of your deceased spouses. You could learn to love one another without being forced to forget about … your first … and … and … they wouldn't feel they had to make our child forget who their _real _father was … it wouldn't be a loyalty contest. If you marry someone who's … unhindered … "

Gabriel didn't finish the thought, but Audrey detected fear in his eyes. Not fear of his own death. Fear that if she were to marry someone who was _not _a brother, that she would forget about him completely. The tears that had been gathering in his eyes finally let go, streaming down his cheeks. For all the reason he attempted to project into his voice, Audrey could tell Gabriel was terrified.

She had never seen him so scared…

"There will never be room for anyone in my eternal soul except for you, Gabriel," Audrey whispered, kissing him. "Never. We are one soul. But if for some reason I were to ever find myself raising our child alone, I will make sure our baby has an adequate father figure who will teach him what it means to have the Archangel Gabriel for a father. You have my word."

Gabriel curled up around her in a ball and sobbed, burying his face in her neck as they both wept. This conversation had cost him. Emotionally. It didn't matter. Things had changed. They had a future together now.

Audrey would make sure of it…


	174. Chapter 173

Chapter 173

Audrey looked down at her hand. Nothing. Ever since they had met up with Mary Magdaline nearly two weeks ago, the compass rose had remained nothing but an empty, circular tattoo on her right hand. It appeared Mary was right. Her job had been to gather the twelve disciples and help the Savior get a jump-start on his mission. She had done her part to help him make up for the thirteen year delay caused by the Father preventing Yesua from incarnating into human form. Now…. no compass rose. No visions. No episodes of holy blasphemy. Nothing. She was no longer the Prophet of the Savior.

Whew!

"All aboard!" Chris yelled, Mary Magdaline's human father. "Now boarding the Savior express. Last one on the train is a rotten egg!"

"Sorry to leave it behind?" Mary asked, pointing to the replica Conestoga wagon which the hippie Freegans had used to cart an ungodly amount of their worldly belongings on the three-day wagon ride from Yellowstone, Wyoming to Livingston, Montana. The commune had packed up lock, stock and barrel and taken to the road, following the trail blazed by Mary Magdaline.

It had been Mary who had led her parents' friends to safety when Gabriel's forces had decimated their original home in Seattle. Mary who had attracted like-minded individuals along the way. And Mary who had assumed a position of leadership despite her young age. This Mary, however, despite still being a proponent of passive resistance as a _first _defense, had learned from her husband's brutal murder at the hands of Rome. Her motto now was 'avoid trouble, but prepare for it anyways.'

"That stupid wagon nearly cost the Reverend his life," Audrey replied. "The only reason we were even forced to bring it along was because of _me._ Travelling in comfort came at too high a cost."

"Might I help you with your bags, Miss?" the train conductor asked Audrey, an elderly man wearing a neatly pressed, if too-large, conductors' uniform. His back was scrunched over with osteoporosis, obviously painful, and his hands exhibited Parkinsonian tremors. It looked like _Audrey _should be offering to help _him _board the train.

"N…." Audrey started to say and was cut off.

"Yes, thank you," Mary said. "She needs all the help she can get. Thank you for offering." Mary reached out to shake the man's hands, clasping his right hand with both of hers. "I'm Dara … or Mary … depending upon who you ask. It's a pleasure to meet a Korean War veteran all the way out here."

The conductor's face lit up in a toothless grin as he began to chatter about the Korean War, not thinking to ask how Mary knew that information. To Audrey's mortification, the elderly conductor picked up her heavy saddlebags and carried them up the steps of the caboose with the practiced gait of somebody who's been doing his job his entire lifetime. Before Audrey could even grab the rail and heave her enormous girth up onto the train, the conductor was back, offering her his elbow like a gentleman to help her mount the steep stairs.

"Nuthin' like a couple of pretty gals to put a spring in an old man's step," the conductor said, giving Mary a wink.

Audrey murmured her thanks and shoved Mary down the aisle, waddling to carefully weave her engorged abdomen between the seats in the narrow aisle not designed for a nearly eight-months pregnant lady carrying an oversized angelic child.

"He was like … eighty years old!" Audrey hissed. "How could you ask him to lug all that gear onto the train?"

"Look at him," Mary said, pointing out the window where the man was assisting _another _passenger do the same thing. "The only thing keeping that man alive is his pride in his job. His family is all dead and gone before him. His one surviving grandchild has not yet been able to make contact and he doesn't know he still has one alive. He's lost half his body weight since the apocalypse and his uniform is threadbare and worn, and yet every morning he presses it and wears it so he still looks like what a conductor _should _look like. Don't demean him by treating him like an invalid. Besides … I think he's going to find it a lot easier now that his Parkinson's disease and bad back have been cured."

"What?" Audrey asked, looking out the window to take a closer look. The conductor was no longer hunched over as he walked and his hands no longer shook as he reached out to clip the tickets showing what part of the train a passenger was riding on.

"I cured him," Mary said nonchalantly. Turning from Audrey, she set Audrey's bags up on the shelf and under the seat. "I'm young and healthy, so I'll be riding in the rumble seat once we get moving. Do you need anything before I go?"

"Wait!" Audrey exclaimed, Mary's words finally registering. "You _healed_ him? The conductor? Just like that?"

"That's all it takes once you get used to it," Mary said with a shrug. "You can do it, too. Probably how you've kept Gabriel alive despite the Fathers attempts to yank him back into the upper realms. It just takes practice. That's all. I'll teach you once we get settled in."

Like most trains these days, what rail lines were running were dedicated to running goods between areas that still had populations. As was the case in Texas, the main 'crop' for Wyoming and Montana was cattle. Most of the other passengers were riding in plain old boxcars. Audrey was getting special treatment because she was pregnant. She watched the elderly conductor grab a case of canned tomatoes, fresh from the commune garden, and help one of the hippie females haul it up onto a boxcar as though it weighed nothing at all.

Audrey spotted Gabriel and the other men loading the horses onto a couple of boxcars about seven cars back. The crowd was giving Gabriel and the spirited Haizum a wide berth. Angel wings. Nephilim wings. And now bat-like Grigori wings. Even amongst the crowd, she would know Gabriel's distinctive black wings anywhere.

"Mary?" Audrey asked, her voice trembling with trepidation as she asked a question she _really _didn't want the answer to unless it was good news. "Is he going to be okay?"

"I wish I knew," Mary said, following the direction of Audrey's gaze. "I really do. No matter how much the Father has stunted their development by treating them as mere creations, the fact remains that Gabriel and Yesua are full-blooded brothers. Not subject and god. Only the manner of their birth differs."

"Gabriel and the others have always considered themselves inferior to Yesua," Audrey said. "He said the Father constantly reminded them to bow down to him."

"The Mother doesn't see it that way," Mary said, picking up Audrey's bags for her and carrying them up the steps. "But like it or not, because the angels were created via an act of will, not via material means, their mortal shells can be destroyed via that same will. The Father likes to remind the Mother that she's not the only one capable of destroying, although the only thing he can destroy is things he creates."

"Azrael survived," Audrey said. "It had consequences. But he survived dissolution. Maybe Gabriel could, too?"

Not that turning Gabriel into a death-wielder like Azrael would be her _first _preference. Audrey liked to _touch _her husband. But if it was a choice of that, or nothing at all, she'd take it. Azrael was reportedly making headway in controlling his ability to destroy.

"Unfortunately," Mary said. "Yesua has no more power to correct the defect which enables the Father to simply dissolve his brothers' mortal shells than Gabriel himself does. If there's a solution, Gabriel is going to have to figure it out for himself. Azrael was lucky the Mother got to him before Tezcatlipoca did."

"Her … former betrothed?" Audrey asked.

"I suspect he's more than that," Mary said. "He just sits on the other side of the gateway waiting for the souls from this realm to pass so he can devour them. Something about he thinks if he devours enough of them then someday he can cross over like the Mother did. The Mother seems … resigned … to the fact he's always there. I don't know why the damned thing doesn't just get a life!"

"Sometimes a bad relationship seems better than no relationship at all?" Audrey suggested. "She put up with the Father for all those billions of years. And then all of a sudden she's a single woman … Mother … goddess … whatever! I can't imagine there's a whole heck of a lot of other people she can relate to."

"No," Mary said. "The Mother is unique. I only got to know her because we took refuge in her part of the universe after the Father incited Rome against Yesua and instigated the crucifixion."

"I thought that was a voluntarily sacrifice on Yesua's part?" Audrey asked.

"Urban legend," Mary said. "Although not without _some _basis. The Father assumed he could simply regain control by making Yesua abandon his physical form. _Of course _the Father assumed that would mean he would abandon _us,_ as well. Especially _me. _The Father was _livid _when Yesua married me. He couldn't just dissipate his mortal shell as punishment."

"Why did Yesua choose to suffer like that?" Audrey asked. "Gabriel could never understand it. Why did he _choose _to hang on until his mortal shell expired of its own volition instead of just striking them dead or teleporting out of there?"

"Wager," Mary said, her eyes filled with a mix of emotions that Audrey couldn't name. Remorse. Anger. Pain. Disgust. "There was no Sheol back then. Just the garden. Or the void. Yesua wagered the Father he would live amongst the humans _as _a human, including dying as one. The Father wagered when the going got tough, Yesua would come home with his tail between his legs. The Father didn't know my husband very well. When it became obvious Yesua was winning, the Father cheated. He figured Yesua would chicken out on the dying part if he made it really awful. Yesua called his bluff. The Father was forced to pay up and create Sheol. A halfway house between the garden, where almost nobody gets in, and the void, where their soul is destroyed. It was built to intern questionable souls until Yesua matures enough to create his _own _universe."

"Christians talk about how noble the Savior's death was," Audrey said. "But I always thought it was barbaric. Easter always gave me the creeps. The veneration of torture. I was always much more impressed by what the Savior did while he was still alive."

The sad smile Mary gave her conveyed the reborn saints _own _feelings on that matter more accurately than hours worth of conversation. Mary Magdaline currently wore the physical shell of a sixteen-year-old Ameri-Asian female, but in her dark eyes she carried the weight of having witnessed her husband's senseless murder.

"How come Gabriel and the others are susceptible to being dissipated?" Audrey asked, changing the subject. "But Yesua isn't?"

"The Mother used to be naturally trusting," Mary said. "When the she birthed the cherubs, she didn't think to weave any protections into their life sparks. By the time Yesua came along, it occurred to her that the Father didn't share her adoration of their children and he had picked up a nasty habit of simply destroying whatever displeased him. A remnant of the soul-garbage the Father picked up when Tezcatlipoca attempted to devour him. The Mother swears the Father wasn't like that until _after _his trip into the void."

"You mean the Father is damaged?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Mary said. "As soon as the Father recovered from being torn to shreds by Tezcatlipoca, they created the universe together and the cherubs. By the time Yesua came along, she'd begun to wake up and smell the chunks of chaos-creature lingering in her husband's consciousness. She imbued Yesua's life spark with all the qualities she loved best about the Father, including ones he'd lost when he was damaged by Tezcatlipoca. She chose begotten means to conceive Yesua to make him _immune _to dissolution."

"She shaped the life spark?" Audrey asked. "I thought the Mother couldn't shape matter?"

"The life spark is different from the matter that houses it," Mary said. "And it would be more accurate to say that the Mother is not _good _at shaping matter. Not incapable of it. You'll see … I'll train you to spot the heavenly host when they're scuttling around looking for someone to inhabit. I call them 'shadow cats.' The first time you realize what you're looking at, you'll understand."

"I suck at algebra," Audrey said. "No matter _how _many private tutors my parents hired to teach me. Is the Mother's inability to shape matter kind of like that?"

"Algebra didn't exist the last time I was here," Mary sighed. "But yes … I understand that analogy. It's a gross oversimplification of the problem, but it works. The Mother sucks at algebra."

"So why are _we _immune to the Father's ability to wipe out our memories or dissipate our physical forms?" Audrey asked. "While the angels are fair game?"

"We're not _entirely_ immune," Mary said. "Not only did the Mother imbue the progenitors of our species with what she thought were the best qualities of both deities, but she included a strong soul-deep yearning to challenge authority and find things out for ourselves. To _think _for ourselves. Qualities she _would _have imbued the cherubs with had it occurred to her the Father was capable of the things he later did. We've been a thorn in the Father's side ever since."

"But … the female angels rebelled," Audrey said. "And later … Lucifer. And now … Gabriel."

"The Mothers' base nature is thoughtful and passive," Mary said. "It's a quality that's necessary to use the vast power she wields or you simply destroy yourself and everyone around you. But she's not a door mat. When Tezcatlipoca overreacted to the Father showing up and objecting at their wedding by tearing him to shreds, it was not justified. The Mother rebelled. The angels are more like that. They only rebel if there's a really, really good _reason _to rebel."

"Like Michael," Audrey said.

"Michael," Mary said, remorse flashing across her dark, almond-shaped eyes. A wistful smile appeared on one corner of her mouth, and then was suppressed behind her usual friendly smile that did not quite meet her eyes.

As the train's whistle blew and the now-spry elderly conductor made the last call to board, Audrey's mind turned to Sandalphon and the 200 undecided angels, and then Lucifer and the Fallen. The train lurched forward on its rails towards its set destination and began to pick up speed. Just like her visions. All of the angels remained neutral. None would disobey their leader. What would it take to compel them to move so when the final battle came, her poor husband wasn't left standing alone against the insane Grigori?

"Tell me everything you know about getting angels off their tail feathers and sticking up for what's right…" Audrey asked Mary.


	175. Chapter 174

Chapter 174

Gabriel watched as they hitched three enormous MRL 'helper' engines onto the front of the train, in front of the three _existing _engines. A six-engine train! Meanwhile, an engineer was going down the length of the train opposite the cars with another engineer, checking to make sure the doors were closed and everything was secure.

"It's hotter than hell in here!" one of the passengers complained when the engineer went to shut the door. "Why can't we just leave it open?"

Gabriel tuned his highly-sensitive angelic hearing in to hear the answer as he, too, would not wish to be forced to ride with the doors shut once he settled in for the night.

"You can reopen it once we get to the other side," the engineer said. "The last thing you want to do is ride with the doors open up Bozeman Pass. Especially the side that faces Interstate 90."

The passenger started to argue, and then a second passenger tugged their arm and hissed something in their ear too low for Gabriel to hear. The passenger blanched and then capitulated while the engineer shut the door. Livingston Station had become an important stop on the train route, but Gabriel had not yet discerned why other than the fact three extra engines had been added. Cattle roamed the land as far as the eye could see the entire lengthy state of Montana. Why Livingston?

A large group of rough-looking men came out of the station where Gabriel had noted them congregating earlier and circled around their leader, another engineer. This one appeared to be in charge. The foreman. The men were bristling with shotguns, pistols and knives. Protection for the train, Gabriel surmised. With a few barked orders, the men started jogging down the length of the train and climbing onto various box cars.

"Looks like they're expecting trouble," Gunnlaeif said. "Should we offer our services?"

Gabriel grunted affirmation and glanced at Four Bears.

"I'm in," Four Bears said with a nod. "The best protection is always your own."

"Tell the others," Gabriel said. "I'll alert Thamuz. He's been holding back so he doesn't spook the cattle and horses."

"Or _us,_" Gunnlaeif said. "I mean … I know Mary says he's harmless. But … _DUDE!_ He's a … dinosaur … dragon … whatever the hell he is! One look at him and I want to shit my pants!"

"If these people are expecting trouble," Gabriel said, "then we'll use that to our advantage."

"Thamuz appears to be even-tempered and truthful," Four Bears said, his carefully measured speech indicating he had given this matter considerable thought. "He has stated the limitations to his loyalty. They are no more unreasonable than any of ours. Unless his mate is freed to rejoin him or the hijackers turn out to be his brothers, I feel we can trust him."

"If there were insane Grigori preying upon the supply routes in these parts," Gabriel said, "we would have heard about it. They appear to be expecting human predators."

Gabriel left the job of coordinating the others in Gunn and Four Bears capable hands. He fluttered over to catch up with the foreman, who was rapidly walking down the entire length of the nearly two-mile long supply train that linked this part of the country with the major supply ports on either end. Seattle … and Chicago. Both former death zones that were recovering like New Orleans had by the mere fact that their deep water ports were too critically important to be allowed to languish in the hands of the all-too-common scumbags who had unfortunately survived Yahweh's purges.

"We'd like to offer our assistance," Gabriel offered, noting that the foreman didn't appear to be too surprised at his appearance.

"Any assistance your kind can offer would be appreciated," the foreman said. "Tuma'el and Yeter'el have seized control of the cities on either end of this route, but their protection only extends so far. Out here, we're on our own."

"It's just me," Gabriel said. "The two others are but boys. They can patrol the air and look for trouble, but I won't risk them in a _real _battle. The others who are with me are quite handy with a rifle. They're willing to help guard the cars in whatever manner you see fit."

"Where's Mary's pet dragon going to ride?" the foreman asked bluntly. "We've all heard the rumors and spotted something _big _patrolling the air around Yellowstone the past couple of years."

"Thamuz can be trusted to defend this train," Gabriel said. "But I suggest you don't let him hear you call him a pet. He's as intelligent as you or I."

"So the hippies claim," the foreman said. "I had this dog once…"

"Your dog can't recite the periodic table of elements while cleaning the supper out of his teeth using one of your bones as a toothpick," Gabriel warned. "Thamuz keeps to himself. He'll fly most of the way to watch for trouble and only settle onto the roof of one of the boxcars when he becomes tired. As will I. Warn your men not to shoot at anything with wings unless it becomes obvious they're unfriendly."

"That sounds like a plan," the foreman said, turning to point where he had been travelling to. "The cars they keep trying to hit are the oil tankers towards the back of the train. They ride in souped up vehicles along Interstate 90 which runs along the railroad tracks and hit us when we're chugging up Bozemen Pass at a snails' pace. The first thing they always try is get a man onto the train to uncouple the back of the train. If they can't get on and they're desperate for fuel, they'll shoot the front oil tanker to blow it up so it derails the train or blows apart the coupling to the rest of the train."

Gabriel glanced forward to where the caboose and boxcars carrying passengers sat right behind the main engine. The setup had appeared peculiar at first glance. Cabooses were supposed to go at the rear of the train. Not the front. Now he understood why. It appeared the highwaymen had adapted to the new reality of well-guarded supply trains being the primary mode of moving supplies in post-apocalyptic Earth instead of the interstate highway system.

"How slow does this thing get as we head up the pass?" Gabriel asked.

"This line runs over 5,700 feet above sea level," the foreman explained, pointing west towards the Rocky Mountains. "That might not sound like a lot, but for a train pulling a million tons of freight, we might as well be scaling a cliff. By the time we get to the top of the pass, this thing will barely be doing 7 miles per hour. We're sitting ducks. And then, heading back down, we have the opposite problem. We have to slow this train down enough to get through the Bozeman Tunnel without derailing."

Gabriel nodded, the wheels turning. "How can we be most helpful to you and your men?"

"It's not simply a matter of knowing they're coming," the foreman said. "This train comes through once a week and somebody _always _tries to hit us. Usually more than once. There's more than one group of highwaymen along this route. Knowing what they're coming at us with, however, would be useful. There's a big difference between defending against the lone group of gunmen on horseback who thinks they can run and jump onto a train like some old wild-west move and say 'stick 'em up' and a well organized group with RPG missiles and machine guns mounted onto the back of a pickup truck."

"We can do that," Gabriel said. "What about my people? The ones who can't fly. Where do you want them stationed?"

"I only have Chris's word that you're on our side," the foreman said. "Nothing personal. We've had gunman planted on my crew before. Can't be too careful. I'd prefer if your guys split up and shadowed my guys guarding the passenger and cattle cars. Highwaymen aren't too interested in passengers or cattle, but they're not above shooting at them anyways."

Gabriel started to object and then decided to shut up. While he had still been Michael's second in command in charge of protecting heaven, if somebody he didn't know were to walk into the pearly gates and announce they wanted to help, he'd send them packing. Even when it was a human city he had been sent to protect, Gabriel had always been cautious to trust people he didn't know. Trust had to be earned.

"Agreed," Gabriel said. "My wife is riding in the caboose and our companions are riding in the boxcars. It will take the pressure off your men so they can focus on the _real _targets. The fuel supplies."

The foreman appeared to be relieved Gabriel didn't argue with him.

"If _you_ want to go back there and work with my men," the foreman said. "I'll be happy to have you. Who am I to tell the Left Hand of God that he can't protect my train."

"I am Fallen now," Gabriel said bluntly. "What actions I do, I do on my own. My being here has nothing to do with god."

"So I have heard," the foreman said. "Sometimes I catch your webcast. I assume that's your young cameraman arguing with my crew about setting up wires on the roof of the boxcar right now?"

Gabriel glanced over to where Jose' was animatedly arguing with one of the train engineers about where to hook up his portable satellite dish on the roof of the train.

"The Bozeman Tunnel will peel anything off the roof of this train taller than a man pressed flat against the roof," the foreman continued. "Including _you._ You're too big. Perhaps _you _can reason with him?"

"I will tell him to wait until we get to the other side," Gabriel said, sighing resignedly. He didn't know exactly what Mary Magdaline had done to heal Jose', but ever since she had, the young man had become a royal pain in the ass. Part genius. Part petty tyrant. One of the hippies, or Freegans, or whatever they called themselves these days, had been a close compatriot of some human computer genius named Bill Gates and had compared the two. Although Jose' still had numerous strange behavior quirks that were outright annoying, the force of a lifetime of habit, the young man no longer _needed _to take his medication to remain lucid. Gabriel had already decided he liked Jose' a lot better when he had been prone to hallucinations.

Gabriel fluttered back to the passenger cars to brief the others. In the past, he might have argued with the foreman about the best use of deploying his men, but not now. Now … the only thing Gabriel cared about was getting his little Prophet into an area with a modern hospital as quickly as possible so she could birth their child safely. Anything they accomplished in addition to that was just gravy.


	176. Chapter 175

Chapter 175

"You look hot," Non Gae said, gracefully sitting down in the seat the young mother with colicky twins had just vacated to take them to the closet-sized caboose restroom. "Here." The North Korean kisaeng handed Audrey a beautiful white fan with pink peonies hand-painted on the lacquered silk. Non Gae had her own equally beautiful black fan.

"How do you always look so beautiful and graceful?" Audrey asked, awkwardly opening the fan and gratefully fanning herself in the sweltering caboose. "Even when it's 98 degrees outside with 98 percent humidity?"

"Much practice," Non Gae said, her black, almond-shaped eyes glittering with amusement at Audrey's grousing. "Long trip. Gabriel send me to babysit. Defend against trouble. About time you learn to use."

"I _am _using it," Audrey groused, fanning herself with a vengeance. "I can't _ever _remember being this hot in my entire life. Not even when Gabriel and I were stuck in the Mojave desert!"

"Fan not just to fan," Non Gae said, her meticulously red-painted lips curving up into a secretive smile as she flipped open her black fan and shut it again with a single practiced movement. "Is weapon. Don't hit self with ends of tines. Razor sharp. You cut self."

"Oh," Audrey said, stopping her fanning and giving the fan she had opened before her a closer look. "But it's just … bamboo?"

"Is buchae," Non Gae said. "Korean fighting fan. Wood not bamboo. Is pak dahl. Kind of birch. Grow in iciest mountains in North Korea. Very strong. Like steel. But light."

"Ouch!" Audrey exclaimed, sticking her finger in her mouth just in time to catch the blood from dripping onto the white cotton shirt that was currently plastered to her chest. "_That's _steel!"

"Steel razor tips," Non Gae said. "And wire … here … run through end of fan. Will stop a sword. Tips cut like scalpel. Very sharp. You be more careful next time. Yes?"

"This isn't like your metal fans," Audrey said, feeling pleased with herself as she practiced flipping the fan in and out and nonchalantly fanning herself with the supposed 'weapon.' Non Gae had a pair of razor sharp stainless steel fans that were most obviously a type of weapon. When the kisaeng opened and shut _those _particular models, it reminded Audrey of the sound of razor-sharp angel wings. "This fan seems almost … normal. Like a fan you'd carry to a cotillion ball."

"That the point," Non Gae said. "Buchae no look like weapon. "Hang from belt. Fan with it. Hide in plain sight. But fighting fan a weapon if you know how to use. Man grab you here. You use like this. Break wrist."

Non Gae had Audrey demonstrate grabbing her arm while Non Gae showed her how to close the fan and use it as a type of leverage to break the hold. It was an entertaining way to spend a long, boring train ride while stuck in a pair of seats opposite one another. At least until the young mother with the colicky twins came back.

"That's useful," Audrey said, flipping the fan open once more and using it for its intended purpose. Moving air around her sweltering body so she didn't overheat. "I've seen you use your steel ones to go for the throat. Could you teach me that move?"

"First you learn basics," Non Gae said. "Buchae not only weapon, but also beautiful dance form. Dance teach to fight. Long trip. I teach you hand portions of dance. I satisfied you serious about art form, I teach you rest later."

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Non Gae patiently taught Audrey how to gracefully flip open and shut the fan in a variety of directions, fan herself, and then do a wrist movement which caused the fan to move in a complete circle around the arm in a pinwheel movement.

"Non Gae?" Gunnlaeif said, sticking his head into the caboose. "Gabriel says to expect trouble. Highwaymen ahead with pickup trucks. It's time to rock and roll, my sweet." Gunn gave Audrey a wink.

"Thank you for teaching me," Audrey said, reluctantly closing the fan and holding it out for Non Gae to take. "Maybe you'd be willing to give me another lesson sometime?"

"You keep that one," Non Gae said, pointing to the beautiful fan. "My first buchae in kisaeng academy. Dance as group. Most people no know is also weapon. It honor me you keep. Learn to use it."

"Thank you," Audrey said, immediately flipping the beautiful lacquered fan open and using it for its intended purpose. To move the air around her body so the sweat that was pouring out of her pores in disgusting buckets would evaporate fast enough to cool her body. Glancing at Gunn, she noticed the look of pride Gunn had as he looked at Non Gae. "Hey? Are you two just … friends. Or an item?"

"Gunn is baby," Non Gae said evasively, the slight smile-crinkle around her dark, almond shape eyes contradicting her words as she spoke. "Ten years younger than me. Man think woman is his, start making demands. No do this. No do that. I no like man tell me what to do. Been on own too long. Past not good. Not kind of woman man want to stay with."

Audrey glanced at Gunn once again. It had become obvious to the group some time ago that although Gunn gave Non Gae her space to do her 'work' when it needed to be done, that he was obviously quite taken by her. She had watched Gunn vigorously bed an endless string of Dot Gov groupies since shortly after they had left Santa Fe. An activity he had kept discreet at first due to Gabriel's moral condemnation of such casual relationships but later chosen not to hide anymore. Gunn still had his groupies, but he only went with one when Non Gae was occupied elsewhere. She wasn't certain if that was a good thing, or a bad one. Non Gae struck her as the kind of woman who would have no qualms chewing a man like Gunn up and spitting him out if he got too possessive.

"Anyways … thanks," Audrey said, doing a not-too-terrible facsimile of the rotating fan motion Non Gae had just taught her. "I look forward to our next lesson."

Audrey stared out the window after they left. Trouble. Again. She had expected it the moment she had seen Gabriel stride by snapping orders at the others, lacing up his breastplate and armor. Off in the distance, Thamuz could be seen, an unusually large reddish-brown 'bat' flying around in broad daylight. She pitied the poor fools who messed with this train like some idiot dog chasing a car. What were they going to do with it when they caught it? The damned thing was nearly two miles long!

The young mother with the two colicky twins came back down the aisle, a baby slung on each side of her chest in a sling, sound asleep at last. She plopped back into the seat Non Gae had just vacated. Nonchalantly flipping open the fan, Audrey proceeded to cool herself.

"That's a beautiful fan," the young mother said. "I always thought the Chinese made such beautiful things."

"It's Korean," Audrey said with a satisfied smile. "And yes … they do. Very _useful _beautiful things."


	177. Chapter 176

Chapter 176

"Stay in formation and stick together," Gabriel shouted to the two Nephilim boys over the wind as he coasted above the train. "Glide above 1,500 feet and patrol a one-mile perimeter. That will avoid all but the most accurate sniper bullets. If they send reinforcements, blow your dog whistle three times so we have a heads up."

"We have our bows," Anu protested. "We can help!"

"You don't have any armor," Gabriel snapped, pointing down to where an assortment of souped-up, weaponized motor vehicles was racing towards the train as it slowed to a crawl just before it crested the 5,700 foot ridge at Bozeman pass from three different directions. "Look at them. They're pros. The first thing they're going to do is take out our eyes and ears. That's you!"

"I can do this!" Anu exclaimed, his eyes flashing with anger. "I'm not a baby!"

"No," Gabriel said. "You're not. You and Ningizzada are my eyes and ears. Most missions are _not _glamorous. I need to know I can rely upon you to follow orders."

"We will," Ningizzada reassured, banking slightly so he moved just close enough to Anu to thwack him with one of his wings. "You need eyes and ears, you've got them."

"Why can't Thamuz be your eyes and ears?" Anu sulked.

"Because Thamuz has armor," Gabriel said. "And they're not expecting him."

"They're not expecting _us, _either," Ningizzada observed.

"Enough!" Gabriel growled, glowering at the both of them. "Patrol the air at 1,500 feet. Blow the whistle three times if there's more trouble on the way. That's an order!"

"Yes, sir," the two boys grumbled together.

Gabriel gave the both of them his sternest, most no-nonsense expression before banking left and descending towards the back of the train.

On the way past the cattle cars, Gabriel gave Four Bears the signal indicating which three directions trouble was headed at them from and how many vehicles each way. Coordinating aerial dogfights had been a hell of a lot easier when he had still been connected to Yahweh's hive mind. Back then, all he had to do was think of which angel he wished to relay a message to and they could communicate via thought. Now … all these millennia he had thought human soldiers were dimwits and now _he _was the most dimwitted of all, unaccustomed as he was to using the unwieldy lesser forms of communication. Even the Nephilim boys were better at communicating during a coordinated attack than _he _was.

Gabriel landed on the last grain carrier car before the oil tankers began to relay the details to the engineer who had been assigned foreman for defense purposes.

"Eleven vehicles," Gabriel stated, pointing in the direction the train was travelling. "Coming at us from ten o'clock, two o'clock, and a rear guard from seven o'clock. Based on our current speed, it appears they're timing it to hit the train just after the engine crests the peak but the rest of the train lags behind."

"This is bad," the foreman said, frowning. "Usually they go directly for the rear of the train for the oil tankers long before it hits the peak."

"Won't the train will be starting to pick up momentum, boss?" one of the gun slinging deputies asked. "Maybe we can outrun them?"

"This train is nearly two miles long," the foreman said. "We'll be travelling less than 10 mph when we crest the ridge. It takes nearly fifteen minutes for the entire train to crest and it won't start to pick up speed until most of the mass of the train is beyond the crest. Wherever they hit, from that point backwards are sitting ducks for that 10 minutes."

A series of shrill whistles rang down the train. The signal from ahead. The foreman was right. The highwaymen were using an unusual tactic this time.

"You'd better head up front, Mister Gabriel," the foreman said. "It appears they might be thinking of a hostage situation this time."

Gabriel didn't need to be told twice. Nodding once, he immediately took to the air and headed back to where he had spotted Four Bears positioned with one of the regular hired guns who defended the train.

"Trouble appears to be aimed right for _us,"_ Gabriel said.

"Why should today be different than any other day?" Four Bears said blandly, brandishing his rifle which he had decorated using a combination of bald eagle feathers and one of Gabriel's smaller wing feathers molted at some point during their trip. The hippies had talked the no-nonsense chief of the Three Affiliated Tribes into acting more … native. To release his inner spirit. Or whatever new age nonsense the commune members were always preaching.

"The Foreman fears they may have a hostage situation in mind," Gabriel said.

"First they have to get through _us,"_ Four Bears said, his expression grim. "No going off half-cocked like the last mission. I don't feel like bailing your tailfeathers out of a jam again. Especially if you start talking to evil spirits in your head again."

"If we run into any of those evil spirits," Gabriel reminded him, "we gave Thamuz our word we would try to trap it long enough for Mary to see if there's any way to help it. Capturing a heavenly host and healing it is the most critical mission this group has at the moment. It's the one carrot tasty enough to get the insane Grigori to play ball with the Savior."

They both glanced over to where Thamuz now raced towards them, hugging the tree line as he flew so he wouldn't be seen by anyone who wasn't expecting him. Gabriel had mixed feelings about fighting on the same side as his old enemy who had once been his friend. With his memories restored, he could remember playing with the Grigori far longer than the blink of an eye, in heavenly terms, that they had been enemies. Unfortunately, his recent memories of the insane double-souled creatures wantonly destroying anything and everything Yahweh built had all been formed at a time when he couldn't remember _why _the Grigori were so hell bent on destruction. The sudden retrieval of suppressed memories couldn't erase the feelings he had felt at the time.

"You'd better head up and warn the others," Four Bears said to Gabriel. He turned to nod at the gunslinger he was partnered with. "We've got this covered back here. I'll blow the whistle if things turn dire." The two men hunkered down flat on the roof of the car, one of them pointed in each direction, to avoid making easy targets of themselves as Gabriel headed up the train to warn the others.

The shit hit the fan right at the caboose. Before Gabriel could even warn Gunnlaeif and Non Gae, who he had assigned to guard the passenger car. A shot rang out from the diesel fuel tanker which fed the engines. Cindy. Taking potshots at the insurgents. The party was beginning without him. Gabriel raced towards the front of the train in time to see Gunn hacking at a guy precariously balanced on the edge of a pickup truck racing alongside the tracks, attempting to leap onto the little flat travel platform behind the caboose. Two cars up, a second pickup truck was attempting to do the same onto the main engine. Cindy fired again, aimed in the other direction. The second group of vehicles he had seen converging from two o'clock must have been attempting the same thing on the other side.

"'Bout…" *THWACK* "freakin'" *THWACK* "time!" Gunn huffed in between thwacks of his machete as Gabriel swooped down and knocked the man off balance, causing him to fall in between the pickup truck and train.

Gabriel didn't bother to answer, instead turning to smash in the skull with his mace of the highwayman who suddenly realized he was under attack from the air and swung the machine gun mounted to the light bar of the pickup truck. Without hesitation, Gabriel smashed his fist straight through the roof of the pickup truck, ignoring the pain as metal tore the flesh in his hand, and peeled back the roof.

"Sonofabitch!" Gabriel yelped, using an expression he often heard Gunn shout in a similar situation when experiencing unanticipated pain. For some reason, Gabriel couldn't remember feeling any pain the _last _time he had performed such a routine maneuver. The day he had torn the roof off the police cruiser.

"Get the fuck out of my truck!" the driver screamed at Gabriel as he simultaneously turned to shoot Gabriel in the face.

Luckily, Gabriel remembered the _last _time he had torn the roof off a car. His little Prophet had shot him in the face with a flare gun. Gabriel expected it. He ducked to one side, barely missing the bullet, and then grabbed the man's wrist, bending it backwards until it snapped.

The driver screamed and jerked the wheel too hard to the left. An unconscious effort to get away from Gabriel as he snapped the man's arm. Jagged support brackets protruding from the roof he had just ripped off captured Gabriel's torso, preventing him from simply flaring his wings and escaping as the truck rolled. He was trapped. The momentum of the truck flipping over carried him with it, crushing him beneath the cab as the truck pinwheeled onto it's back.

Pain.

The roll continued, giving Gabriel a glimpse of the brightest blue sky he had ever seen, and then continued the roll over a second time.

More pain.

The truck skidded a distance on its back, dragging him on the pavement, before coming to a halt.

The pain of flesh tearing from bone.

Gabriel gasped for breath and could take none. The truck had landed so it pinned him beneath it.

Audrey! He couldn't go. Not now! It wasn't time! He hadn't purchased her freedom with his life!

The pain was excruciating. He fought it. He couldn't take a breath. The truck was crushing his lungs. The last thing his brain registered as he passed out was the curious racing of the engine and sensation of the tires still racing fruitlessly in the air from the overturned pickup truck.


	178. Chapter 177

Chapter 177

Heaven exploded into his mind as his consciousness was momentarily catapulted out of his body. Stars. The sound of Thrones and Virtues murmuring to one another as they painstakingly orchestrated the movement of stars and galaxies. A heavenly choir rang through the heavens as the Seraphim sang songs of love and beauty in Yahweh's name. A tendril of consciousness reached towards him. Light filled his heart with warmth, erasing the strange sense of disembodied pain that felt like a distant echo from his mortal shell, urging him to let go and come home.

"Father," Gabriel whispered, grabbing the tendril of his own consciousness connecting him to his mortal shell and reassuring himself the thread was still sturdy and strong.

'_The Father says to say the word and choose to come home,' Uriel said, a hint of disapproval in his voice, 'and all shall be forgiven.'_

"My wife," Gabriel said, struggling to resist the call of heaven as he fought to fully regain consciousness. "I can't abandon her."

Pain. He welcomed it. So long as he could feel the pain, he knew he was still alive. He reached back and embraced the pain of separation like the lover it had become. It was what allowed him to exist separately from the will of the heavenly Father and gave him free will. His consciousness was his own.

'_Fool!' Uriel snarled. 'Why do you persist in this course of action?'_

Now that he knew what he was listening for, Gabriel could hear it. Fear laced the voices of the Thrones and Virtues. The song sung by the heavenly choir had a sour note underlying their song. The underlying vibration the universe made as it moved through the heavens was … discordant. The tendril of the Yahweh's consciousness which reached towards him was … off. Gabriel could now sense the gaps in Yahweh's soul, grown larger during his absence.

Yes … the Father had a soul. Just like him. And it was damaged. Like the two-souled Grigori. Now that he knew what to look for, he could sense the fragments of the void creature the Mother had been forced to incorporate back into Yahweh's consciousness when she had carved his soul-pieces out of Tezcatlipoca's incorporeal form and reconstituted them back into a semblance of her mate.

Tormenting him…

Whispering…

Urging him to just _take _what he needed, wager be damned, and force Gabriel to come home.

There _was _a Devil. And it lived inside of the Father. For as long as the universe had existed, Yahweh had been doing battle with _himself._ He refused to let the cherubs go because he had been using their souls as a crutch to fill the voids within his own.

"The Father is damaged," Gabriel replied, the exertion of speaking shooting pains through his mortal lungs and making his voice little more than a whisper. "He doesn't know how to make himself whole."

Gabriel couldn't take a complete breath. Something was crushing his chest and had pinned his arms so he couldn't push against it. He adjusted, taking fast, shallow breaths to strengthen his mortal shell.

'_Why does he offer –you- amnesty?' Uriel snarled, his jealousy apparent in his voice. 'You have betrayed him!'_

"Because I have something he needs," Gabriel said, the excruciating pressure nearly causing him to pass out again as fire burned down the underside of his body. "And I won't just let him take it from me."

'_Pain,'_ alien thoughts whispered in his mind. _'Focus on the pain. Embrace it. The pain is excruciating, but not mortal. You are not in danger of dying unless you choose to let go.' _Gabriel's own thoughts? Or another consciousness? The consciousness felt familiar, but did not feel like his own.

'_Then you will suffer without mercy in the Keep,' Uriel said coldly, turning his back on him. "For all eternity like the traitor you are!'_

"Audrey," Gabriel cried out, fighting to stay conscious. He was more vulnerable when he was unconscious and in pain. The Father had reached out twice to offer amnesty and once attempted to have the heavenly host possess him. Gabriel focused on his breathing and the sound of the racing engine of the truck which had him pinned beneath it, forcing his consciousness back down onto the Earth. He had friends now. _Human _friends. They would come for him.

It felt like an eternity.

Gabriel screamed as the weight was suddenly lifted off his chest, nearly blacking out from the pain of the release of pressure from his ribcage.

"I've got you, old friend," a deep, familiar voice said, gathering Gabriel in his arms as though he was a little boy. A blurry image of reddish-brown danced in front of his eyes and refused to come into focus. Memories of riding on Thamuz's back as a cherub came into his mind, urging him to trust. They used to be friends.

It hurt. Being moved hurt. But he had to get back to his little Prophet. She would help him resist the call of heaven.

"Don't let the Father take me," Gabriel pleaded. "It's not time."

"He'll have to reinter me in the Keep, first," Thamuz promised, crouching and then leaping into the air. "Sleep. Mary will have you all fixed up in no time."

The sound of Thamuz's powerful leathery wings beating against the air and sudden sense of weightlessness cued Gabriel they were now airborne. Gabriel had not been carried since he was a cherub. He was too big. Only a few of the Grigori had ever been strong enough. Thamuz was one of them.

Gabriel passed out…

"Gabriel…" he heard his little Prophet sob, tears in her voice as she touched his cheek. "Please wake up." The feel of a train in motion reassuringly vibrated up through the floor into his back, causing both pain and comfort. He was still here.

He could hear the same compulsion in his beloved's voice that he had heard the first time she had compelled him to 'get up, you jackass' at the base of the cliff. The sweet scent of her unique human essence, laced with underlying scent of their child, filled his senses. Gabriel smiled despite the pain. So long as he could smell her, hear her voice, feel her touch, she would give him the strength to resist the call of heaven.

Warmth filled his body. He resisted. He didn't want any part of the Father's enticements. They were a trap.

"Stop resisting, you idiot!" a female voice snapped. "It's just me. If we wait for your wife to heal you, we'll be here for a month! We can't afford to have you wallow in bed for that long!"

Mary. Blunt. As always. Gabriel stopped resisting. The warmth resumed. It was familiar, and yet different from the gentle warmth of his little Prophet or fiery heat of the Father. It lacked that underlying thread of neediness, healing as a means to control, that Gabriel could now detect in the Father's consciousness.

"Ouch!" Gabriel yelped as he felt rib bones crack back into place. Instantly, his breathing became easier. Oxygen flowed uninhibited into his lungs.

"You're hurting him!" Audrey cried out.

"Stop whimpering like a baby and move your arms and legs so I can see where else you're banged up," Mary said. The words were blunt, but the compassion in her voice and warmth flowing through her hands contradicted her harsh words.

"I'm seeing double," Gabriel said, unable to focus.

"Audrey," Mary said. "You take care of that. Put your hands on either side of his temples and just focus on helping him clear his mind."

"I don't know how…" Audrey started to protest.

"You _do!_" Mary said. "You do it all the time. Just picture pushing what's in your heart down and out your hands and into his head."

Audrey kissed him from wherever her position was upside-down from where he lay and then did as Mary said. Gabriel felt the familiar, gentle warmth he associated with his wife's unique soul energy soak into his skin where her hands touched his face and gently clear his mind. The three Mary Magdalines crouched over his chest, unlacing his breastplate to check for damage beneath the armor, gradually merged into a single human form. Gabriel reached up with one hand to touch the hand on the side of his head, his little Prophet, to reassure her, and registered the sensation of lack of skin wherever flesh had been exposed from beneath the heavenly armor.

Gabriel didn't quite manage to suppress the groan of pain which escaped his lips. He didn't want to frighten his little Prophet any more than he already had. Although he was in excruciating pain and had broken several bones which would have required at least six weeks to heal, his armor had protected him. At no point had Gabriel felt his mortal shell would fail unless his friends failed to retrieve him from the wreckage or he _chose _to abandon it. But there would be no explaining that to _her._

"Hold on," Mary said. "You've got a pretty nasty case of road burn. You're damned lucky the car was going the same speed as the train and you were wearing armor or you would have been road kill."

Gabriel yelped again as he felt a broken thigh bone snap back into place and warmth flow through the flesh.

"Quit whimpering and move that leg so I know I set it right," Mary snapped.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have the bedside manner of a wolverine?" Gabriel groused, soaking up the warmth that Mary gave willingly to help him heal.

"We should introduce her to Ann," Gunnlaeif called from somewhere out of sight behind Mary. "I think they'd get along marvelously well."

"Audrey," Mary snapped. "You finish up here with the road burn and let me know if I missed anything. I've got two other wounded to attend to! Two of the guards have been shot."

Mary's stronger warmth suddenly cut off. Just like that. Leaving him basking in the subtle, more gentle warmth of his wife. Something wet dropped onto his forehead. She was crying.

"Little Prophet," Gabriel said, reaching up to look at where his upside-down wife kneeled at his head in the narrow aisle of the caboose. "I'm okay. Just a few scratches."

"You idiot!" Audrey hiccoughed. "I saw the whole thing from the window of the train. I thought my heart was going to stop when that truck ever flipped over. Why didn't you just fly away?"

"Got hung up in the roll bar," Gabriel said, wincing in pain as he grabbed one of the seats and used it as leverage to pull himself into a sitting position, his back now turned to her. "If the car had rolled the other direction, I would have made it clear."

Hands reached from all around him to help him up. Other passengers on the train. Strangers. Murmuring reassurances. Touching him. Steadying them as he lurched awkwardly to his feet and made his way to the nearest seat. Lending him whatever strength they could to help him heal. The gift. Every person on that train possessed it to some degree or another. Just not as well-developed as Mary. It was unconscious. Untrained. The gift was like learning to read. Few spontaneously learned to read without being taught, but nearly all _could _if somebody took the time. The gift of healing was the same. Human nature, when not corrupted by evil, was to _help_. They chose to help him to whatever capability they possessed. He could feel it. Why had he never felt it before?

Gabriel realized he had made the right choice in refusing the Father's offer of amnesty. Again. The Father had created humans in his own image. Right down to the fracture in his soul. Gabriel understood now what the Savior had been trying to tell them all along. Michael had been right. Humans just needed guidance.

And so did the Father…


	179. Chapter 178

Chapter 178

"It's so weird not having my visions," Audrey said, running her fingers through Gabriel's soft under-feathers, trying to find the sensitive little spot that would make him burst out laughing. "What a relief!"

"I know what you're up to, imp," Gabriel said, twitching away his wing and attempting to distract her by cupping one luscious breast in his hand. "And it won't work."

"Spoilsport!" Audrey mock-pouted. "We have other ways to subject naughty cherubs to torture!" Playfully she ran her fingers straight down his abdomen to where the happy trail of peach-fuzz which started at his navel thickened into black curls at his manhood. She gave a victorious laugh as Gabriel's already-awake manhood twitched in interest.

"Don't humans have a law against cruel and unusual punishment?" Gabriel asked, grabbing her hand and redirecting it to less … frustrated … parts of his body.

"Poor pretty angel," Audrey taunted in a sing-song voice, evading his hands and making a beeline for the head of Gabriel's frustrated manhood once more. "Can't get no satisfaction?"

"You're worse than the heavenly host," Gabriel growled, grabbing both of Audrey's hands and pinning them together in a 'prayer' position with one of _his _large, strong hands, pinning them against his chest so she couldn't move them.

"He can't get no," Audrey sang to the tune of an old Mick Jagger song, "He can't get no … satisfaction … no no no!" Wriggling as best she could on the slippery bed of feathers that was Gabriel's wings, Audrey slyly slipped her leg up between Gabriels thighs and moved so that her thigh lightly brushed the bottom of his testicles.

"Honey," Gabriel hissed with combined pleasure and sexual frustration. "Please! Don't tease me when we can't do anything about it!"

"Who says we can't do anything about it?" Audrey taunted, doing the exact same teasing movement a second time. "We'll just have to get really, really creative. That's all!"

"Mpfh!" Gabriel groaned. "That's what you said the last time and I ended up hurting you. Let's just cuddle." He pulled her in closer, fluffing his feathers and caressing her body with his wings, lightly tickling down her back with the soft, tiny feathers of the leading edge of one muscular wing.

"Mmmmm…." Audrey murmured happily, stretching up along his torso and arching her back with delight. She loved the feel of being massaged by angel wings. "I'll take a large order of whatever you want to dish out. Supersized. With fries."

"You're craving French fries?" Gabriel asked. "Do you need me to find some for you?"

"No, silly!" Audrey said, giving him a quick kiss on his chest for his offer to go out foraging in the middle of the night for whatever strange food craving she was experiencing at the moment. "It's an expression. From the old days. You would drive through a fast food restaurant and order your meal. And then you'd tell them to make it larger with extra fries. All good stuff. Only more of it."

"Weren't fast food restaurants really bad for your health?" Gabriel asked, perplexed. "Why would you want more of something that was bad for you?"

"The same reason I want more of _you!"_ Audrey said. "Because you taste so good!" She suddenly found Gabriel's ticklish spot and went after it without mercy.

"Ho ho ho ho hee hee hee hee STOP IT!" Gabriel giggled like a little girl and then bellowed in his most fearsome voice.

"Will you two shut up over there!" a female voice yelled out in the dark.

"They're incorrigible!" a second male voice said.

"Like Energizer bunnies!" a third voice said that sounded suspiciously like Gunn.

"No wonder the first thing he did was knock her up!" the first voice said. Cindy. "Eight months pregnant and they're _still _all over each other. They're worse than the Reverend and Lyubitshke!"

"Hey!" a fourth voice complained from the other end of the car. "Do I hear someone taking my name in vain?" The Reverend.

Unfortunately, in the Spartan accommodations of the cargo train, the best the disciples had been able to do was bed down in the hay area of the two railroad cars carrying their horses, separating out illusory 'rooms' using blankets. It wasn't the first time they'd been jammed in such close quarters. In fact, for the others, it was the norm. With three married couples and one quasi-relationship pairing, they'd all just learned to pretend they couldn't hear what the others were doing when they were 'doing it.'

Gabriel was a very private person. Normally the secretive archangel would have whisked her away to a hidden 'bower' someplace for a night of wing-thumping fun. But with it being so close to Audrey's due date, being carried airborne had just become too risky. She'd gotten so large that lovemaking had become uncomfortable and nearly impossible. Two weeks ago, she'd finally asked Gabriel to stop searching for a private bower and just bed down with the others. But sometimes … they got carried away and forgot where they were.

"How much you want to bet six months after that baby of theirs is born," the second voice said which sounded suspiciously like the Senator, "he's got her knocked up _again._"

"I'll bet you a hundred dollars," the third voice yelled. Definitely Gunn.

"Shhhh…." Audrey whispered at Gabriel between giggles. "See what you did?"

"_-I-_ did?" Gabriel murmured in her ear as he adjusted his grip on her and nuzzled the side of her neck beneath her ear, tasting her flesh as he went. "If they think _that _is bad, they should be flies on the wall when we really_ do _make love."

Audrey giggled at the image of Gabriel knocking all the pictures off the wall and smashing furniture during one of their amorous lovemaking sessions. His voice was rumbling and low as he spoke the way she loved to hear. The voice which had carried the word of god for millennia, now whispering sweet words of love into her ear. His voice was so erotic when he used his 'voice' that Audrey almost didn't _need _to make love to feel her energy intertwine with his in holy union. One amorous whisper from an aroused Gabriel and Audrey felt her heart race and her feminine core tighten as her knees turned to mush.

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," Audrey whispered, nibbling on his lower lip and then kissing the slight cleft of his chin. She snuggled in closer to his torso, relishing the feel of Gabriel's hard, muscular abdomen flex beneath his skin. Or as close as she could _get_ to him given the large obstruction currently impeding them.

The 'obstruction' kicked.

"Our child appears to agree with me," Gabriel whispered. "Not even born yet and she's already thumping her wings against the wall. What's the saying human fathers have? I'll need to polish the shotgun?"

Audrey giggled and snuggled closer into his arms and wings, relishing the feel. Loved. Never in her entire life had she known such love until she had fallen in love with Gabriel. Protected. She felt safe. Hope. With all twelve disciples found and the visions ended, for the first time she had hope they would defeat whatever forces clamored for Gabriel's life and work something out.

"How soon after _this _one is born do you _want _to try for a second one?" Audrey asked happily, sliding her hand down to grasp the head of his manhood and give him an affectionate little squeeze. "Are you going to keep me barefoot and pregnant like your brothers wives?"

Gabriel stiffened beneath her touch.

"Honey?" Audrey asked, wondering if perhaps she was making an incorrect assumption. "If you don't _want _any more children, that's okay, too."

"I would be honored if you would give me as many children to love as you felt comfortable bearing," Gabriel said at last, silencing her with a hungry kiss. "You know I came from a very large family. One thousand brothers and sisters. I can think of no fate crueler than to be raised as an only child."

There was almost desperation in his kiss. A yearning for something Audrey knew he feared to hope for. Gabriel was more pessimistic about the future than she was. He was _afraid _to speak of the future, fearing making plans would jinx things.

"Sing for me, Gabriel?" Audrey asked at last. Singing always took his mind off his worries. "Could you sing the Song of Songs?"

"As you wish," Gabriel whispered. Quietly enough not to disturb the others, Gabriel sang the song he had sung to proclaim his love for her to the heavens Christmas Eve at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. It was a song about love. Making love. Love in all of its beauty and manifestations.

Audrey shivered with pleasure as Gabriel's voice softly took on the subtle undertone of chords as the song caressed her ears. No human vocal cords could sing such notes. She hoped their child would inherit their fathers' heavenly voice. Pressing her ear against the skin of his bare chest so she could hear his heart beat, she listened as the notes softly vibrated in tempo, quite literally singing what was in his heart. It was the most beautiful song she had ever heard, and he would only sing it for _her_. Her angel Gabriel.

"I love you," she whispered, pressing her ear against his heart as he continued the song and relishing a feeling contentment so profound she felt as though she were one soul with him. "I wish this moment would never end."


	180. Chapter 179

Chapter 179

Dogs barked through the eight-foot chain link fence. At the top, three strands of barbed wire added another two feet to the height. An assortment of men and women with guns patrolled the grounds. Even _more _men with rifles were stationed on the rooftop, including at least one machine gun visible in a ring of sandbags. Not only was the facility protected from the ground, but also against _airborne _threats.

"Bridge Studios," Audrey read aloud off the side of the assortment of plain grey industrial buildings in the Vancouver suburb of Barnaby.

"Shouldn't he be in a church or something?" Lena asked.

"_My _original Methodist church was in an industrial building," the Reverend pointed out. "In Las Vegas. It's what's inside that counts."

"This is the place," Mary Magdaline reassured them, whistling and waving to the guard positioned in a little guard box directly beneath the sign depicting the now-defunct MGM lion.

For the past day, Mary had been almost giddy with excitement at finally being reunited with her husband after a nearly seventeen-year separation. For Audrey, that length of time would have been an eternity, but Mary shrugged it off. The first thirteen of those years she had been without her memories. Compared to how long she and Yesua had been married, it was a mere vacation.

Gabriel, on the other hand, had become sullen and withdrawn the closer they came to reunification. Audrey _had _to believe Yesua would forgive Gabriel's prior blind obedience to the Father. _She _had, and Gabriel actually _had _killed her, not just _tried _to kill her. Although, truth be told, Audrey had merely been collateral damage. The Savior had been the quarry. Gabriel felt his actions were unforgiveable, although Audrey knew he hoped Yesua would someday forgive him. Gabriel served the Savior because _she _served the Savior. Not because he believed Yesua would 'save' him from the Father's wrath.

"Who are you?" the guard asked. At his side, a Doberman and a German shepherd stood pointed in the dog equivalent of 'attention' at the guards side.

"On the first day of the week," Mary said cryptically, "I came early to his tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone had already been taken away."

"How do I know you are who you say you are?" the guard asked, challenging her to prove her identity.

Mary looked down at the two dogs and smiled without saying a word. Immediately, they bowed down to her.

"Tell Yesua I am here," Mary said softly to the dogs. Tails wagging, the two dogs took off towards the cluster of buildings, yipping like puppies.

"I'll just wait for confirmation," the guard said with a slight smile. "If you don't mind. Can't be too careful."

"Caution is good," Mary said. Moments later, Michael appeared at her side in a blinding flash of white light.

"Mary," Michael said, his voice wavering with emotion. "We've been expecting you. We weren't sure how long it would take you to arrive from the train station with so many others in tow."

The way Michael reverently approached Mary, wings quivering with emotion, nostrils flared, confirmed what Audrey had suspected. Although Gabriel never, ever divulged a confidence, he had not denied her queries about Michael having an interest in the Savior's wife as more than just as someone he had once protected. Michael had protected Mary for nearly nineteen years after Yesua's death and continued to protect their mortal offspring long after both were dead and gone and had often wished Mary were there to answer difficult questions. It was only natural he might have developed feelings for her.

"My parents and their friends are working their way from the train station," Mary said. "I thought it best to bring Yesua's chosen ones right away."

"He didn't tell me you were here," Michael said, attempting to keep from showing in his face the emotion his traitorous wings were unable to suppress. "Not until yesterday. All this time … why didn't you tell me you were in corporeal form? It would have made the decision to defend him easier for me if I'd known."

"Which is why you _couldn't _know, Michael," Mary said softly, reaching up to touch Michael's cheek. "All this time … the only thing I have ever dreamed about is reuniting with my husband."

The words were softly spoken, the gesture intimate, but Michael looked as though he had been punched in the belly. Pain registered in his eyes, glistening and bright with withheld tears as he swallowed. His wings drooped to the ground before he recovered and re-donned his customary stoic mask.

"I will lead you to him," Michael said crisply, snapping into the demeanor of a perfect soldier. "This way."

Cold... Mary knew how Michael felt about her and was firmly putting him in his proper place before she went to meet her husband. Gabriel had hinted when Audrey had pestered him about her suspicions that Mary wouldn't have him. Now … Audrey understood. Michael had been nursing a crush for the last 2,000 years and just been cut down at the knees.

Michael opened the door to the largest building and held it open, gesturing for them to go inside. Mary led the way. As Audrey stepped through the door, Gabriel positioned protectively at her back as always, Michael stopped them.

"Gabriel is to follow the guards to a different building," Michael said, looking uncomfortable. "Yesua wishes for him to confer with the guards about security measures."

"But…" Audrey protested, leaning back into Gabriel's torso.

"It's okay," Gabriel said softly, running his hand down her arm. "That's what I'm here for, remember? You've got it tattooed across your forehead."

"But…" Audrey stammered and turned to Michael. "Gabriel needs to come with me to meet the Savior. We've been serving him all this time."

"Yesua asked that Gabriel confer with the guards about security," Michael repeated, nodding to the six guards who had been shadowing them since they had walked through the front gate of the compound, but who suddenly appeared threatening. "He will speak to Gabriel later."

"It's okay," Gabriel murmured, his expression unreadable. "I need to be debriefed about the security situation. It's standard operating procedure when coming back from a mission." He deliberately stiffened his wings into the stiff posture Audrey thought of as 'dress wings' so Audrey couldn't read his true feelings on the matter.

"Come, Audrey," Michael urged, reaching out to grab her hand. "Yesua is anxious to see you again. He hasn't seen you since the day he was born."

"How can he even remember me?" Audrey asked. "He was a newborn."

"His consciousness is 64 million years old," Michael said. "You simply helped birth his second mortal shell. Just because his _shell _was too immature to interact with you in anything but the most rudimentary way doesn't mean _he_ doesn't remember."

"Really?" Audrey asked, and then felt like a fool. "I hope he doesn't remember what an incompetent midwife I was. Is Charlie here?"

"Both Jeep and Charlie are here," Michael said. "They're anxious to be reunited with you."

Audrey glanced back at Gabriel, who was attempting to be nonchalant about being debriefed. She didn't like the way the guards appeared ready to pounce on him through the thin veneer of politeness. It reminded her too much of the reception they had received at the Pentagon. Putting herself into Jeep and Charlie's shoes, she could understand why they wouldn't want him anywhere near their child. They hadn't gotten to know him the way _she _had the past two and a half years.

"I'll be okay," Gabriel said, gently pushing her forward and stepping back. "You go ahead without me."

Audrey hesitated, and then succumbed to her intense curiosity and excitement. Gabriel would just have to earn their trust. The same way he had earned everybody else's. Everything Audrey had ever learned about the Savior in the bible said he was a compassionate and forgiving god. All you had to do was confess your sins and change your ways. Gabriel had done that long ago. Once Yesua saw that for himself, Gabriel would be okay. Audrey was certain of it.

"I'll call you if I need you," Audrey said, disappearing into the building behind the others. The sooner she met with the Savior and plead Gabriel's case, the sooner he'd be out of the 'dog house.'

From a purely pragmatic point of view, without Gabriel there to help things along, Audrey doubted she would have been able to gather the others. In the early days, before the Fallen had sprung their offspring from Sheol and grown in numbers enough to come out of hiding and congregate in the dead cities, nobody would have believed her when she went knocking on peoples' doors and informed them she had been sent to gather disciples for the reborn Savior. Having an angel at her side had been proof she was not merely insane.


	181. Chapter 180

Chapter 180

"This way," Mary said, taking the lead and easily winding through the building despite having never been there before. As she wound through the last corridor and pushed open a double door, the hallway opened up into an absolutely cavernous room at least fifty feet high, Mary broke into a run.

"Let her go," the Reverend said, smiling as he tugged his _own _wife's hand. "She hasn't seen him in almost seventeen years."

"I could not bear to be separated from you for a single day," Lyubitshke said, smiling at her husband in return. "Much less seventeen years. We will hang back a moment."

Lyubitshke appeared to be doing well today. The young Romani woman had been a bit green around the gills lately with morning sickness. A predicament Audrey could sympathize with. The Reverend hovered around his young wife every bit as attentively as Gabriel hovered around _her. _A well-matched pair, matched by the Mother herself.

'_Gabriel,' _Audrey thought to herself. Mary had been attempting to teach her to reliably follow the life-connection to somebody besides the Rabbi and communicate with them. She attempted to do so now and registered a sense of contempt and annoyance. Yup. That felt like Gabriel being debriefed.

"I'm so nervous," Lena whispered anxiously. "This is the part where we get there, the Savior takes one look at me, and tells me you made a mistake." Lena primped her hair and adjusted the waistband on the prim skirt she had worn today just for the purpose of meeting him.

"He's going to love you," Audrey said, clasping her hand and giving it a squeeze. "Remember … he's the one who led _me _to _you._ Not the other way around. _I'm _the one who should be nervous. He was just a baby when I last saw him. I wonder what he's like now?"

All around her, the others anxiously did things they customarily did whenever they were anxious. The Reverend comforted his wife. All weapons had been checked at the door, but Gunn kept subconsciously checking for the knife that was no longer at his hip while Non Gae stood perfectly still in a beautiful, birdlike pose, her silk dress colorful and bright. The Rabbi had open his trusty Torah, praying fervently, while Muhammad did the same with his Quran. Jose' was surreptitiously filming everything that went on, while Cindy adjusted the Senator's collar and tie. Mambo was using her cane today, her 'bum' leg acting up more than usual in the damp Canadian Maritime air. And as for Thamuz … the Grigori patiently stood, wings at attention so the tip-spikes pointed vertically, ignoring the curious stairs of the people milling about inside the complex.

"He's ready for you now," Michael said, striding towards them.

Audrey led the way. Or more accurately, waddled. To be honest, she felt like the Mama duck in the story Make Way for Ducklings, waddling along with her disciple ducklings trailing anxiously behind her, peeping nervously away. This was where she got to find out if she'd been doing the right thing all this time, or had stepped on the Savior's toes.

"Ohmygod!" Cindy squealed. "I don't believe it. Is that?"

"It _is,"_ Mambo said, her chocolate skin crinkling up with a smile that made even her wrinkles develop smile-crinkles.

"Is it real?" Audrey asked, staring up at the enormous ring standing in the middle of what had once been a sound studio.

"I thought _I _was the only scifi geek in the group," the Reverend said.

"I grew up without a television," Lyubitshke said. "Remember? You'll need to fill me in on what you're all talking about."

"It's the stargate," Audrey said. "From the television series Stargate SG-1. What's it doing _here_?"

"It _was _here," Michael said. "_Yesua _came to _it._"

"Why?" Audrey asked.

"Sixty-four million years old," Michael said, "and only three television cult-series ever sparked his interest. The entire Star Trek franchise. Farscape. And the entire Stargate franchise. Yesua is a major science fiction nerd."

"Really?" Audrey asked. "Out of all the things I expected to learn about the Savior, this was not one of them."

"He's chosen it to be the new image of what he wishes to accomplish in his new kingdom," Michael said, more than a hint of pride tingeing his voice. "The cross was never meant to be his symbol. Yesua always intended to unite mankind with a shared vision of progress. The Stargate symbolizes what it is he hopes to build. A new universe where mankind spreads out and rules the stars instead of fighting over resources on Earth."

"He's made a working model, then?" the Reverend asked.

"He's two and a half years old," Michael said, a hint of bemusement lighting up his eyes. "It's going to be a while before he starts building _anything._ His mind likes to think up grand schemes, but his two-year-old body keeps insisting on taking a nap."

The disciples laughed at Michael's rare joke. Audrey stared up at the headquarters, throne room, alter, whatever you called it, which had been set up. The gigantic movie prop ring had been set up in the middle of the room, reaching well towards the ceiling. Behind it, a platform had been erected. The original ramp from the movie set led up to the platform through the stargate where Mary could be seen carrying a small boy and chatting animatedly to a slender blonde woman and a man with dark hair.

"Jeep!" Audrey shouted, recognizing who they were. "Charlie!"

"Audrey!" they called, gesturing for her to ascend the ramp.

Feeling as though she were stepping through the event horizon of a wormhole to another world, Audrey went to meet her old comrades-in-arms and friends she had made that night in the Paradise Diner and meet the young boy she had saved. Not because he was the Savior. But because defending a child against evil was the right thing to do. Hugs were exchanged all the way around.

"Put me down please, my love," Yesua said, his small voice the high voice of a little boy, but his words as crisp and articulate as an adult. "I would like to greet my disciples."

Beside her, one by one the others dropped to knees or whatever had been their practice in their faith of origin and bowed, but Audrey refused. If there was one thing she had learned from her experiences the past two years, it was that she would bow down to no man. Not even a god. Instead, she politely nodded, made eye contact, and extended her hand to shake the Savior's hand.

"It's good to see how much you've grown," Audrey said, looking into Yesua's unearthly blue eyes and seeing the _same _swirling glimpse of heaven that she saw in Gabriel's eyes. Mary was right. They _were _brothers. Only the manner of their birth and Yesua's choice to assume the likeness of the Father, a form without wings, differed.

Yesua reached up with his small hands and clasped the offered hand between both of his. Instantly, the pesky lower back pain which had been plaguing Audrey for the past few weeks warmed and disappeared.

"You have done all of mankind a great service," Yesua said, his childlike face solemn as he stared up at her. "But not for you and Michael, none of us would have stood a chance."

Audrey decided, principles be damned, she _would _kneel. Not out of worship. But because it was rude to deliberately tower over a two-year-old. Groaning, she grabbed Lena's hand for support and clumsily heaved her too-pregnant form down so she was on one knee, like a knight before the queen.

"I only did what _any _human who was not corrupted would do," Audrey said. "Bad men came for a pregnant mother and tried to kill her child. Every person in that diner defended you with their lives. I only wish the others had survived to see what you're trying to build."

"My Father granted each and every one of them entrance into the garden and has treated them with high honors," Yesua said, his sweet, little-boy face belying the solemnity in his unearthly blue eyes. "Their mortal shells were too badly damaged for the angels to heal and he did not wish to shape new ones only to send them back to a world which no longer existed. They are all at peace in the garden."

"You mean he made them forget what he did to us!" Audrey practically spat, feeling the old anger welling up in her gut and striking a discordant note in her soul. "So they would be content there and not stir up trouble. B-a-a-h!" Audrey bleated like a sheep.

"It's been a while since I have heard you speak holy blasphemy," Yesua said, an impish smile lighting up his little boy face. "You have not lost your gifts. My Mother simply chose to spare you any further discomfort once you found Mary. Plaguing your dreams with visions in your advanced … condition … is unwise."

"When can Gabriel join us?" Audrey asked.

Yesua looked right through her with those unearthly blue eyes as though she weren't even there.

"Gabriel has much to atone for," Yesua said evenly. "He orchestrated the destruction of my kingdom and tried to kill me while I was vulnerable. Ninety-seven percent of humanity is dead because he refused to back Michael when the Father gave the extermination order. And then he's been traipsing around the country, very publicly doing things in my name which I never authorized. He's a loose cannon."

"But …" Audrey stammered. "He's changed. He … he … he … none of us would be here right now if it wasn't for him!"

"Yes," Yesua said. "You would. My Mother has a soft heart. She convoluted her wager to incorporate him after Michael pleaded for his life. She gave away concessions she should not have bargained in order to purchase his service as your protector. Concessions which made your mission far more prolonged and difficult than it needed to be. He did not deserve the Mother's forgiveness. And he does not deserve yours."

Audrey stared at the tiny man-child who only stood at eye level to her because she was on her knees. The reception at the door all of a sudden made sense. This was not what she had expected from the Savior she had learned about in religious education classes.

"We're done here," Audrey said quietly. "Lena? Could you please help me up?"

"Audrey?" Lena asked perplexed.

Without saying another word, Audrey heaved herself to her feet, turned, and waddled out of there, straight into the yard where Anu and Ningizzada were being held outside the main gate along with Mary Magdaline's human parents.

"We need to find Gabriel," Audrey said. "We're done here. It's time to go home."


	182. Chapter 181

Chapter 181

Gabriel would have known his brother's presence anywhere. Whispering to his little Prophet that he would be back in a moment, he delicately extricated his wings from her sleeping form, tenderly kissing her as she grumbled and reached for his warmth. He tucked his pillow into her arms before covering her with another blanket to protect her from the pre-dawn chill.

Quickly getting dressed, Gabriel stopped just long enough to step into the next room to wake Anu and Ningizzada and request they stand guard. Grumbling slightly about the early hour, the boys tumbled out of the first comfortable beds they had slept in for weeks and positioned themselves outside Audrey's door. Gabriel nodded his appreciation and headed up to the round observation tower of Vancouver's iconic Harbour Centre. He always selected not only the most comfortable accommodations for his nightly bower with his little Prophet, but also the most easily defensible. The lone skyscraper overlooking the city, set apart from the others, was it.

"Brother," Gabriel said cautiously as he approached Michael staring solemnly out onto the rapidly brightening sky beyond the mists which enshrouded Vancouver Harbour far beneath the observation tower. He knew why Michael was here.

"He wishes to speak to you now," Michael said, his expression unreadable. "Before Jeep and Charlie wake up and rile the entire complex up in arms to protect him."

"I won't leave her," Gabriel said stiffly, his feathers stiffening with anger. "She wants to go home."

"She has no home," Michael said softly. "I'll stay and personally guard her. You can fly back to Burnaby on your own. It's only a few miles as the crow flies. Yesua has ordered the snipers not to shoot you on sight unless you provoke them."

"Protect her as you would protect _Him_," Gabriel growled, his face sullen. "Or you will answer to me."

Michael responded to Gabriel's foul mood by gripping his shoulder, compassion showing in his face as he reached out to grab Gabriel's face in a gesture the cherubs had shared since childhood. Only those closest to Gabriel understood he often used sullenness to hide deeply wounded feelings.

"You have my word," Michael reassured him. "Now go. Before the others awaken and you're forced to hold your conversation chained to the wall with a machine gun pointed at you."

"Yesua should be able to control his own men," Gabriel said, scowling.

"Yesua is two years old," Michael said. "Jeep is his protector. Not me. You forget that he saw us do battle on the cliff after you were ordered to stand down. Jeep, more than anybody, has reason to distrust you."

"I remember him as a mild-mannered, timid man," Gabriel said, remembering the question he had asked of Jeep. "And yet he was willing to fight me to the death to save a child that was not even his own when he knew there was no hope. I did not understand then why he fought. Now … I do."

"He is not timid anymore," Michael said, a wistful smile twitching up one corner of his mouth to belie the troubled expression in his eyes. "Only his natural predisposition to be gentle has tempered the warrior you unleashed that night. Otherwise, Jeep would make Asmodeus look tame."

"Then Yesua chose his adopted father wisely," Gabriel said, the timid young man who had dared to defy him going up in his estimation even more. "I am glad."

"Watch your step," Michael warned as Gabriel prepared to take wing. "Jeep will kill you in a heartbeat. He has dedicated the last two and a half years of his life learning how to kill an angel. His profound hatred of you for killing his father has colored the Saviors perception of everything you have attempted to do to earn his forgiveness."

"I did not kill the one called Bob," Gabriel said. "He blew himself up trying to kill _me._"

"Jeep saw you slash his father through the gut with your wings," Michael reminded him. "When he left the diner, he thought his father was already dead. It doesn't _matter _what really happened. All that matters is what Jeep felt when he saw his father fall and the fact his father is not here _now_. That will be the emotion he feels for you for the rest of his life."

"And the one called Charlie?" Gabriel asked.

"_Her_ hatred has colored Yesuas' perception of you as well," Michael warned. "But you offered her a choice on the cliff. To give up her son and live. Or die along with him. She saw the hesitation in your eyes as you weighed killing her to get to _him. _She has been a bit more amenable to at least consider you were only doing what the Father ordered. It doesn't excuse your actions. But I think given time she might learn to accept your offer of service as your wife finally did."

"The male of the species has always been physically stronger," Gabriel said. "But the female has always been the more pragmatic of the two."

"Was it this way with our own sisters?" Michael asked. "I can't remember them. But I've always imagined they were something like Mary Magdaline and Charlie."

"I think so," Gabriel said, recalling what he could of Amitea. "_And _stronger. Emotionally, anyways. Where it really counts. Perhaps that is why the Father simply eliminated them? He couldn't control them the way he could us."

"You are the only angel alive who remembers the truth," Michael said. "Even Yesua was a newborn when it happened. _Really _a newborn. Not simply possessing an immature mortal shell. Even the Fallen have only been able to retrieve fragments. It's truly disconcerting to realize that all this time the Grigori have been telling the truth."

"Spin," Gabriel said, his wings twitching with contempt. "The Prophet calls the version of the truth that was handed down to her people 'spin.' Something about the lies politicians and business leaders make to excuse their crimes. She's rewritten them, you know? The Bible. The Quran. The Torah. Right now she's going through the Bhagavad Gita_._ She's made it her life's mission to rewrite every holy text she can get her hands on and tell the truth."

"Death am I," Michael quoted. "Destroyer of worlds. Perhaps that is her role in this whole charade? The thorn in our paw reminding us that in the end, the truth is still there no matter _how _much we wish to ignore it?"

"The Mother tattooed it right across her forehead," Gabriel said, his sullen expression softening as it always did when he thought of his little Prophet. "Her revelations are never pleasant. But never have I known her not to speak the truth. Not even when she seeks to spare a person's feelings by picking how much truth she chooses to utter."

"Then it's time to go meet the Savior," Michael said. "And hear the truth. Perhaps you two can reach an understanding. I have pleaded your case and I believe he will at least listen to what you have to say."

"I have nothing _to_ say," Gabriel said. "The Father said to kill him. So I tried to kill him. It was wrong. End of story. The only thing I have left to say is that I'm sorry."

"He needs to hear it from your lips," Michael said, giving his shoulder one last squeeze and shoving him towards the balcony. "Go. Before his protector wakes up and orders the snipers to shoot you anyways. It doesn't matter _how _articulate Yesua is. He's wearing a two-year-old shell right now and his guards are going to err on the side of protecting him."

"Protect her with your life," Gabriel said just before he leaped off the balcony. "You gave your word."

"I will," Michael said. "She's carrying my niece!"

Gabriel closed his eyes as he fell, refusing to flap his wings until the very last minute so he could experience the feeling of falling. The cool shroud of mist hugging the ground clung to his flesh on the way down, obscuring his view of the ground. Falling was dangerous. But exhilarating. The feeling of just letting go and letting fate lead you where it wanted you to go. Like the wind itself. Or the tide.

At the last possible moment, Gabriel banked his wings and swooped upwards, narrowly avoiding the ground. Taking risks was stupid! His little Prophet would be miserable without him and he was about to be a father. As much as he yearned to return to the freedom of being a carefree cherub, he had responsibilities now. Just not the ones he had _thought _were important.

Circling through the buildings back into the sky and heading east, Gabriel rehearsed what he would say in his mind. What do you say to the little brother you tried to kill?


	183. Chapter 182

Chapter 182

Gabriel stared down at the small boy who barely rose above his knees. Although wearing the mortal shell of a boy not yet three years of age, there could be no mistaking the vast consciousness which resided in the boys' eyes. Yesua. Not just the son of Yahweh. But also his brother. Why had Yesua's consciousness grown so powerful so fast while his much older brothers had all languished in servitude?

"Walk with me," Yesua said, gesturing for Gabriel to follow him into the cavernous, darkened room where a plywood movie set of a gigantic ring had been taken out of storage and made the central icon of the Savior's throne room. Resurrection. Like the Savior himself, Yesua was resurrecting a mythology that resonated with the message he wished to convey and making it his own.

Gabriel followed silently behind. They had the illusion of speaking alone, but Gabriel could smell the hostility pheromones coming off the snipers positioned all around the room. His sensitive angel hearing could detect the elevated beating of their hearts as they made the tiniest movements tipping him off as to their positions. He'd deliberately come without his armor and mace. One wrong move and he'd be so riddled with bullets even Mary Magdaline wouldn't be able to salvage his mortal shell.

"It appears you have created a dilemma," Yesua said, scratching his chin in a gesture that belonged to a grown man. "You tried to kill me. I don't trust you. I'm not _ever_ going to trust you. Nor will the people my human parents have gathered around me to protect me while I am vulnerable."

"I understand," Gabriel said, his wings stiffly pressed against his back.

"Unfortunately," Yesua said, "your friend Jose's webcast and the Reverend's preaching to the masses have made the general population believe you are a central figure in the kingdom I am trying to build. You have become the people's champion."

"It was never my intent," Gabriel said quietly. "I have said as little as possible and avoided Jose's camera as much as I could."

"-_I- _know that," Yesua said. "But tell that to the general public. Every day Jose' has taken every single word he's been able to get on film and made it appear you were speaking on my behalf. Until now, my mortal shell has not been articulate enough to even go on the air to correct the misperception. Attempting to discredit you while still wearing the mortal shell of a small boy will only undermine the image people have of me in their mind. Until this body has matured enough for the humans to find what I have to say to be credible, it is best that I act through intermediaries such as the disciples."

Gabriel silently regarded his brother. Yesua was merely reciting his thoughts as he paced back and forth in the strange alter he had set up to be his command center. Not asking for input. The Savior paused during one of his paces and plopped down in the swivel chair he had chosen to be his throne. The square 'captains' chair had fake buttons on the arms that didn't actually _do _anything. A triangular-shaped arrowhead emblazoned the side. Gabriel read the words 'USS Enterprise' etched in small letters beneath the arrowhead. Another movie prop.

"And then there is the matter of the disciples your wife has gathered on my behalf," Yesua continued. "I had looked forward to working with her as she shows the seed of abilities this world has never seen before. But she is even _more_ willful than my own wife. I don't think I can handle two of them."

Gabriel stiffened with fear. If the Savior wouldn't offer her sanctuary, who would protect her when he was gone?

"Relax," Yesua said as though reading his mind. "Audrey has already earned her sanctuary. Her job is done. She can go with you if she so chooses."

Yesua waved his hand dismissively as he spoke. It was not as if he could _stop _her. Audrey was a woman of her own mind. The Savior's experience with his _own _strong-willed human wife had given him ample opportunity to grasp the concept of how miserable Audrey would make his life if he tried to hold her against her will.

"But your presence amongst my disciples has polluted their vision of what my kingdom should be," Yesua continued. "They are outraged you are being asked to leave and threatening to leave _with _you if I don't relent and allow you to stay. All twelve of them. Including Thamuz, who believes your wife may be the only one besides Lucifer the Grigori would ever follow. I am being put in a very awkward position."

"I will speak to them," Gabriel said softly, relieved he wasn't being asked to abandon his wife. "I will urge them to put the mission first and stay."

"Unfortunately," Yesua said, his short little legs swinging back and forth on the enormous captain's chair, a chair sized for a grown man, not a small boy. "Like it or not, you _have _become part of the mission. At least until the Father can get you out of my hair."

Gabriel flinched. All of a sudden, the Father's two offers of amnesty if he would simply return to heaven despite his insistence Gabriel sacrifice himself in battle fighting the Grigori if he chose to stay made sense. This wasn't simply about the wager between the Mother and the Father. It was also about the wager going on between the Father and the Savior. And probably a third wager between the Savior and the Mother. Gabriel had thrown the three deities plans into a tailspin and tied all of their wagers up in knots when he had chosen to obey his wife's command to _'get up, you jackass' _and stay. The fact he had _thought _he was obeying the command of the Father at the time was irrelevant.

"Not only is Michael pleading your case," Yesua said. "But even my _wife _is angry at me even though she hasn't decided whether or not to trust you. She's accusing me of spending too much time out of mortal form. Says I'm out of touch with reality."

Yesua's words sounded far away at the implications of what Yesua had just revealed. Circumstances had changed, but the terms of the wager were inflexible. The Father was looking for an 'out' and Yesua wasn't going to let _either_ of them off the hook. Gabriel's head began to swim as pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Just how many of these so-called 'wagers' did the deities have winging around out there, complicating the lives of mortals unaccustomed to thinking of entire galaxies as pawns to be sacrificed in a game of immortal chess? Gabriel didn't understand the laws of the wager, but he knew they were binding upon the universe.

Crap!

Deliberately stunted or not, the angels had been created to be the offspring of two deities. The wagers they made were just as binding as those made by the deities. Whether they understood the implications or not. In offering his life in battle in exchange for amnesty for his little Prophet's and progenies souls, Gabriel had gone and bound himself up in his own wager.

Double crap!

Talk about creating your own self-fulfilling prophecy!

"We both know I'm not slated to remain on this Earth for much longer," Gabriel said, resignation flooding his body. "This is _my_ mess, and the Father has accepted my offer of sacrifice. The only thing I care about is that somebody takes care of my wife and child once I'm gone and forces the Father to honor amnesty."

Yesua drummed his fingers on the square console of the captains' chair, the hollow thumping sound revealing the chair was merely a prop. Props. Like every religion that had ever gone before, the Savior was borrowing from whatever convenient foundations had been built up already as the cornerstone for the next phase. Few ever stopped to look carefully at the building blocks and question whether the mythology they were building upon was real.

Only his little Prophet ever asked those kinds of questions.

"Here's what I'm going to do," Yesua said, his sweet little boy face masking the iciness in his eyes. "We're going to have a big ceremony broadcast on Jose's satellite uplink thanking you for your service yada yada yada…" He waved his hands to accentuate what he was saying.

"Thank you," Gabriel said.

"I'm not doing it for _you!"_ Yesua snapped. "I'm doing it for _them._ My followers. Like it or not, a bullshit myth about my limitless capacity to forgive has propagated the Earth in my 2,000 year absence and now I'm stuck with it."

"I understand," Gabriel said.

This was a side of Yesua he remembered. For all the verses in the bible about Yesua being democratic and forgiving, an equal number of stories about times people had pissed the young god off and earned his wrath were conspicuously absent. Tales, ranging from Gospel of Thomas stories about a young Yesua smiting the neighborhood bully and leaving him dead for a few hours before resurrecting him to teach him a lesson, to numerous outbursts against authority figures, striking dead corrupt Jewish temple authorities and Roman government cronies, had been deleted. There had been a _reason _the Father had been so anxious to get his rabble-rousing, impetuous son off of Earth until he had a chance to mature a bit more.

"You _don't _understand," Yesua growled, his irritation made almost humorous by the high lilt of his immature human vocal chords. "Mary took my pragmatic view of human nature and turned me into a saint after I died! I'm a realist. Not a door mat! If you condemn everyone to Sheol who pisses you off, pretty soon there's nobody left to build new worlds with!"

"I _do _understand," Gabriel said, suppressing the urge to twitch his wings in annoyance and forcing his face to remain neutral as he spoke with his voice even and low. "Do you think it has been easy for me? Nearly every disciple you chose to aid your mission felt as though they were selected to goad the Father. Everything I ever believed in turned topsy-turvy on its head! And you know what? I wouldn't trade a single one of them for all the angels in heaven! So believe me. I _do _understand."

"I didn't pick the disciples," Yahweh said bluntly. "The Mother did. And you can bet your _ass _she picked ones to give the Father apoplectic fits. Even the Rabbi was chosen to goad him. Were you aware that Hasidic Jews believe in a Shekinah, a female aspect of god, and there are strict laws about honoring their wives?"

"I wasn't aware of that," Gabriel said. "His people were always Sandalphon's responsibility. I never studied their sexual beliefs all that closely."

"Hmph!" Yesua snorted, his childlike voice making the expression sound more like a cat sneezing than a living god expressing disgust at Gabriel's lack of knowledge. "Not the disciples _–I- _would have chosen. But all good choices nonetheless. So you can see why I'm not willing to just let you take your wife walk off with twelve disciples whose allegiance formed around the two of _you _and not _me _while I've been busy trying to make this … shell … grow faster. It's a little early for my church to be fracturing into separate religions like happened the last time. I'm still here."

"I'll do anything you ask," Gabriel said softly. "All I ask in return is that you give your word that, no matter what happens, you will protect her."

"I can make no promises about her physical form," Yesua said. "This is a mortal realm. I can assign guards to protect her, but if she goes and gets herself killed before her normal expiration date, there's nothing I can do about it. The same with your child. I won't promise something I can't deliver."

"I understand," Gabriel said. "It's … I don't want the same thing to happen to _her _as happened to the families of the Fallen."

"She has pledged her service to _me,_" Yesua said. "So long as she never does anything seriously wrong to violate that service and remove herself from the wager I have with the Father, I can protect her."

"Agreed," Gabriel said, shifting uncomfortably and flapping his too-stiff wings which were cramping up from staying too long in 'dress wings' formation. He froze as he heard the sound of rifles being cocked.

"It's okay!" Yesua called, looking up into the darkness and holding up his hand to prevent the snipers who had kept Gabriel in their sights all this time from using him for target practice.

"What then?" Gabriel asked. Yesua was right. His hanging around wasn't going to help matters along with the followers Yesua had gathered on his own. It was only a matter of time before he, or someone who was with him, got inadvertently shot.

"And then I'm going to announce I'm sending you on a mission to clean up every hot-spot I can think of on this poor, battered planet and clean up the mess you and the Father created when you jumped the gun," Yesua said. "I want you as far away from me as possible, as often as I can possibly get away with without tipping off the others I don't trust you."

"Agreed," Gabriel said. Missions. It was what he did best. Yesua was giving him a chance to right some of the wrongs he had created.

"You can take up residence with your wife far enough from me that you don't create problems with my followers," Yesua said. "But close enough that I have easy access to her. Mary wants to train her and _–I-_ want to study that thing she does with her voice when she's angry. Even Azrael can't make the iron in the pearly gates ring or fracture the gates of the Keep."

"We're at the Harbour Centre," Gabriel suggested. "The next city over. She likes it there."

"Fine," Yesua said, waving his hand and abruptly turning his back on him. "The entire building is yours. Everybody knows the major cities are death zones. You can start by cleaning out your own neighborhood. Dismissed."

Gabriel watched as the small boy with the soul of a god walked down the movie-set ramp beyond the gigantic ring he had chosen to symbolize his second attempt at ruling these people, muttering under his breath like an old man. The young god was infinitely more tolerant than the heavenly Father, but there would be no denying Yesua was his Father's son.

"Yesua?" Gabriel asked the retreating form just before he disappeared through the double doors into the hall.

"What?" Yesua asked, pausing without turning to look back.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said, emotion choking his voice. He wished to say more, but how do you put into words your remorse for committing an unforgiveable act? His apology sounded pathetic and inadequate. Even to his own ears.

Without saying a word, Yesua disappeared behind the double doors, the only sound the 'whoosh' of air as he left.

"I'm so sorry," Gabriel whispered, his wings drooping to the floor as his shoulders slumped in defeat. It was time to go home and make up fairy tales of forgiveness to put his little Prophet's mind at ease.


	184. Chapter 183

Chapter 183

"Perfect!" Audrey exclaimed. "Right there." She waddled across the room to touch the eloquent, white-painted wood of the crib Gabriel had scrounged up from a house within the city.

"Took her long enough," Ningizzada groused.

"If I had to move this thing one more time," Anu grumbled, "I was going to chuck it out the window and see how it looked after falling 44 stories."

"And now let's move this bureau," Audrey asked, cheerfully ignoring the boys grousing as she directed them to move a matching bureau for the eleventh time this afternoon.

Ever since Gabriel had informed her the Savior had requested they take up residence close to his headquarters and granted them use of this entire building for whatever purpose they saw fit, Audrey had been busily carving out the abandoned luxury condo on the highest floor before the building narrowed into a bulbous observation tower to be their permanent home. A home! At last she and Gabriel finally had a permanent home!

"Can I paint our room red?" Anu asked, picking the nearly invisible yellow paint speckles out of his pale blonde hair from the paint job the boys had helped her do last night. "Red and gold, maybe. Like Iron Man. He's my favorite superhero."

"I want dark blue," Ningizzada objected. "Like Optimus Prime. He's a much more sensible role model."

"Why don't we knock down the wall into the vacant apartment next door and give you each your _own _room to paint however you like?" Audrey laughed. "We can paint each room on this floor a different color scheme to match up with a different superhero!"

It amazed Audrey that although the boys were one-quarter angel, they idealized human fabrications of superheroes more than their angelic sires just like any other human boy. She enjoyed having the boys around and was glad Gabriel had convinced the Savior to allow them to continue living with them. Besides … it would have been a real drag carrying groceries all the way up to the 28th floor without electricity to power the elevators. At least until Gabriel could carve some semblance of order out of the city and instill the rule of law. Vancouver was theirs!

Even as they worked, Gabriel was gathering human survivors and laying out his plan to take back the city from the all-too-common thugs who roamed the streets. With an important port city such as Vancouver, the city wouldn't languish for long once security had been restored. All that was needed was a strong figurehead for the decent people to rally around and it would recover. Gabriel had appointed himself, at the Savior's request, to be that figurehead just as the other Fallen were doing in strategically important cities around the world.

And now the Savior was reaching out to them! Tomorrow, Lucifer and his top ten lieutenants, including Shemihaza and Belaziel, would be teleporting into Burnaby for a meeting exploring areas where the two factions might agree enough to form tentative treaties regarding how the two factions might work out their differences. Since it had been _her _cry of rage, enhanced by whatever 'gift' she had inadvertently picked up during her death-journey through the void, which had damaged the gates of the Keep and enabled Thamuz to finally spring both Grigori and Fallen, her presence was mandatory. If successful, Audrey's persistent failure to recruit Lucifer to Gabriel's aid each night in her now-defunct visions would end in success. Never had she felt so hopeful for the future!

The doorbell rang. Not unexpected. Audrey bustled to the door, cheerfully throwing it open to find a red-faced, huffing Lena doubled over attempting to catch her breath. Behind her, Muhammad and Jose' were doing the same.

"Couldn't you have set up house on a lower floor?" Lena gasped for breath. "I mean … twenty eight floors. Even my bunions are going to have bunions after hauling up _those _flights of stairs!"

"Homecoming gift," Muhammad said, handing her a large box tied in what appeared to be a bed sheet. A post-apocalyptic attempt at wrapping paper. "From all of us."

"Mambo said you're going to need as many of these as we can find," Jose' said without a hint of stuttering or hand-tremors. "We've put out the word to the others to grab them wherever they can find them."

Although the outward appearances of Jose's illness were no longer obvious, Audrey could still detect peculiar behavior patterns that marked where mental illness had once incapacitated his mind. He rarely ate unless reminded. He focused too intently on one subject to the exclusion of all others. In-person social interactions were still awkward and Jose' often failed to pick up on social cues. His mannerisms had a high-strung, birdlike quality about them. Gabriel had commented several times since Mary had healed him that now, more than ever, Jose' reminded him of the Father.

"If my ankles swell any bigger," Audrey complained, plopping down on the very nice leather couch which had been original to the condo, "I'm not going to be able to wear shoes. I miss my high heels!"

"You haven't worn high heels the entire time I've known you," Lena said. "And I've known you longer than anyone except Gabriel and the Reverend."

"I wore them on my wedding day," Audrey said, smiling at the memory of Gabriel slipping the dainty white heels off her foot and kissing the arch of her feet the first time they had ever made love. "I _used _to wear them all the time."

"Audrey looks good in heels," Jose' leered. "She's got nice legs. When they're not puffed up like balloons."

"Don't let Gabriel hear you say that," Muhammad joked, punching Jose' in the arm. "Unless you want your head to look like something that went through a meat grinder."

"Let's see what's in the box?" Audrey said, carefully unwrapping the sheet which was, in itself, a useful gift. "Oh! Diapers!"

"In case you find yourself in a really shitty situation," Lena joked.

"There's wipes down the bottom, too," Muhammad said. "We scrounged up a whole bunch of them. But we aren't carrying _those _up all those steps. We left them in the lobby with the security guard for Gabriel or the boys to fly up the easy way."

The first thing Gabriel had done upon announcing the Savior had handed him control of this building was go through every floor and find out who was still living here. Six families and a couple of squatters who used to work in the building had stayed on after the apocalypse, surviving by scavenging the city. The old security guard had been trapped here during the apocalypse and, going home to discover he only had one surviving daughter, had returned with her to the place where he had been employed and taken up residence here. Gabriel had put the man back to work doing his old job. Although no match for a gang of armed insurgents, at least the guard could give warning if trouble walked in the front door.

"I like this building," Jose' said. "Do you think Gabriel would mind if I took over one of the empty flats? I could set up one hell of an antenna on the roof of this thing."

"Talk to Gabriel," Audrey said. "Eight miles isn't far as the crow flies, but without modern transportation, you'd find it's not very convenient to walk to work with the Savior."

Gabriel was adamant they not interfere with the Savior getting to know his new disciples or attempt to lure them away from the adjacent city of Barnaby. He had been given a mission. Clean up the adjacent city so it didn't threaten the Savior's headquarters. Gabriel was pursuing that mission with a vengeance. It was a long way from the blanket forgiveness Audrey hoped the Savior would find in his heart, but it was a start. Trust had to be earned and Gabriel had been given the first task of probably many to start earning it.

"Anu? Ningizzada?" Audrey called. "Could you boys please get some snacks and drinks for our guests. And yourselves, too? It's time to take a break."

The boys bustled about in the kitchen, carving slabs of cheese and plopping them on a platter with some sloppily sliced homemade bread and pouring water from the container Gabriel fetched each morning from an untainted water supply. Muhammad had come earlier in the week to convert the dead line to the gas stove over to liquid propane, which could be obtained at an exorbitant price via the trans-Canadian railway line which ended at the city. Jose' had rigged up a solar panel and a battery which gave them a small amount of backup light each night. Civilization.

While the boys got the food, Audrey made small talk with the others about how much progress Gabriel had made in less than a week clearing out a five-block radius around their building and building consensus amongst the community. The disciples filled Audrey in on how Mary had been busily teaching each of them to heal, a gift they all had in varying degrees now that somebody was actually bothering to teach it to them.

The twelve had been brainstorming about ways to recruit humans overseas. The Rabbi spoke Hebrew, a language Jewish people around the world spoke, and German. Lyubitshke spoke six Eastern European languages fluently enough to be understood. Jose' spoke Spanish. Muhammad Arabic. Lena and Mambo both spoke French and Haitian Creole. The Senator Russian and Spanish. Non Gae spoke Korean and Chinese. Cindy spoke fluent Spanish and enough Greek to go on vacation there. And as for the Reverend, he had emerged from his trip through the void with the same gift of tongues that Gabriel and _all _the full-blooded and half-blood angels possessed. Including the Savior.

"What happens after Gabriel clears out Vancouver?" Lena asked.

"I don't know," Audrey happily chattered. "Gabriel's been kind of dodgy about what he's got up his sleeve. I think he's just trying not to worry me until after the baby comes. You know how he is! Always trying to protect me!" To accentuate her point, she placed her hand on the front of her swollen abdomen, so large she couldn't see her feet.

"Mr. Secretive Clam," Jose' said. "I could always set up a few webcams in his tenants meetings and see what he's up to."

"You do…" Audrey laughed, "and he'll have your head on a platter for invading his privacy!"

While the adults laughed and spoke of their hopes for the future, the boys took advantage of the lull provided by their visit to snarf down ten grown men's rations worth of bread and cheese and then slither away before Audrey could assign them more work.

Normal. For the first time in more than two years, life felt normal. No more visions. The Father was behaving himself. No more rumblings of trouble from the Grigori. The leaders of the Fallen were coming tomorrow to parley. The disciples were focusing on expanding their efforts world-wide. And Audrey strongly suspected by the secretive grins and evasive answers they kept giving her when she asked for details about a meeting they had proposed for _after _the big meeting with the leaders of the Fallen would end with a baby shower.

Audrey spent the rest of the day after they left feeling very, very happy as she built her little 'nest' in the sky.


	185. Chapter 184

Chapter 184

"Yesua has made it clear you're not to go anywhere _near _tomorrow's parley," Michael said, his face looking remarkably drawn and tired for an immortal. "You have earned back Shemihaza and Belaziel's trust, but some of the other brothers have threatened to walk if they see you anywhere near that place."

"Their distrust has been earned," Gabriel said, hiding behind his customary unreadable expression. "I interred many of them _personally _into the Keep without question."

"As did I," Michael said, color rising to his cheeks, betraying his own shame. "I have been banished from the negotiations as well. But some of the Fallen are willing to give me the benefit of the doubt because I defied the Father to save Yesua. I will be allowed on the premises, but not the negotiations themselves."

"I do not like the thought of my little Prophet going alone," Gabriel said. "What if the Fallen double-cross us?"

"I will be close by," Michael said. "And do not forget that your wife is not completely defenseless. The Fallen gained their freedom because her anger the night the Father sent the coyotes to reclaim you somehow reached into the void and caused a vibration that damaged the blast-door to the Keep."

"She has no control over that gift," Gabriel said, remember what had happened when _he _had tried to harness that same power to recapture their wagon in Glendive. "The source of power is fickle and unreliable. It leaves itself wide open for abuse."

"What will you tell her?" Michael said.

"One of the nice things about being mortal is you quickly learn to lie to save your own skin," Gabriel said bluntly. "My wife is aware the Fallen do not trust me and my presence there will create complications. She does _not _know the objection originates with Yesua himself."

Michael nodded agreement. "I will not tell a lie. But I will say nothing that contradicts the truth you have just spoken so that lying is not necessary. She's _going _to notice eventually that Yesua doesn't trust you anywhere near that place unless he's got two dozen snipers with you in their sites."

"The disciples are planning a baby shower for her after the meeting," Gabriel said. "I have led her to believe attendance at such an event is beneath me. She will be so happy at being the guest of honor that she will not even notice I am not there."

"I will retrieve and return her to your flat," Michael said, preparing to leave. "I will take good care of her."

"Your first duty is to protect the Savior," Gabriel said. "Without him, nothing gets solved. But know that if my wife is in danger and calls for me, I shall come. Consequences be damned!"

"I understand," Michael said. He paused, placing his hand on Gabriel's shoulder and giving it a squeeze before he leaped off the balcony and cast himself between the dimensions, his eyes filled with compassion. "Yesua will forgive you eventually, brother. Just give it time."

Gabriel was silent, saying nothing as Michael disappeared in a flash of blinding white light. A gift the Father had stripped Gabriel of when he had cast him down from heaven which, despite Mary's assurances he'd eventually figure out a way around the Fathers 'fix' of 'stripping him of his wings' so to speak, he'd only been able to overcome twice. Once in the agonizing grip of the Okipa ceremony with a sizeable boost from Ehyeh. The second time while channeling that strange source of raw, unbridled power that originated in the void.

"Time is the only thing I don't have," Gabriel whispered to no one in particular. "I'm out of time."

Silently he worked his way down from the observation deck on the 44th floor of the Harbour Centre he had claimed as his home to their apartment below. The scent of a home-cooked meal prepared in a _real _kitchen and fresh paint assaulted his nostrils the moment he entered the hall. Never had he seen his wife so happy as when he had come home six days ago, still stinging from Yesua's harsh dismissal, and told his little Prophet the Savior had decreed the entire building would be their new home.

"Hi, honey," Audrey said, waddling around the table and setting four places at the table for them and the boys. "Supper will be ready in ten minutes."

Gabriel gazed at the scene of domesticity which had captured his Fallen brothers' hearts and caused them to defy heaven. A common fantasy he and the Prophet had been unable to indulge in due to their nonstop mission to help the Savior who had, eventually, rejected him. But Audrey didn't know that. She'd been cracking the whip ever since Gabriel had told her the place was theirs, prodding the boys to help her scrub the place down from top to bottom, paint a nursery for the baby, and scrounge up supplies to feather their nest.

For just one moment, Gabriel dreamed of an eternity where he came home every night to a scene such as this. Supper on the stove. A real table cloth on the table, complete with napkins, silverware, and china plates. Some posies the boys had picked for her stuck in a glass of water. A family that sat down together and talked about their day.

Heaven. No wonder the Fallen had rejected the garden. When humans got things right, it was far better in its simplicity than the sweetest ambrosia in all of heaven. To spend all of eternity just like this was what he wanted more than anything in the world.

"Let me help you with that," Gabriel offered, stepping up to take the large tray of boiled potatoes out of his little Prophet's hands as she waddled back from the kitchen and set it on the table.

"The Father only knows where your hands have been in this city!" Audrey protested, thwacking him with the potholders. "Go wash up! I'll take care of it!"

Gabriel stole a kiss before doing as he was told. Heaven.

Supper was spent with the boys prattling about their plans to knock a door into the next apartment to make it one, gigantic one and paint their own bedrooms red and blue after some human movie characters Gabriel knew nothing about. Both grandsires would be teleporting early into the city tomorrow and had plans to meet with the boys before the meeting. Audrey cheerfully spoke of the disciples visit this morning and her excitement over tomorrows' negotiations.

"Why do you think they need to have a meeting after the meeting tomorrow?" Audrey asked with feigned innocence, mercilessly pumping him for information. Gabriel could tell she was suspicious and suspected the disciples were planning a baby shower.

"I have no knowledge of such things," Gabriel said, deliberately stonewalling her by giving her his most unreadable, stony stare.

The rest of the night was spent in exquisite ordinariness. As soon as they had sent the boys off to bed, Audrey had other ideas. She appeared in her doorway between their bedroom and the main living quarters in a silky red negligee she had found in an apartment below which showed off her ripe figure and the luscious bump of their growing child just … so.

Gabriel felt his manhood instantly stand at attention. Good day. Bad day. Awful day. It didn't matter. One look at his little Prophet and all he could ever think about was where to find the nearest private bower to whisk her away for a night of marathon lovemaking.

"You know," Audrey said coyly. "Once the baby comes, we're going to be too tired to make love all the time."

"Says who?" Gabriel asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Says everybody," Audrey said. "Why … it wouldn't surprise me one bit if tonight were the last night we got to make love in a very long time."

Gabriel growled at her blatant challenge, half-flapping over to the door and shoving her inside, kicking the door shut behind him as an afterthought.

"In fact," Audrey said, her voice husky and low as Gabriel led her backwards to the bed. "If you don't make love to me right now, I might have to take desperate measures."

"What desperate measures?" Gabriel asked, kissing down the side of her neck and lingering to taste the combined taste of her and their child's essence at the pulse point at the base of her throat. He had no idea how _human _males experienced the pleasure of their wife being with child, but both Belaziel and Shemihaza had cued him in that the Fallen had all found the pheromones to be a heady aphrodisiac. There was a _reason _the Fallen had all had such enormous families.

"Why?" Audrey said, batting her eyebrows in mock innocence. "I'll just have to see what the problem is. Right … here. Any problem?"

Gabriel hissed with pleasure as Audrey nimbly unbuttoned his cargo pants and undid the zipper, nipping on his chin like a she-wolf.

"Everything okay down there, little Gabriel?" Audrey asked, running her fingers down his shaft and pausing to give the head of his manhood a gentle squeeze. Gabriel thought he would pass out from the rush of blood which raced from his head down to the area of his body clamoring for attention.

"Little Gabriel's been lonely," Gabriel grunted, grasping for the words as his wings began to shudder of their own volition. "He misses you."

"Well _–I- _miss little Gabriel," Audrey said huskily. "Maybe he should come on inside for a little visit?"

"Mpfffff…" Gabriel grunted, words beginning to leave him as the oxygen ignored his brain and focused on other, more primal parts of his body. He managed to gasp out one last sentence.

"I don't … want … to hurt … you," Gabriel forced his mouth to coordinate with his brain enough to gasp out one last sentence.

"Why …" Audrey said, feigning a mock southern drawl. "See how high this little old bed is over here? I bet if I lay down on the edge of the bed and you stand up, we must might be able to negotiate a treaty about this matter which has both sides feeling so lonely lately."

To add emphasis to her words, Audrey sat on the edge of the bed, her negligee already up around her hips for easy removal, and tugged him towards her using his manhood as a handle.

"Sssssounds mmmmm…" Gabriel moaned with anticipation, losing his words. At this point, his brain was on auto-pilot with only one care in the world. Make love to his wife until she squealed with pleasure. He heard a slight rip as the negligee tore as he slipped it over her head. Audrey shoved down his pants around his ankles. Gabriel managed to kick off his boots and pants in a motion which had become surprisingly routine as she slipped off his shirt, baring his chest.

"And what do we have here?" Audrey asked, her voice taking on a lilting, naughty tone. "Lollipop?"

The involuntary flapping of his wings nearly catapulted Gabriel up to hit the ceiling as her luscious, red lips closed around the head of his manhood and ever-so-gently ran her tongue around the tip.

"Ahhhhh…" Gabriel cried out, unable to force his mouth to form words. He'd been holding his urges in check lately and she was deliberately teasing him. If she didn't restrain herself, it would be over before he had a chance to pleasure her.

"Nice, _big, _tasty lollipop," Audrey said, smiling as she did it again. "My favorite flavor."

"H-h-honey…" Gabriel panted, fighting to keep control. If he was going to climax, he wanted to do it _with _her.

Before she could do it a third time, Gabriel gently pushed her backwards onto the bed, her legs dangling off as she grinned at her total victory and wrapped her legs around his hips. From this position, it didn't matter that her abdomen had grown so large he could barely bend around her to kiss her unless she simultaneously leaned up to kiss _him._

"Come on in," Audrey teased suggestively, wriggling her hips so she rubbed against the base of his manhood. "The water is fine."

Forcing himself to go slow lest he hurt her, Gabriel watched as he sank the spear of his manhood into the soft hilt of her feminine mysteries. He groaned in pleasure at the combined exquisiteness of both the sensual, and visual, pleasure of watching himself make love to his wife.

"You like that, huh?" Audrey asked from where she lay propped up on her elbows, watching him watch himself with sultry, hooded eyes. "I like watching you watch yourself. Do it again."

Gabriel complied, arching his back and groaning louderas his little Prophet ran one foot part way up his back. There was no stopping the involuntary flapping of his wings as he instinctively tried to take flight. Audrey reached up and ran her hand down his pectoral muscles and down his abdomen, stopping to caress the point where they were joined together.

"One more time," Audrey said, beginning to squirm beneath his ministrations as her lips parted and she arched her back up to meet him. Movement was limited by her increased girth, but not prevented. A very determined couple could still overcome the logistics of lovemaking this late in the game.

Gabriel clamped down on his libido and took the time to pleasure _her _first, pushing his worries from his mind as he sought to catapult them both over the precipice together. Her limited movement meant it took longer to reach the edge, but Gabriel's will was formidable. He forced what tiny fragment of sanity still remained in his brain to wait. Wait. Wait until her cries became louder and more guttural. Her movements more vigorous. Her grasping hands more insistent as he bent over her swollen abdomen to kiss her and she grabbed his back, arching herself onto the spear of his manhood seeking release from the sweet pleasure of the edge. She bit his lip and sought his tongue as though it were oxygen she needed to survive.

He felt her reach the edge of precipice and begin to tighten around his manhood, shuddering as she neared release. Loosening the last of his control, he set free his wings to help him rise in unity with her, oblivious to the photographs she had hung on the wall only this morning as he reached climax himself.

"Gabriel!" she cried out, her voice a sweet choir in his ears as she shuddered and found release at the same time as he did.

Just for a moment, he felt that feeling of oneness he had only ever felt with her. Not even in his most profound moment in heaven had Gabriel ever known such happiness. Such bliss. He could feel their souls intertwine and their consciousnesses merged once more as a single soul and almost read her very thoughts. Holy union. Once it had been achieved, there was not a force in the universe which could rent their connection apart.

His knees collapsed beneath him as the exquisite after-tremors shuddered throughout his body. Falling onto the bed next to her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, hungry to get as close to her for as long as he could and prolong the heaven he always found in her arms.

"I think I'm going to have to find a better spot for those pictures," Audrey giggled. "I should have known better than to hang them on the walls of our bedroom."

Gabriel still had no words, so he didn't speak. Instead, he nuzzled her neck, tasting the sweet taste her body always developed after they had made love. She giggled as he licked the light salty sheen of perspiration off her throat.

"In fact," Audrey said, "I think we should pull the bed into the center of the room and remove ever other stick of furniture so that we have plenty of room for your marvelous wings to thump the walls without having to worry about shattering any furniture. Now that we've got some of our own, I'd hate to have it get smashed apart."

"Mmmm…." Gabriel said, finally getting his throat to obey his command to speak. Somewhat. Instead, he 'spoke' by pulling her up further onto the bed so their legs no longer hung off the bottom and settled her into his arms and wings.

"Our own home," Audrey said happily, snuggling into her favorite spot in his arms. Head on his bicep. Cheek pressed against his chest. Ear pressed so she could hear his blood whooshing through the brachial artery of his arm as his heart beat. "Things are finally beginning to settle down."

Reality intruded into his happiness. He fluffed his wings for warmth and adjusted them so she was completely covered, remembering what Belaziel had done when he lost his wife. Taram-uram had said the thing she missed most about her husband was the sensation of falling asleep nestled in his arms and wings. What would _Audrey _miss most about _him_ when he was finally gone?

"Always remember that I love you more than my own existence," Gabriel whispered into her ear as he watched her drift off to sleep. "No matter what else has happens, never doubt that if faced with the same choices all over again, I would choose whichever path leads me directly back to _you."_

"I love you too…" Audrey mumbled happily as sleep claimed her.


	186. Chapter 185

Chapter 185

"Why should we trust a single word you say?" Lucifer asked warily, his face devoid of emotion as he challenged the reborn deity who claimed to have a place in his kingdom for the wives and offspring of the Fallen even though he could lay no claim to the souls of the Fallen themselves.

Audrey intently scrutinized every nuance of the angel she had tried unsuccessfully in her dreams every night for two and a half years to come to her husband's aid. One thing Enoch had not exaggerated was Lucifer being the brightest and most beautiful of all the angels. Platinum blonde hair. High cheekbones. Snowy white wings. And a physique that would put a Greek Adonis to shame all added to an animal magnetism Lucifer possessed that Audrey couldn't quite put her fingers on. It was more than mere charm. Lucifer had a quality about him that just made people want to jump up and follow him.

"Have you ever known me to lie to you, brother?" Yesua said in his high, child's voice. "I will not promise something I cannot deliver."

"We are _keeping _the cities we seized," Lucifer said adamantly. "You and the Father never bothered to ask the _people _what _they _wanted when you launched this little handover of power of yours that the Father tried to thwart. They no longer trust you. _Either _of you. And neither do –_I-._"

"So far," Yesua said, "the reports we've been receiving from the cities your men inhabit report your men have restored order and instituted laws most subjects find to be fair and reasonable. So long as that continues to be the case, I shall have no problem with your men continuing to hold those cities."

"As if you have any power to stop us," Sipwese'el scoffed, another of the Fallen leaders who controlled London. "All you have is a bunch of pathetic humans under your command and two archangels the Father doesn't trust to give them another command."

"Sipwese'el…" Lucifer warned, glancing at Audrey. She noticed the way the Fallen all kept giving her swollen abdomen furtive glances, but they never acknowledged it.

"Do not underestimate the humans," Yesua said evenly, annoyance flashing in his unearthly blue eyes which were too old for his boyish face. "Their numbers have been decimated, but it is not the first time. The great flood. The black death. Other attempts by the Father to stamp out dissent by sending natural disaster. They bounced back every time."

"If we had no affection for them," Lucifer said, giving the others a look which silenced them. "We would not have been so eager to intermarry with their species and begat our _own _families with them. Who here would trade in their wife or a single one of their offspring? Even the fourth-generation offspring born without wings?"

The Fallen mumbled and looked down at their hands. Color rose to Sipwese'el's face in shame.

"Many of the ones who survived carry our blood," Shemihaza said quietly from his seat at Lucifer's right hand. "They are our children. Lucky enough to be descended from offspring born in the fifth generation and strong enough to survive the great flood. Turning our backs on _them _means turning our backs on our own survival as a species."

Silence descended upon the group. Audrey followed Yesua's lead and did not interrupt.

"We have been forced to remain separate from these people for over 4,500 years," Sipwese'el said, looking at Audrey. "Sometimes I forget they are the same species we chose to defy heaven for to intermarry. Obviously they hold the same enticement _now _as they did _then._"

"Our wives and the husbands and wives of our offspring have brought us great joy," Kokba'el said, another fallen who controlled Istanbul. "4,500 years of technology has not changed that fact."

"Already," Belaziel said softly. "Many of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren too immature to desire spouses when they were interred in Sheol have matured enough in the past two years to choose spouses from amongst the human survivors. They wish to follow our example."

Audrey was glad to see Belaziel's feathers had grown back where he had plucked them out to line his wife's funeral bower, but she could see the Fallen leader was _not _okay. The others hovered around him as though he were made of glass and two of his grown sons had accompanied him on this trip.

"There numbers have fallen so low that their only hope of survival is intermarriage with _us _now," Tur'el said, the Fallen who oversaw Chicago. "Many of them are as eager to embrace _us_ as we are to embrace _them._ Together, we are stronger."

The baby kicked. Audrey grimaced in discomfort and rubbed her stomach, shifting her weight to get more comfortable. She noticed the way each of the Fallen carefully scrutinized her abdomen out of the corner of their eyes. Not one of them had mentioned Gabriel by name, but although he had remained absent at the Savior's request, he might as well have been a pink elephant in the room.

"Speaking of separate," Yeter'el asked, the Fallen who controlled Moscow, "how do we know _he _isn't going to do the same thing the Father always does the minute these humans let him down? Send a flood or an asteroid to destroy them?"

"At least he can't dissipate them like he did to our sisters," Lucifer reminded them and then turned to Yesua. "Well, little brother. Answer the question. The Father has always said you were the only son worthy of his love and ordered us to bow down to you. Why should we believe _you _are any different than _him?"_

"As my _own _human wife likes to remind me," Yesua said. "Often, I might add. I need to incarnate into human form more often. It helps one put things into … perspective."

"Lucifer," Audrey said, speaking up at last. "I think I can speak for humans. This planet has plenty of room for _all _of us to coexist. Whether or not we can agree on every detail, what really matters is we find what areas we _do _agree upon and establish a series of laws that will be applicable to all parties. You have a chance to do what both the Father and later humans tried to do, and failed."

Lucifer made eye contact with her, his intense eyes so blue it nearly took her breath away. Whatever gift Lucifer possessed, it rivaled the Savior's _own_ power to reach out and move the masses. She could see now why Enoch had regarded Lucifer as such a threat. Lucifer had been the first of the sons created after the Father and Mother had breathed life into the daughters. He had been created to rule the Earth. Not Yesua. The Mother had only conceived Yesua as a distraction after the Father had refused to allow their older children to move out into their own spheres.

Two rivals. Lucifer, the eldest son who had _supposed _to have inherited the Earth. And Yesua, the youngest son, who after millennia of service the Father had shoved in Lucifer's face and told him was the Father's only _true _son due to the nature of his birth. Unlike Gabriel, who had only ever wished to serve, Lucifer had been raised to rule this world. Asking Lucifer to cede control to his upstart baby brother was asking too much.

"And what of my _other _children, wife of the Left Hand of God?" Lucifer pointedly asked, one eyebrow raised in query. "Would you demand that I abandon _them _and declare _they _are unworthy to inherit this planet of yours the same way the Father turned around and told _me _that _I _had been replaced by the brother we'd had erased from our memories?"

"Gabriel has found a solution," Audrey said, earning a glare from Yesua for daring to mention her husband's name. "Perhaps. Gabriel has had his memories restored. If you can capture the heavenly host and force them to remember, they become more lucid. If we catch enough of them, we might be able to piece back together some of the Grigori-angel children. Thamuz thinks it may bring the other Grigori to the negotiation table."

"My children are insane," Lucifer said bluntly. "They got that way because Gabriel ran to the Father like a spoiled little brat and tattled on them before they'd had a chance to build the world the Father always wanted. The Father never even gave them a chance to explain themselves."

"Do you remember when your human children were still young, Lucifer?" Audrey snapped. "Do you? Do you remember what they were like when they were the same age as Anu and Ningizzada are now? Gabriel was the Earth equivalent of an eleven year old boy when the Father killed your sisters. Both parents disappeared. And then the sisters they had left in charge of watching him _also _abandoned him. And then _you _guys all told him to get lost. He was the youngest and most immature of all the angels. If you want to assign blame, I suggest you look no further than the reflection in that glass over there."

Lucifer winced as Audrey's words cut him to the bone. Holy blasphemy. She could feel the power underlying her words as anger rose in her gut and she spoke the truth nobody wanted to hear.

"And _you,_" Audrey continued, looking straight at Yesua, "you ungrateful little prick! Do you think I'm too stupid to notice that while Gabriel's out clearing the riffraff out of your city, that he's not welcome here? Do you? Do you think I would have gotten on the road and traipsed around the country for two and a half years gathering _your _disciples for you, getting a webcam shoved in my face every day and drumming up support so you could just turn around and thank my husband for all he did for you by giving him the heave-ho?"

"Gabriel tried to kill me," Yesua said flatly, the coldness in his expression contrasting with the youthful warmth of his boyish face.

"And he –_did- _kill _me!"_ Audrey screamed at him, reaching down into her connection to the void and channeling it into her words as she wielded them as weapons to rub the smirk off his sweet little face. "Isn't it convenient that while _this _one whines about the actions of a little brother he was too busy to pay attention to, and _this _one complains he doesn't trust anyone, and _this _little prick complains he wants everyone to follow him, but heaven forbid anyone should make any mistakes, that _–I- _am the only person Gabriel –_actually- _killed."

The steel shell of the prefabricated building began to whine as Audrey spoke, reminding all that were assembled there just _who _it was she had been chosen to represent. The glass of water the Savior had on the table in front of him developed hundreds of cracks with a light 'tinkling' sound. Yesua looked … stricken. As though Audrey had just put him over her knee and spanked him.

"And guess what?" Audrey hissed, bending in to look Yesua right in the eye. "I forgave him. Remember that? Forgiveness? The only reason my species ever elevated you to the status of Savior instead of simply dismissing you as another fallen angel like they did to your brothers? I forgave him because he recognized what he did wrong and he is sorry and he changed his ways. What's _your _excuse?"

Lucifer appeared to be highly amused at watching her cut down his upstart baby brother at the knees. The other Fallen began to chuckle. Audrey had just proven she was _nobody's _patsy.

"Tell me about this plan of yours to help my non-human children," Lucifer asked, his eyes lighting up with interest. You're the only one who's even _contemplated _a solution that includes _them_.

Audrey outlined her whole, cockamamie plan to capture the heavenly host one at a time, have Gabriel or anyone else who could remember the truth of what had happened restore their memories as best they could, and then have Yesua form a temporary, innocuous shell around the wraiths until they had enough to start sorting out the pieces and attempting to put them back together into some semblance of what they had originally been like.

"So?" Audrey asked, out of breath as a particularly pernicious Braxton hicks contraction gripped her abdomen. "What do you think?"

Lucifer hesitated, looking to the other Fallen.

"I think you're nuts," Lucifer finally said. The others nodded their agreement. "But it's the only plan anyone's come up with so far that has at least the _hope _of getting the Grigori to the negotiating table. We can discuss what we _want _to do until the cows come home, but only the Grigori are immune from the Father's dissolution. Without the threat of _them _hanging over the Father's head once we have been removed, there's nothing preventing him from just dissipating _us _and casting our souls into the void for destruction."

Audrey heaved a sigh of relief. At last. She had finally found the carrot that would get Lucifer to move. Baby steps. He hadn't moved _yet. _But at least he was _thinking _of moving in the direction she wanted.

"So let's look at where else we might at least _agree _to try working together," Audrey suggested, ignoring Yesua and taking charge of the negotiations. Yesua may be great at playing the star pupil who bamboozled his human friends, but to the brothers who had been forced to endure being turned into afterthoughts after the baby brother had been born, his sense of superiority was annoying.

In a matter of hours, they'd roughed out the beginnings of an armistice outlining which brother was in charge of what city, how inhabitants were to be treated no matter _what _their species of origin was, and a single set of laws that would rule disputes based on the US and Canadian Constitutions was hammered it. It wasn't the full monty, but it was a beginning. With great celebration, they declared this round of negotiations a success and headed down to the so-called 'gate room' so the disciples and family who had accompanied the Fallen could witness the signing. All to be broadcast by Jose' live on the Dot Gov uplink, of course.

Hope. At last she had achieved the breakthrough she had always hoped for. Gabriel wouldn't need to die fighting Grigori because the Grigori would have no reason to fight him. Audrey beamed excitement at her victory.

"I can't believe you got them all to go for it," Thamuz said, silently coming up behind her and beaming like a pink mother hen. "Not only do _you _all have hope now, so does my own sorry species."

"Lucifer said I was nuts," Audrey said, taking Thamuz's sheathed clawed hands and tugging him to rear up on his hind legs and walk towards the table that had been set up on the platform of the movie-prop stargate to sign the armistice the twenty leaders of the Fallen, the Savior, and Lucifer had just signed along with eleven of the twelve disciples. Around them, Jeep's guards vigilantly stood guard, weapons holstered but alert for trouble.

"You are nuts," Thamuz said, taking the ornate feathery pen someone had dug up from the prop room and bending to make his mark upon the page in front of the live broadcast for the entire world to see. "But for the first time, my species has hope."

Poof.

"Not so fast, brother," a voice hissed.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

All around them, Audrey watched in horror as Grigori materialized all over the room, snarling with rage.

Humans unholstered their guns.

"No!" Audrey screamed. "Don't shoot them! They need to participate in this armistice as well!"

The largest of the Grigori, the big green male Audrey knew from her visions to be Asmodeus, circled his brother and snarled with rage, conversing aloud with his second-soul.

"You are not authorized!" Asmodeus snarled.

"I am doing what is best, brother," Thamuz said gently. "Our children. The Prophet has a plan to reunite us with our children."

"She lies…" Asmodeus's second soul, Amitea, snarled through his lips. "She is the mate of the one who sent the Father to kill us."

"I'm telling the truth!" Audrey said. "The Mother wants us to _help _you. _All _of you."

"The Grigori _need _noman's help," Asmodeus snarled. "Pathetic human!"

Asmodeus snapped inches from Audrey's proferred hand with his toothy snout, rejecting her.

One of the guards saw it as an attack. He fired.

All hell broke loose.

Guns fired from all around the room.

Lucifer gave the order. It was explicitly stated in the armistice that they would _not _take up arms against the Grigori who had freed them from the Keep. The Fallen fell back, leaving the humans to defend the Savior.

"My wife was telling the truth!" Asmodeus snarled as gunshots rang all around him. "Your words of good will were nothing but lies!"

"Liar!" the second-soul of Amitea sneered. "She's a liar. Liar! Liar! KILL her!"

"She is with child," Asmodeus said, hesitating.

"_Gabriel's _child!" the Amitea-soul shrieked in rage. "Vengeance at last!"

"Don't do this," Audrey pleaded. "Asmodeus. You all used to be friends. We can have peace!"

"Liar!" Amitea shrieked, assuming control. She launched the body of her Grigori husband at Audrey even as Asmodeus attempted to maintain control.

Thamuz had been right. The angel females were the stronger of the two souls. They were filled with hatred over what had been done to _them _and to their _children._ There was no reasoning with them in this state.

'_It's just a vision,' _Audrey whispered to herself. _'Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Oh, god, please! Don't make me do this. Wake up!"_

Audrey screamed as teeth clamped down upon her wrist. Claws raked at her belly. Pain filled her entire body as wing-spikes stabbed her in the abdomen, attempting to tear her child from her womb in an insane blur of teeth and claws that only had _one _thing in its mind. Tear apart the child of the one who had betrayed them as had been done to their _own _children.

She had no choice. Gabriel had known all along it would come to this.

"Gabriel!" Audrey screamed.


	187. Chapter 186

Chapter 186

Gabriel slipped the note into the bag and carefully shut the drawer. It was a small gesture of his love, but he resolved that every week he would add to it until there were enough.

"Gabriel?" Anu asked, peeking his head in the door. "You promised you would let us speak at the neighborhood watch meeting tonight after weapons practice."

"Yes," Gabriel said, twitching his wings to alleviate their discomfort. "It's important you learn to speak on behalf of your _own_ interests while balancing the greater good. Not just blindly serve. It's what makes the difference between a leader and a foot soldier."

That last comment was directed at Ningizzada, who had a distressing tendency to follow orders no matter _how_ ludicrous they were. That was, of course, balanced by Anu, who never, ever followed an order without argument. One was too obedient. The other too defiant. Gabriel's biggest challenge was shaping the two boys personalities so they learned from one another and met minds someplace in the middle. With proper guidance, _both _had the potential to become great leaders.

Together, of course, they balanced one another out the same way Gabriel and Michael had always done. But Gabriel had learned the hard way that a good soldier must also be fully capable of working independently of his unit or command. Apart … the boys would always be weaker without the other. Apart … they would be vulnerable to stupid errors in judgment the same way Lucifer had erred too far on the path of defiance, while Gabriel had erred too far on the path of obedience. If there was one thing his little Prophet had taught him, it was that it was important to always be capable of thinking for oneself.

"Pappi said he would fly over Vancouver Island with me later if they wrap things up early enough," Anu said hopefully of his grandsire, Shemihaza. "Now that they've decided to come out into the open, they're making great progress clearing out Manhattan Island and restoring order. He said the Rabbi and his family may even be able to return to their old neighborhood in Brookline once we become powerful enough to push out past the bridges!"

Shemihaza, Lucifer's second-in-command, had arrived at their apartment at dawn, followed shortly by Ningizzada's grandsire Belaziel, to visit with their grandsons. The news given to the boys was hopeful, but the news they had pulled Gabriel aside and discussed in private was dire. The Grigori were livid some of the Fallen and their families were choosing to follow the Savior. Yesua was a sore subject the angry, dual-souled Grigori could easily rally against.

The problem wasn't anything Yesua had done to the Grigori _personally._ Given how volatile they were, Yesua was being remarkably open-minded about negotiating a settlement which included _them _and their half-angel offspring. It was Yesua's very existence as the 'only begotten son' of the Father which goaded them. The Mother had become physically pregnant with Yesua. The female angels were expendable. The Father had destroyed them and the civilization they had built without remorse and replaced them with Yesua. End of subject.

"Uncle Yeqon and Uncle Kasadya said they'd come by with Jiddo [grandfather]," Ningizzada said of his half-angel uncles and grandsire Belaziel. "They said all of Toronto is ready to embrace the Savior. Jiddo has made great headway in convincing the ten Fallen under his command and their families to _also _swear fealty to Yesua."

Gabriel's senses were filled with the presence of eleven of his Fallen brothers. Although the Savior's headquarters in Burnaby was eight miles away, it was close enough for Gabriel to sense their presence, as well as the presence of numerous half- and quarter-angel hybrids. It was a family reunion. One he wasn't invited to attend.

Gabriel suppressed the conflicting emotions of anger and sadness. Other than Michael, the others had always shooed the littlest cherub away until his enormous size had made him too large to ignore. Until he had found fellowship amongst the disciples, Gabriel had never had friends. _They _were his brothers now. Except the Savior had ordered him to step back and let _them _go, now, as well.

Gabriel had always known it would hurt to someday let his little Prophet go. What surprised him was how badly he missed the disciples. Until he had actually _had _friends, he had never understood what it meant to lose them. Whereas losing Audrey would tear out his heart, each disciple was a limb he had just been forced to hack off of his own body. Piece by piece, he felt as though he was being dismembered.

At least the Savior had agreed to let him continue training the two Nephilim boys. Gabriel knew Yesua only allowed it because he, himself, lacked both the wings and the military know-how to train them and Michael had been forbidden by the Father he still ostensibly served. Shemihaza and Belaziel had made the boys' service to the Savior conditional upon being in Gabriel's care. Otherwise, the boys would have been ripped from his sphere of influence as well.

"Let's get some work done," Gabriel ordered brusquely, pointing one wing towards the balcony to distract the boys from the heaviness which weighed upon his heart. "Front and center. Now!"

The boys eagerly leaped off the building, swirling lazily in the up current caused by the ocean breeze hitting the side of the high rise building before assuming their assigned positions to his right and left as his 'wingmen.' At Gabriel's request, both grandsires had brought weapons for their grandsons to learn to use in-flight. Anu … a Roman-style sword. Ningizzada … a curved middle-eastern cutlass. At the human equivalent of twelve years maturity, the boys were considered old enough to begin training for service in the military. It was a milestone which had the boys excited and eager to learn.

"Someday do you think the Savior will use us in his army?" Anu asked eagerly as they circled the city in tight formation for their thrice-daily security patrol.

"Like you and Michael?" Ningizzada said, shouting over the sound of the wind rushing through his wings.

"Perhaps," Gabriel said. "But first you must learn to lead."

"That's _your _job, Uncle Gabriel," Anu said. "You and Michael. Someday me and Ningizzada are going to be your top lieutenants."

"I am mortal now," Gabriel said, pausing to give the two boys an intense gaze. "As are you. Someday … we're going to need _new _leaders to step up to the plate. I need to know that _somebody _will teach my child what it means to be an archangel if something happens to me."

The boys squirmed underneath his gaze.

"You know we take the duties you have given us seriously, Uncle Gabriel," Ningizzada said.

"We will train her as though she were our own child," Anu said, looking very adult and serious for an adolescent boy. "You have our word on it."

"But nothing's going to happen to you," Ningizzada hastily added. "Right?"

Gabriel made the boys spend the next five hours on the ground of the park alongside the waterfront learning a variety of blocks, thrusts and parries with their swords. A small crowd gathered of people Gabriel had previously reached out to within the city. Within a short period of time, the boys had made friends amongst the survivors, including kids their own age. They spent the rest of the day teaching their new friends how to thwack at targets using practice sticks as mock swords.

Humans. Learning to fight side-by-side with angels. As equals. Someday, if Audrey's plan worked, not only would angel and human fight side-by-side as one race, but so would the Grigori and their half-angel offspring. It might not be the kingdom Yesua had envisioned when he had first incarnated down upon the Earth to guide these people, but somehow Gabriel thought the world would be a better place because of it.

All he needed was time…

Time…

Unease gripped his gut.

Nostrils flared, Gabriel sniffed the air for the source of his uneasiness. The hair on the back of his neck and pinfeathers in the leading edge of his wings stood on end. Nothing.

As he turned back to teaching the lesson, the unease grew frantic. Fear!

"Audrey," Gabriel said, suddenly realizing the source of distress.

"Uncle Gabriel?" the boys both asked, stopping what they were doing to look his way, wings trembling with anticipation. They could sense it, too.

Although he could not hear the actual words, the force underlying his little Prophets voice as she screamed his name caused the steel in every building in Vancouver to ring.

"I'm out of time," Gabriel told the boys, his eyes looking through them to the future he would not live to see.

Looking up at the sky, for the first time in a very long time, he prayed.

"Father," Gabriel said. "I know we've had our differences. But I pray you will give me the strength now to turn the tide. It is in _both _of our best interests that _all _of our children be given a chance to finish building the kingdom that _you_ created."

Leaping into the air, Gabriel was not surprised when he visualized teleporting to his little Prophet's side and was instantly taken there.

"Gabriel!" Audrey screamed, fruitlessly trying to fend off Asmodeus as the second-soul of his mate compelled his body to tear their child from her womb and kill it.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, dropping to stand between his wife and the Grigori dragon who sought to kill her. "Whoever molests the Prophet of the Savior shall answer to the Left Hand of God."

Clenching his mace, Gabriel prepared to do battle.


	188. Chapter 187

Chapter 187

"Gabriel!" Audrey screamed as Amitea stabbed her in the abdomen with the spiked tip at the knee-joint of her leathery wing. Stabbing her baby.

"Your mate is absent," Amitea hissed through Asmodeus's voice. "He is not here to protect you."

"Asmodeus," Audrey screamed in pain. "You know your wife is damaged from the void. You have to stop her. She is killing the only chance you will ever have to heal your children!"

"Amitea," Asmodeus said, forcing his body to pause, shuddering with the effort as one soul compelled his body to kill, while the other compelled it to be still. "We must hear her out. This is the first time someone has proposed healing our children."

"She lies…" the Amitea-soul shrieked like a banshee as she compelled her husband's body forward to kill. "Liar! Liar! Liar! They all lie!"

"Stop shooting!" Audrey screamed, looking for Jeep and making eye contact. "Please! We must negotiate with them. Not kill them!"

"Tell me of this plan of yours?" Asmodeus choked out through gritted teeth, his body clenched and muscles trembling with exertion as he suppressed the killer urge Amitea was feeding through his muscles to force him to spring.

"The heavenly host become lucid when you force them to remember the past," Audrey said, clutching her side where Amitea had stabbed her to staunch the blood. Inside her womb, her baby frantically kicked, in obvious pain. "They're still damaged. Only soul fragments. But if you can make them lucid enough that they remember _whose _soul they used to belong to, you have a hope of finally piecing them back together."

"What good will _that_ do?" Amitea screeched through her host, wailing with rage at being confined. "They are disembodied wraiths. Like meeeee!"

"Silence!" Asmodeus grunted. The tremors in his body grew worse as he fought to maintain control of his own flesh. "Tell me more and make it quick!"

"The Savior learned to shape small animals from the clay of this Earth the last time he was here," Audrey said quickly. "Birds. Mice. Rabbits. Small, innocuous animals whose bodies the fragments of your children can inhabit until they become self-aware enough to recognize the other pieces of their own souls. If we can find enough pieces, the Mother can piece their souls back together into one soul. Like she did for the Father."

"Mice?" Amitea shrieked with rage, forcing Asmodeus to start to leap forward and barely being thwarted. "Our children are descended from angels! I will not allow you to turn them into rodents!"

"The Mother cannot shape physical shells," Asmodeus said, panting with the exertion of keeping his wife's soul in check. "What shape will our children assume once you have found enough pieces to make a complete soul? And _who _will shape it for them?

Slowly, Asmodeus used the last little bit of his control to force his body to bow all the way down onto his front paws and further still until he was resting on his elbows. It was a position designed to give Audrey time to leap away when he finally lost control. And he _would _lose control. Audrey could see his control slip by the second.

Audrey hesitated. No solution came to mind. Without access to the soils of heaven, none amongst them except the Father had ever demonstrated an ability to shape matter into _sentient_ creatures.

Behind her, the lines had been drawn in the sand. The disciples, including Thamuz, surrounded Yesua along with Jeep, Charlie, and the soldier-followers and hippies to defend him. The Fallen stepped back to the perimeter of the room as Lucifer herded his lieutenants and family members out of the fray. More Grigori appeared every moment. All four hundred of them. Only the vast cavern of the old movie theatre sound stage could accommodate so many doing battle at once.

Truth. All Audrey could do was tell the truth.

"I hadn't thought things through that far," Audrey said, tears coming to her eyes as she realized she had failed. "I … I don't know _what _the next step would be. I thought … get them in a real body and help them heal their minds … maybe … I don't know."

"She lied!" Amitea screeched triumphantly, finally overriding the will of her slightly more reasonable husband and causing his form to spring at the Prophet who had failed this world by failing to come up with a viable plan.

Amitea knocked Audrey to the ground and started clawing at her womb, trying to rip out Gabriel's child. Jaws clamped around her wrist, preventing her from getting away. Audrey screamed, pulling the one item Yesua had overlooked when he had disarmed the disciples for the meeting and used it to break the grip on her arm. Non Gae's war fan. Fanning it open, Audrey used the razor-sharp tips embedded in the lightweight wood to slice a gash in Amitea's face. The pain, plus Asmodeus attempting to regain control, forced Amitea to pause long enough for Audrey to scramble to her feet.

Gabriel materialized in a flash of blinding white light and dropped to the ground to stand between Audrey and the insane double-souled Grigori leader who was trying to killer her.

"I am here, little Prophet," Gabriel said, resplendent in his armor, wings flared, his face both beautiful and grim. "Whoever molests the Prophet of the Savior shall answer to the Left Hand of God."

With a shriek of rage, Amitea and Asmodeus _both _launched themselves at Gabriel, their disagreement forgotten in their mutual hatred of the angel who had informed the Father of their disobedience and caused the destruction of their entire species.

Thwack. Gabriel smashed Asmodeus off the side of his ribcage, an audible 'crack' signifying he had broken ribs. Asmodeus yelped in pain. His yelp alerted the others that their mutual enemy had finally arrived in their midst.

"Kill him!" the dual souls of Asmodeus and Amitea trumpeted with one voice.

"Gabriel…" the other Grigori snarled as they realized he was there. One by one, they fell back from whoever it was they were fighting at the moment and focused on the one thing every Grigori had dreamed of for 74 million years. Kill the angel who had summonsed the Father back from his diversion before they had finished building a civilization the Father would allow.

A second flash of blinding white light caused Audrey to throw her hands in front of her eyes. All around them, other flashes of light indicated the dogs of heaven had just arrived. Two hundred total against four hundred Grigori. Notably absent were Sandalphon and the undecided angels. The Grigori backed off. Just for a second.

"Uriel," Gabriel said. "I knew the Father would send you_."_

"I am not here by my own will," Uriel sneered. "But unlike _you, _I will obey the Father's command."

"You must learn to give the Father what he _needs,_" Gabriel said, grabbing Audrey by the hand. "Not just what he asks for."

"The Father is infallible," Uriel said, his back stiff and his demeanor haughty. "It is not my place to question him."

"Then you shall be responsible for his downfall when his children's children storm the gates of heaven and tear him limb from limb," Gabriel said bluntly. "Just as the Mother did before them."

"Gabriel," Audrey said. "Don't do this. Asmodeus is open to reason. I almost had him convinced."

"Rodents," Amitea sneered, holding the spot on her snout where Audrey had sliced it open. "The weak human proposes turning my children into rodents. I would rather cast them back into the void _myself _rather than subject them to such indignity!"

"But they will live!" Asmodeus interrupted himself as he forced himself to hold back. "We can love them no matter _what _their forms! As you once fell in love with _me!"_

"We were destroyed because _you _were unworthy of us!" Amitea screamed in rage. "Abominations! Our children were destroyed because they were abominations! Just like _she _is carrying now!"

"She will not be satisfied until you are dead," Asmodeus hissed at Gabriel between clenched fangs. "I cannot hold her. Her hatred is too powerful."

It felt as though Audrey's heart were going to leap out of her chest as Gabriel pulled her into his arms to kiss her goodbye.

"Know that I will always love you," Gabriel said, tears streaming from his unearthly blue eyes as his voice choked up with emotion. "We are one soul. Somehow … somehow we will find a way to be together."

"Don't do this!" Audrey cried, clinging to him. "Together we are stronger!"

"We are _already_ strong," Gabriel said, bending his head to capture her lips in one last desperate kiss. "Our love is unbreakable."

Audrey sobbed as she tried to hold him here. To stop him from doing what they both knew he must do. In front of them, the screeching of Amitea as she battled for control of her host grew louder as she used hatred to gain the upper hand.

"So long as I am alive," Gabriel said, extricating her hands from his armor and pushing her towards his brother. "There can be no peace. You must go with Uriel, now. He will protect you."

"I was only sent to protect _her,_" Uriel sneered. "Not interfere. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I am to personally escort your soul to the Keep to suffer for all eternity for the abomination which grows in your wife's belly!"

"No!" Audrey shrieked as Uriel roughly pulled her into the air.

Asmodeus shuddered and finally lost control, launching himself at Gabriel once more. Gabriel fought him off, but one-by-one the other Grigori dropped what they were doing and threw themselves at him.

Behind them, the tide of the battle turned in favor of the Savior as the disciples came together with Yesua's other followers, their training finally paying off with the large 'anchor' of Thamuz cracking his brothers heads together to knock some sense into them.

"Gabriel!" Audrey shrieked as she saw Gabriel wasn't doing that well. The Grigori no longer fought with any rhyme or reason. In a pig pile of pure insanity, they simply threw themselves at him again and again, sacrificing many of their lives, until he finally became too overwhelmed to fight them anymore.

"Uriel!" Audrey cried. "How can you stand by and let this happen? He's your brother."

"He is Fallen," Uriel said without emotion. "The sentence is eternal suffering in the Keep. No exceptions."

Audrey could hear Gabriel's cries of pain from beneath the writhing pile of insane Grigori tearing not only _him _apart_, _but also each other in their eagerness to tear him to shreds.

"Lucifer!" Audrey screamed, looking across the room and finally making eye contact with the leader of the Fallen. "Please! Help him! He's your brother."

Lucifer quivered with emotion, all the sorrow of the world contained in his eyes as he wrestled with the decision he now faced. He stepped towards them. The other Fallen took notice and paused.

"Please!" Audrey pleaded.

A young cherub, horribly deformed, toddled in front of Lucifer. His last-born son. Interred as a baby for the sin of having Lucifer as a sire. Condemned to Sheol without question … by Gabriel. At the Father's bequest. Brought to the meeting for the sole hope that Yesua could do something for the child. It was no secret amongst the Fallen that Yesua wanted Gabriel dead for bringing down the apocalypse and attempting to kill him. Lucifer stepped back.

"I'm sorry," Lucifer mouthed the words from across the room and then looked down in shame. The Fallen leader picked up the small boy and hugged him, burying his face in the boys' neck as tears streamed down his cheeks.

Gabriel's cries of pain stopped. The Grigori still writhed, snapping and snarling and a sound permeating the room that sounded like lions tearing meat off a carcass in a National Geographic film.

"Sandalphon!" Audrey shrieked. "Please! You know this is wrong!"

Nothing. No answer. The undecided remained … undecided.

"You should not have tempted him after the Father told him 'no,'" Uriel said coldly. "Now he will pay the price _all _creations pay when they disobey the will of god."

Anger rose in Audrey's gut.

"Fuck you!" she snarled. Flipping open the war fan, she slashed him straight across the face with the razor sharp tip and took out his eye. They were in the air. Uriel dropped her. Audrey screamed in pain as her ankle snapped like a twig as she hit the ground and her swollen abdomen threw off her balance.

"Gabriel!" Audrey cried, crawling towards the still-writhing pile of Grigori on her hands and knees, sobbing as she blindly stabbed at the first insane dragon she touched with the pathetic little fan whose only worth as a 'weapon' was the up-close element of surprise.

The Grigori turned on _her. _Audrey cried out as claws grabbed at her to scratch and tear once more. She welcomed the pain. It distracted her from the pain of having her heart ripped out of her chest as she watched Gabriel die.

A loud crash rattled from the skylight in the ceiling of the building. Two white-winged blurs streaked down from the ceiling, swords drawn, and dropped in perfect formation on either side of her. Defending her. Defending Gabriel. Anu and Ningizzada. Forced to fly the eight miles manually because the third generation Nephilim had lost the ability to teleport, but brave enough to do what the others would not do.

"You'll have to go though us, first," Anu said, neatly decapitating the foolish Grigori who had Audrey's ankle clamped in his jaws.

"Fall back!" Asmodeus shouted, finally regaining control of his own body once more.

Killing Gabriel had been something Asmodeus desired. Killing Audrey, on the other hand, the Grigori leader had enough wherewithal to be intrigued by what she proposed. The Grigori backed off, leaving her to see what was left of her husband.

"Gabriel," Audrey cried, crawling to his side and trying not to vomit as she saw what little was left of him. His neck had been torn open on one side and blood was gushing out the artery. His belly was torn open and his intestines hanging out. The flesh was chewed off his arms and legs in large chunks. The floor was stained with his blood. He only still lived because his breastplate had covered his heart and they had not been able to get it off to tear it out of his chest before he bled out.

"Don't go," Audrey sobbed, clutching his face which had, for some reason been spared serious damage. "I don't want to exist without you!"

"You must," Gabriel gasped, his eyes clouded with agonizing pain. "So long as I know you and our child still exist, I can endure any punishment the Father throws at me."

Audrey placed her hands over the artery gushing out his life's blood, applying pressure and trying to heal him as Mary had taught her to do. A bottomless pit of need pulled at her. His wounds were too severe. Not even the Savior, in his current immature form, could heal such wounds.

"I love you," Audrey said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You are my heart."

"I love you more than my own existence," Gabriel whispered, his voice barely audible. "We will find one another again. I swear it on my own soul."

Audrey felt the light go out of his body as she kissed him goodbye, his dying breath passing into her lungs. She held her breath, trying to keep him with her, trying to make his soul take up residence inside her own body as the Grigori had done.

She could not bear to let him go.


	189. Chapter 188

Chapter 188

Audrey could feel his physical form grow diffuse beneath her touch as it shimmered and tried to dissipate. Only her will to keep him there overrode the will of the Father. Her heart pounded in her ears. Her lungs felt like they were going to burst. In her womb, their child frantically kicked from lack of oxygen.

She didn't care…

Gabriel touched her mind. Her heart expanded as, just for a moment, their consciousnesses merged as a single, inseparable soul. Holy union. Their bond transcended this universe.

"_You are killing our child, little Prophet,"_ Gabriel whispered into her mind. _"Your body needs oxygen. You will both die without it."_

"_I won't let you go," _Audrey thought. _"We are one soul."_

"_If you die," _Gabriel whispered in her mind. "_The entire universe will go down with you. You must save –both- of our species. Not just our child."_

Audrey's lungs burned. The sounds of the tide of the battle turning. Belazial and Shemihaza overriding Lucifer's orders to remain neutral and leaping to defend the two grandsons who dared battle the Grigori. The battle sounded muffled and far away as oxygen deprivation caused the room to go black.

"_Please. Take me with you,"_ Audrey cried out in her own mind. "_I would rather spend all eternity in the Keep –with- you than a single moment in heaven without you."_

Lucifer finally shifted and gave the order. The other Fallen jumped into the fray, defending their two brothers who defended the two Nephilim boys who defended the widow of the archangel who had just died.

Battle lines. The dogs of heaven were under orders to seize any Fallen or Nephilim they encountered and reinter them in Sheol, New battle lines were drawn. Fallen … against unfallen. Brother fought brother as Yesua fruitlessly pleaded with them to stop.

Battle lines. Gabriel wasn't the _only _angel the Grigori hated. Just the one they blamed for the destruction of their wives and offspring. Each and every angel in the room had recaptured and reinterred at least _one _of the escaped Grigori at _some _point in the past 74 million years. Old hatreds died hard. The battle shifted again. Unfallen … against Grigori.

Human … against them all.

The Father … against himself.

"_You must heal this fracture in heaven once and for all,"_ Gabriel pleaded with her. _"The fracture originates with the Father. He is broken. The chaos creature which taints his soul will urge him to try to make me forget. You must remember the truth on my behalf until we are reunited."_

Audrey gasped as images of the birth of heaven exploded into her mind. All of eternity flashed before her eyes, from the first moment the cherubs had been created 14 billion years ago until the last moment when Gabriel breathed his dying breath into her lungs. Audrey could feel him fracture off a piece of his own soul and place it into her heart for safekeeping. The memory that part of the Father which contained the fragments of the chaos-creature sought. The secret to both shape _and _create life.

"_Remember me, my love…" _Gabriel whispered into her mind. And then he was gone.

Audrey grabbed at his body, trying to hang on to some part of him, as the Father dissipated him into the stardust he had been created from. The stardust danced around her for a moment, pausing to caress her cheek, and then was gone. Gabriel was gone. He was really gone.

"Gabriel…" Audrey whispered, waiting for his arms to come around her and whisper that it was just a dream. That this was just another vision. To feel his lips kiss her neck and fluff his wings so she was comfortable as she recovered from a particularly horrific vision.

Strong arms came around her and lifted her off the ground, but they were not Gabriel's.

"We need to get you out of here," Belaziel said gently. "I gave Gabriel my word I would protect you."

Audrey threw her head towards the ceiling and screamed her husband's name.

"She's covered in blood," Lucifer said.

"I think it's mostly Gabriel's," Shemihaza said.

The room was a dark blur. All Audrey could feel was the pain of her heart being torn out of her chest and a tearing sensation in her abdomen.

"Her clothes are all wet," Belaziel said as he cradled her in his arms. "Her water has broken. She's in labor."

"Get her out of here," Lucifer ordered. "We'll mop up."

Screeches of rage and the sound of a creature being dragged split the air as something loud, and swearing, was dragged towards them in the emotional fog which surrounded Audrey's mind.

"What do you want me to do with _this _one," a familiar voice asked. Michael.

"Let _her_ decide," Lucifer said. "It was _her _mate he killed. She has the right under Sharia law to decide his fate. It is the Father's own law as handed down to the Prophet Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel."

"Audrey?" Michael asked gently. "It is your right to decide. What should be the fate of this creature?"

Audrey lifted her head and realized the reason she couldn't see was because her eyes had been squeezed shut to shut out the world she no longer wished to exist in. Asmodeus. Bound and gagged and held by seven of the dogs of heaven. Michael was giving _her _first dibs on the Grigori leaders' fate who was responsible for her husband's death. Not the Father. She stared mutely at the dual-souled dragon who had given the order to kill.

"Ungag him," Michael said. "Under the law, he has a right to defend himself. Let's hear what he has to say."

The dogs of heaven pinned Asmodeus down as they pulled the muzzle from his snout, his neck held by three nooses pulled in different directions so he could not use his deadly fangs to attack without strangling himself.

"Put me down," Audrey whispered, clutching her abdomen. Pausing to breathe through a contraction, she held Belaziel's arm as she shakily hopped over on her broken ankle to stand in front of the creature of nightmare which had haunted her dreams for more than two and a half years. Asmodeus did not flinch. She could tell in his eyes that he expected her to condemn him to death.

She had Gabriel's memories now. She had been raised by manipulative parents. She understood the law of the wager which Gabriel had never been unable to grasp.

"Asmodeus," Audrey whispered, reaching up to place her hand on either side of his snout. "I forgive you."

Gently, she bent down his head and kissed him, breathing one of the memories Gabriel had left her with into Asmodeus's soul. The truth about what had really happened.

Tears sprang into Asmodeus's eyes as he realized Gabriel had been innocent of everything the Grigori had believed to be true.

Audrey grunted in pain as another contraction hit. Too close together to the last one. The baby was coming.

"No!" the second soul shrieked. "She lies! It was _Gabriel _who sent the Father to kill us. You must kill her!"

Audrey could sense the chunks of void-creature the Mother had used to fill in the blanks in Amitea's damaged soul. Amitea was not rational despite having just learned the truth because she was hopelessly damaged. The void-creature in Amitea's soul resonated with that part in her _own _soul which had been touched by her brief trip into the void after Gabriel had killed her. Audrey understood, now, what needed to be done.

"Amitea," Audrey said, feeling the dark power fill her veins. Gabriel's memories of how to channel holy fire now suddenly made the power of the Mother make sense. Holy fire was merely that small portion of the power of the void the Mother gave the Father to maintain the universe. It had been refined in such a way that it would be harder to abuse. Deities born in the void such as the Mother or creatures who had been reborn after passage into the void could channel that power. Audrey's eyes turned black. Bending to kiss Asmodeus once more, Audrey used the _same _power used by Azrael to sever a soul from its mortal shell to give Amitea the kiss of death.

"Amitea … you go to hell."

Audrey used the power in her voice to catapult the wraith out of Asmodeus's body and into the arms of Sandalphon, who had suddenly appeared and finally _decided _to take a side by helping Michael let _her _decide the fate of the Grigori.

"No!" Asmodeus shrieked as he suddenly realized what Audrey had done. He began to fight against his bindings to get free. "Take me with her!"

"An eye for an eye," Audrey whispered. "A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. It is my right as the widow of the man the Grigori just wrongfully killed to invoke the ancient decree. Until Asmodeus helps me complete the mission Gabriel left me with, he is forbidden to reunite with his mate. _All _of the Grigori are forbidden to reunite with their mates. They are to be severed from their mates and barred from Sheol. Let every single one of them suffer the _same _fate that they have visited down upon _me._"

"Yes, Ma'am," Sandalphon said, grasping his insane invisible charge and dragging Amitea's fragmented soul personally back to the Keep where she belonged until somebody could figure out a way to fix her.

Audrey teetered unsteadily on her feet, and then collapsed.


	190. Chapter 189

Chapter 189

"You'd be proud of her," Audrey said, caressing the marble likeness of his strong, straight nose and running her fingers down his cheek. "Only fifteen years old and she just beat every angel in three armies at throwing a mace."

She bowed, placing her forehead upon the cold, lifeless marble until the chill began to leave the stone in the spot where flesh met crypt. Only Belaziel understood her grief. More than a brother-in-law. Less than a lover. Willing to marry her and perform the 'duties' of a husband because Gabriel had asked it of him, but relieved when Audrey had politely, but firmly, refused a Levirate marriage. Belaziel had assumed the role of protector to fill the void left by his own wife's death. It was a strange little emotional ménage au quad they had formed to eek out a miserable existence without their mates.

"I don't know if he ever lets you hear me," Audrey said, a tear running down her cheek as she had her daily conversation with her husband. "Belaziel said sometimes the Father would let him hear Taram-uram cry. Just to torment him. He didn't know what was worse. Not hearing her at all. Or hearing her cry."

Tears dripped onto the tomb. Not quite empty. After Gabriel had died, Belaziel had sent his sons with a jackhammer to carve out every inch of floor that had soaked up a single drop of Gabriel's blood and carry it back to Toronto. The Fallen had pooled their resources to entomb the bloody concrete in a beautiful marble crypt and covered it with a life-sized marble statue that appeared as though Gabriel were sleeping. Clasped between the carving's hands was his real-life mace. Inside the crypt, Audrey had placed the trumpet which had heralded the apocalypse for safekeeping.

A flash of blinding white light burst into the room.

"Uriel," Audrey sighed without even turning to look. She didn't need to. Along with Gabriel's memories had come the ability to recognize each brother's distinct life-spark. "What now?"

"She is at it again," Uriel said. "You need to have another one of your 'talks' with her."

"Just a minute," Audrey said, closing her eyes and registering the feel of marble on her forehead. "Just let me finish saying good night." She ignored him as she finished her conversation with her husband.

"I wish you were here," Audrey whispered, although she knew Uriel heard her anyways. "A child needs her father. Her _real _father. Belaziel does the best he can to fulfill his promise to you. But it is not the same."

She ran her hands down the cold, unresponsive marble to touch the carved breastplate and imagined she was reaching straight through the heavens into Sheol, into the Keep itself, to touch his heart. She didn't know if he could feel her, but Mary had taught her to heal loved ones at a distance using such a method and sometimes it felt as though the energy flowed, so she did it each night as she spoke to him.

"None of the others are like you," Audrey whispered. "She yearns for a soul-connection she senses _should _be there, but is missing. Was this what it was like for you growing up with the Father's soul so damaged?"

Uriel moved uncomfortably behind her, but did not contradict her. Even _Uriel_ now admitted the Father was not well. Ever since Gabriel's death, the Father had locked himself into his workshop and refused to come out, giving Yesua carte blanche to do whatever he pleased.

Only Sheol and the Keep remained off-limits. And the Father's workshop, which no creature of heaven had seen the inside of since the day Gabriel had died. No creature, either mortal or immortal, knew what went on there now with four-hundred insane, disembodied angelic females and Gabriel.

"Audrey?" Uriel reminded her, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Your daughter?"

Audrey ignored him.

"I miss you," Audrey whispered to the tomb, her salty tears darkening the cold, white marble which had become permanently stained. "You are my heart and my soul. I wish you were with me."

She stretched over the crypt to kiss his perfect, cold lips.

"I love you more than my own existence," she whispered. "Good night, my love."

Audrey adjusted her khimar to cover her hair and neck as she stood and finally turned to face Uriel, tugging down the long black sleeves of her shirt and adjusting the ankle-length black Romani skirts she now favored. No one who saw Audrey now would recognize her as the smart-mouthed seventeen-year-old in the too-short skirt at the Paradise Diner. Denied the privilege of following her husband into the Keep, Audrey had borrowed the conservative dress of the Muslim community of Toronto to signal those who sought her hand in marriage, and there had been many, both mortal and immortal, that she was not interested.

"What has she done now?" Audrey finally asked.

"She has gone rogue again," Uriel said nervously. "Anu caught her red-handed hunting down a warlord in Afghanistan possessed by the heavenly host. Without backup. Anu is holding _both _of them until you can deal with it."

"Take me to her then," Audrey sighed with resignation.

Uriel stepped forward and hesitated, nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent, and fumbled with sheathing his weapon. In what had to be the ultimate cosmic joke, the last order the Father had given before reaching down to personally dissipate Gabriel's mortal shell had been to order Uriel to protect Gabriel's wife and daughter as Gabriel, himself, would have done. With no further instructions to follow, Uriel had no choice but to _stay _with her and carry out those orders. He gently took her fingers, his hand trembling as he pulled her into his arms and carefully flared his deadly razor-sharp wings to carry her into the air.

"Are you ready?" Uriel asked, his voice trembling as he unconsciously bent his head closer to her neck, nostrils quivering as he inhaled her scent. His face flushed. Audrey could hear his heart beat faster as she wrapped her arms around his waist for flight.

Audrey looked unsmilingly into his unearthly blue eyes. Mary Magdaline had restored sight into the eye Audrey had blinded with her war fan, but refused to heal the scar which ran from eyebrow to jaw bone. Mary had bluntly told the Carrier of the Light of God that he, quote, _'needed to see a reminder of his blind stupidity staring himself in the face every morning so he wouldn't be such an asshole in the future.'_

"Let's go," Audrey said flatly.

Uriel teleported the both of them to a cave somewhere deep in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. The disciples had had little luck bringing the word of the Savior to survivors of the apocalypse there. It was fertile ground for rogue heavenly host, whose last orders had been to torment sinners and stir up mischief, to find someone to possess.


	191. Chapter 190

Chapter 190

"Anu," Audrey said, greeting the strapping young man who bore little resemblance to the curious boy who had crashed their Manhattan bower to see if the Savior could heal him. Gabriel had been right. Yesua needed leaders capable of both leading_ and_ thinking for themselves. Anu and Ningizzada had been the two unexpected catalysts Audrey had overlooked in her visions each night who had finally shamed the others into dealing with the pile of shit every creature in the universe had been standing in since the day the Father had royally fucked up and destroyed his own daughters.

"She did it again!" Anu said, his eyes flashing with anger as he pointed to the sullen young woman who stood, arms crossed, at the other side of the cave. "How am I supposed to protect her if she keeps coming to hotspots without backup?"

"Gabriella Sandra Anderson?" Audrey asked, power creeping into her voice as she called her daughter onto the carpet. "What is the meaning of this?"

Gabriella scowled. Even with human DNA, she had inherited her father's height. At seven-feet, two inches and the build of a professional gymnast, Gabbi was already an inch taller than Anu. If not for his military experience, she could probably pin him to the ground and pluck his feathers.

"You have ordered the heavenly host be rounded up so you can cast them out of their hosts and give them mortal shells, Mother," Gabriella stated evenly, hiding behind her most unreadable expression. "So I have captured the ringleader."

"You're only fifteen years old!" Anu said, fire flashing in his eyes. "How the hell am I supposed to protect you if you keep sneaking out and disobeying orders?"

"I am –_obeying- _orders," Gabbi corrected, twitching her nearly-black wings with contempt. "You said capture heavenly host. I have captured one. You never said they had to be in Toronto."

Audrey turned her head and pretended to cough so Gabriella wouldn't see her smile. Her hand automatically went to touch the small pouch of feathers she kept underneath her shirt over her heart, the feathers Gabriel had plucked from his own wings the morning before he had died.

"Your father was always _adamant _that a good soldier never goes into a mission without his wing man," Anu interrupted. "You never, _ever_ fly a mission alone without telling anyone!"

Gabriella glowered at Anu without saying a word. Like her father, Gabriella rarely argued to make her point. _Unlike _her father, if she knew she would be forbidden to do something, she would avoid asking. The _illusion _of obedience since, if she had not been forbidden to do something, then technically no one could accuse her of disobeying. Defiance. Disguised as obedience.

"Audrey?" Anu asked, throwing his hands up into the air in exasperation. "Are you going to help me out here?"

Audrey paused, searching for the truth that would make her point without damaging her daughters' fragile self-esteem. Like her father, Gabriella often hid deeply wounded feelings behind sullenness. Like her father, the young woman often took things quite literally. Like her father, she was forever trying to discern the deeper need of those she loved and further those needs using any means possible. Audrey was one of the few people who had ever understood that about her father.

"The sooner we capture all of the soul-fragments of the murdered Grigori children and restore their memories," Audrey said softly. "The sooner we can attempt to piece complete souls back together into some sort of mortal shell. Gabriella was very brave to track them to their den. Just like her father was brave."

"Hmph," Gabriella snorted as she gave Anu a contemptuous look that would have melted paint off an automobile.

The Grigori males had all been captured, forcibly had the truth rammed into their brains, had the female angels exorcised from their husbands' bodies, and been forced to attend anger management counseling under the watchful eye of Thamuz. Unfortunately … until the Savior healed their wives and children's shattered souls, the Grigori would always be a threat.

"But…" Audrey continued, watching the scowl instantly reappear on her daughter's face. "That same bravery cost me your father's life. If I were ever to lose you, too, I would cast myself into the void in despair_."_

The scowl disappeared. Gabriella's arms remained defensively crossed, but she looked down at her shoes, stubbing the toe of the hideous blue canvas high-top sneakers she had inexplicably taken a liking to into the rocky floor of the cave.

"Sorry, Mom," Gabriella mumbled, refusing to make eye contact.

"Anu and the others would defend you with their lives," Audrey continued, her voice still quiet and gentle. "When you take unnecessary risks, you put _them _at risk as well. How would you feel if something _you _did was to cause one of _them _harm?"

"I'm sorry," Gabriella said, tears springing into her beautiful, unearthly blue eyes that always took her mother's breath away, so much were her eyes like her fathers. "I just … if you can get them all together sooner … I just … I'd hoped…" Gabriella's voice trailed off.

Ever since Gabriel's death, Fallen and Unfallen angels often congregated in Toronto, brainstorming about ways to spring their brother's soul from the Keep without getting themselves cast into the void. Gabriella, so like her father in many ways, often hid, evesdropping on their conversations. She had gotten the idea into her childish brain that as soon as the angels were able to fix the Grigori children, her father would be able to come home.

"Your father gave his life to buy us time," Audrey said, stepping up to take her daughter in her arms like a little cherub even though Gabriella towered over her. "I won't let the Father keep him from us a moment longer than the time it takes for me to figure out a loophole in their wager. You have my word."

Gabriella sniffled and nodded, wiping away a clear, stringy booger that streamed out of her nose with her sleeve. The girl might be tall as an oak, strong as an ox and brave as a lioness, but in many ways, she was every bit as emotionally immature as her father had been as an adolescent. Slow. Thoughtful. Deliberate. And loyal as hell. Audrey had learned while Gabriella was still in diapers that one got nowhere _fast _when one yelled at or lectured her moody, strong-willed, silent daughter. It was better to point out the facts and let Gabriella figure things out for herself.

Otherwise … you ended up in situations like today. Gabriella would circumvent disobedience by simply avoiding notifying anyone what she was up to. Audrey found it ironic that, despite there being no serious penalty for disobedience in this realm (if one discounted loss of privileges and grounding), that Gabriella had inherited her father's desire to do as she had been told even as that part of her temperament she had inherited from her mother urged defiance.


	192. Chapter 191

Chapter 191

"Well…" Anu groused, giving the bound and gagged figure they had been ignoring a shove towards Audrey. "She caught him. Are you going to deal with him? Or what?"

"Tie him so he can't attack me," Audrey said. "And then ungag him. I will deal with him."

Uriel drew his sword, ready to disembowel the warlord possessed by one of the heavenly host.

"She is an abomination," the warlord sneered, spitting at Gabriella. "Her father suffers greatly in the Keep for his sin of conceiving her."

"Kneel before the Prophet of the Savior!" Anu ordered from where he held the warlord on a leash, giving him a kick in the back of the knees so he would crumple to the ground. Anu gave both Audrey and Gabriella an apologetic look. "Tell me what you know of Gabriel."

"He burns," the warlord hissed, stretching his neck to an unnaturally long length and baring his pointed teeth. "The Father forces him to relive the moment when he killed her over and over again."

Audrey winced. Before the heavenly host had realized the lights in heaven were on, but no one was home to make them return there, some of them had heard rumors about what went on inside the Keep. The stories varied, but not by much. It appeared the Father was fixated on punishing Gabriel not for falling in love with her after he had been cast down from heaven, but for being obedient and attempting to kill the Savior. The sin he had cast Gabriel down as a sin offering to the Mother for in the first place.

Audrey turned away as she blinked back her tears so the creature wouldn't see her weep. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Gabriella's fists clench. She took a few deep breaths to compose herself before turning back. Perhaps she would be able to shape something a little more appealing to its Grigori sire than a mouse? Most of the time, there was so little to work with that it was all she could do to shape a beetle.

"You'd better call in backup," Uriel said sternly to Anu. "This one looks more intact than the others."

Anu gave his uncle a dirty look, but did not utter the words Audrey could practically hear shouting at the surface of his mind. _'I'm not stupid, you know.'_

"Ishtup-sin! Shu-mama! Taribum!" Anu shouted towards the entrance of the cave. "We've got a live one."

Three Nephilim under Anu's command eagerly came streaming in. One of them gave Gabriella a high five and earned a glare from Anu for egging her on.

"Oh boy!" Ishtup-sin said sarcastically. "Killer rabbits."

"Well that's no ordinary rabbit," Shu-mama said, doing his best impersonation of a British accent. "That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on."

"Enough!" Anu snapped.

"You tit," Taribum said, also donning a British accent as he pretended he didn't hear Anu as he wrapped a second noose around the warlords' neck. He gave Gabriella, who had looked like she couldn't decide whether to smash the warlords skull in or cry, a funny face. "I soiled my armor I was so scared!"

Anu glowered at the three of them, but one glance at Gabriella struggling somewhere between rage and tears caused him to silence his retort. Ever since Gabriel's death, Anu and Ningizzada had appointed themselves as Gabriella's personal protectors. Whether she _wanted _to be protected or not. These days, it was _not._

"That rabbit's got a viscous streak a mile wide!" Ishtup-sin continued with the script, tying a third noose around the warlords neck and pulling straight back so it couldn't leap. "It's a killer!"

"He's got huge, sharp … er…" Shu-mama said, tying its ankles together to make sure it couldn't lurch to its feet. "Look at the bones!"

Gabriella started to giggle.

"Go on…" Taribum said. "Chop his little head off."

"Enough!" Anu shouted. "We've got a job to do!"

"Always remember that this creature was once as you are," Audrey reminded them, giving them the same stern _'I'm disappointed in you'_ look her Elvis-loving grandmother used to give _her_. "Half angel. Half mortal creature."

"Yes, Prophet," the three young men said, pulling the nooses in different directions so it couldn't launch itself at Audrey as she worked.

"Don't be afraid," Audrey said, carefully approaching the warlord. "We're only trying to help you. _Both _of you. You'll only be hurt if you resist."

Uriel hovered protectively at her back, sword drawn and pointed at the warlords' throat, the rustle of his deadly, razor-sharp wings as he flared them echoing off the walls of the cave.

"One sudden move and you're dead," Uriel said emotionlessly to the possessed warlord. As a full-fledged archangel, he was a creature of nightmare to a lesser being such as that which possessed the warlord. Healing the heavenly host was not Uriel's job. Protecting Audrey was. But after fifteen years of silence on the part of the Father and learning that Audrey was going to complete the mission whether he approved of it or not, Uriel had learned to go along for the ride.

"Uriel," the warlord hissed with recognition, cringing before him. Although the heavenly host feared _all _angels, only the six remaining archangels truly struck terror into the disembodied wraiths and made them cow before the others. Audrey had never figured out what additional power the archangels possessed to cause that effect. Gabriel had not known and neither had the others she had questioned since then.

But whatever the power was, it appeared Gabriella might have inherited it from her father. Anu was right. This fragment _was _a large one. The largest they had tracked down so far. Audrey could sense chunks missing from what might someday become a complete soul if she could find enough other pieces, not simply a piece of shattered consciousness.

"I'm going to help you remember who you are," Audrey said to the warlord, her voice deliberately reassuring and low. "If you remember your true name or the name of your mother or sire, that would be helpful, but if you can't, that's okay."

"Mother of all abominations," the warlord hissed. "Heaven spits upon the fruit of your womb."

"That's it," Gabriella said. Without another word, she strode across the room and kicked the warlord in the face. She crushed his throat beneath her blue high top sneakers as she glowered at him. "In case you forgot, it was this _abomination _which captured your sorry ass and dragged it into this cave."

"Gabbi," Anu warned. "You are violating protocol."

Gabriella gave the warlord once last crushing step just to make her point, and then stepped off his neck as ordered. Temper. Audrey had only rarely seen Gabriel exhibit a true temper, his normal mode of disapproval to be to glower and sulk. Both personality traits his offspring appeared to have inherited in droves. But Gabriella had _two _parents. Sometimes … the young woman's willfulness rivaled Audrey's own.

"This won't hurt," Audrey said, clasping the warlord on both sides of his face as she recalled the particular set of memories she wished to show the creature. "But if you try to bite me, you will have to deal with Uriel."

"No," the warlord cried, trembling with fear. "You possess the kiss of death."

"Only if I choose it to," Audrey said, staring into the warlords black, heavenly host possessed eyes. "Be still so I can concentrate or it will be back into the void with you."

Audrey breathed the gift of memory into the creatures mind. The memories were only fragments. Gabriel had been emotionally very immature and not understood much of what he had witnessed of the courtship between the female angels and the Grigori. But he _did _remember them. All four hundred female angels. All four hundred male Grigori. Although at the time he had assumed the love he saw between the two had been the love of playmates, not lovers, Gabriel had remembered there _had _been love. And he remembered which one had paired off with whom. Gabriel had left her with detailed memories of all four hundred sets of parents of the heavenly host Audrey now sought to reunite.

And then … the memory of the Grigori and their half-angel offspring storming the gates of heaven to kill the Father for destroying their mothers. The Mother's mistake. Their deaths. By the time Audrey was finished, the warlord was sobbing and two distinct voices had become apparent. The host. And the wraith which possessed him.

"The Mother gave you enough physical mass to keep the fragment of your consciousness here in this realm," Audrey said. "But she has no talent to shape it. I'm going to help you learn how to hold a shape on your own so you don't need a host anymore and can begin to heal. Are you ready?"

"Yes," the creature said, its voice different from that of the warlord host.

"Focus on the sound of my voice," Audrey said soothingly. "First you must vacate this host." As soon as it had, Anu had the Nephilim lead the warlord away for incarceration and re-education. The warlord had already been a very bad man even _before _the creature had possessed it.

For the next five hours, Audrey carefully talked it through how to use its own mass and craft a shape around it. In this case, the creature chose to assume the shape of a large, lop-eared bunny. Audrey only ever taught them to assume the shape of animals which were easily controlled. Although this fragment was large enough to shape into a higher animal such as a dog, a dog could be a serious threat. Hence the Nephilim boys recitation of the Monty Python script about killer rabbits…

After a decade of the Savior repeatedly failing to transfer wraiths from whatever body they possessed to one of the numerous little clay figurines he carved to bring to life, it had been Azrael's wife Ann who had finally figured out the heavenly host already _had _enough mass to shape a small body. If there was one positive thing which had come out Azrael's terrifying journey back into the void to save the Reverend, it was that it had forced him to finally learn how to shape his own mortal shell in such a way that it was no longer deadly. The heavenly host had been far too badly damaged to bear the power of the void the way Azrael and Audrey did, the same reason the Father had come out of the void without that same power. But they could learn to shape the mass the Mother had given them.

"What is your name?" Audrey finally asked, not expecting the creature to remember. Very few did. Even fewer remembered who their parents had been.

"Bridei," the rabbit-wraith said. "Begat by Thamuz and Iofiel."

Anu gasped. "Prophet … do you know what this means?"

"It means Thamuz is going to be a very happy dragon," Audrey said, clamoring back to her feet from where she had spent the last five hours kneeling, talking to a dog-sized cute fluffy killer rabbit. "Uriel? Would you do the honors?"

"No!" Bridei cried, trembling with fear. "You gave your word you wouldn't let him hurt me."

"He's not going to hurt you," Audrey said, patting the bunny and pulling her hand away as it instinctively tried to nip her and caught itself before it became a rabbit kebob at the end of Uriel's sword. "Hey … watch that aggressiveness. Your sire will teach you to work on that. You're going to be reunited with him now."

Uriel scooped up the rabbit and placed him into a pet carrier crate one of the Nephilim had fetched while Audrey was working. Thamuz had been put in charge of caretaking the soul-fragments of the Grigori children, cataloguing them, trying to help them remember who they were, and counseling them on anger management. Yellowstone had remained abandoned due to the fact the supervolcano was about to blow and level everything for a thousand square miles, but Mary's parents had set up a _new _hippie Freegan commune in Vancouver close to Mary and Yesua and helped Thamuz care for the creatures until a permanent solution could be found.

Uriel paused before lifting the crate, looking between Audrey and Gabriella, nostrils flared as he lingered.

"Are you going to be okay with her?" Uriel asked, glancing at the sullen Gabriella. "Or would you like me to return?" One wing touched the ground with a metallic scrape as the Light of God assumed a wing-position Audrey thought of as 'humble wings.'

"We'll be fine," Audrey said, finally making eye contact for the first time since Uriel had interrupted her nightly conversation with her deceased husband. She traced the scar she had left upon his face with one finger, noticing the parade of emotions which crossed his face. "Please give Thamuz my love."

Uriel took a long, shuddering breath and shut his eyes. When he reopened them, he had composed his emotions behind the unreadable expression all full-blooded angels normally wore. It was the closest Audrey had come to accepting him in the fifteen years he had protected her since his inaction had led to her husband's death. Today … the capture of this particular heavenly host … was a major victory. Not only was it the most intact soul-fragment they had caught to date, but it was also the offspring of one of the Savior's disciples. Today … had been a very good day. Audrey hadn't had very many of those since Gabriel had died.

Without another word, Uriel took the creature and disappeared between the dimensions.

"Gabriella," Audrey said, turning at last to her daughter who stood, her posture slumped in an awkward teenaged effort to hide the fact she towered over everyone in the room now that Uriel was gone. "Take me home."

Gabriella took her mother's hand and instantly teleported the both of them home without even bothering to flare her glossy, nearly-black wings.


	193. Chapter 192

Chapter 192

"Yesua has requested a meeting tomorrow," Belaziel said, coming up behind her and placing his arms around her shoulders. "He is very pleased. Thamuz already isolated three small soul-fragments that go with the one Gabriella captured the other night. Already the creature is regaining some of his original memories."

Audrey leaned back into his torso and sighed, accepting the warmth her not-quite-husband sought to give her. It was a strange relationship they had. Audrey refused to marry him, and he had refused to pressure her. _Both _flaunted the mandate of the Savior for _both _of their species to be fruitful and multiply so he had enough subjects to populate the entire universe. Neither really _wanted _another mate. Belaziel's now resided in the bliss of heaven. Audrey's in the eternal torment of the Keep. Both hoped that someday they would be reunited with the one they loved. But eternity was a long time to spend alone. Somewhere between love and apathy lay an infinite number of shades of grey. Audrey and Belaziel had gravitated to each others' warmth because only _they _understood what it meant to love someone who was no longer here so deeply that no one could ever fill their shoes.

"Yesua can go to hell," Audrey grumbled. "The creature claimed the word in Sheol is that the Father torments Gabriel by forcing him to relive the moment he killed me. The only reason the Father would be fixated on that moment is because he's still trying to get Yesua to forgive him for screwing up by punishing Gabriel. Same shit, different day."

"The Father is broken," Belaziel said, nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent and tugged her towards the bed. "You know that. Even _Uriel _is now acknowledging that fact."

Audrey followed Belaziel's lead and lowered her weight onto the bed, scooting up under the covers and tolerating his touch as he spooned in behind her and fluffed his feathers before encircling her in his arms and wings.

"Uriel needs to get a life!" Audrey exclaimed. "He's … he's …"

"He's hopelessly in love with you," Belaziel said, tugging her close and nuzzling the back of her neck with his nose. "We all are. How can an angel not fall in love with such a beautiful soul?"

"You understand me," Audrey sighed, closing her eyes and accepting Belaziel's subtle affection. "You never…"

"I understand that the minute you find a way to spring your husband from the Keep," Belaziel said, no resignation or remorse in his voice, only the tone of somebody stating a fact, "that this strange little relationship will end and you will go back where you belong. It is as it should be."

Belaziel tasted the pulse point at the base of her neck. Audrey reached up to touch the arm wrapped protectively around her shoulder and sighed.

"I _do _love you, you know," Audrey said softly. "It's just …"

"It's just that we're here," Belaziel said, kissing her hair. "And they are not. Sometimes … you just have to make do. By the way, you're low on potassium. You're forgetting to eat again."

As Gabriel had suspected, only Belaziel was capable of loving the wife he knew he had to leave behind in such a way that he wouldn't be threatened by the love she bore her _real _husband. Theirs was a relationship of mutual support and admiration. Less than lovers, for they had never consummated their relationship or taken it beyond fulfilling the need each other felt to hold or be held by a mate who was no longer here and help raise each others' offspring. But more than mere friends. Over the past fifteen years they hadlearned to love one another. It just wasn't a carnal love. More like … puppies. Unrelated mongrel puppies who had been torn away from the rest of the pack too young, tossed into a new home, who would spend the rest of their lives with one's chin resting upon the others paws.

"I miss him," Audrey said, a tear escaping the corner of her eye. "I miss him so badly my heart hurts."

"I know," Belaziel sighed. "For 4,500 years I existed in the Keep, clinging to her memory, only to lose her so shortly after I got her back. It never goes away. All you can do is learn to function around the pain so you don't let down the _others _who rely upon you to be their guiding star. Responsibility. It's the only thing which keeps me going."

"Gabriella is taking unnecessary risks," Audrey said. "She has this cockamamie idea that as soon as we get the Grigori children reconstituted, we can free her father. I'm afraid she's going to get herself killed."

"Would you expect anything less of the child of my brother?" Belaziel asked, pride tingeing his voice. "I will speak to her. I do not wish for her to make the _same _mistake my own children did in thinking they could simply storm heaven and make the Father see reason."

"Thank you," Audrey said, snuggling further into his warmth. "If I lost her too…"

"I understand," Belaziel said, kissing the back of her neck and momentarily tightening the grip he had around her shoulders to give her a hug. "Good night, my Sweet." Within moments, he was asleep, snoring softly into her ear.

Audrey touched the little bag of feathers she always kept under her clothing and imagined the arms which held her now were Gabriel's. Belaziel would not be upset at her imaginings. He did the exact same thing, pretending the one he curled up around each night was his wife.

It was a strange little ménage au quad they shared. Two broken people who still lived, and the two mates who were every bit as much a part of the relationship as if they were curled up in the bed with them.

Levirate marriage. In a bizarre, twisted way, the mandate of the Father to seek solace from the next available brother made sense.


	194. Chapter 193

Chapter 193

"Why you always hanging around my Mom?" Gabriella asked, sheer skull-splitting boredom finally compelling her to speak to the pain-in-the-ass archangel who had taken it upon himself to be the bane of her existence.

Uriel raised his head from where he sat in the ill-suited human chairs of the waiting room, wings smushed against the wall, and scrutinized her face to determine whether she was asking a legitimate question, or simply being hateful. He had good reason to be wary.

"Because the heavenly Father asked me to," Uriel said after a long pause.

Gabriella unslouched from her chair, which, unlike Uriel, she'd had enough sense to pull a couple of feet away from the wall so it wouldn't crush her feathers. Like most of the Unfallen, Uriel was downright stupid when it came to navigating the material realms. Mary Magdaline's human mother, Phhoung, was going to be _pissed _when she saw what Uriel had done to her freshly painted wall and chairs with his juiced-up razor sharp feathers.

"Why?" Gabriella asked, placing her hands onto her thighs and leaning forward to hear the answer.

Uriel's look shifted from being merely unreadable to one of wariness. Gabriella was notorious for silently scorning those around her. When she finally _did _speak, it was usually to deliver a remark so cutting it left the recipient emotionally bleeding upon the ground. She'd inherited her father's watchful, reticent manner, and her Mother's natural gift for holy blasphemy. Uriel had to have known she'd heard rumors about his involvement in her father's death, but she'd never heard it from the horses' mouth. He visibly struggled with how much to answer her.

"It was a long time ago," Uriel finally said with a sigh, looking down at his sandals. "I was a different person then." His razor-sharp feathers scraped down the wall as his wings unconsciously drooped. Phhoung was going to be doubly pissed. Gabriella almost looked forward to the spectacle of watching Mary's four-foot-nine Cambodian mother cuss out the seven-foot-three archangel.

Normally, Gabriella enjoyed tormenting the pompous Uriel. Payback for all the times he had ratted her out to her mother or her two lapdogs, Anu and Ningizzada. Today, however, it occurred to her that perhaps it was a question she ought to know the answer to.

Whatever the truth, her mother refused to discuss it. Fallen and Unfallen angels alike, including the older Nephilim, also refused to tell her. Whatever the circumstances surrounding her father's death, it caused both Fallen and Unfallen to feel profound shame. All she'd ever heard was rumors from Nephilim her own age who whispered that Uriel had been responsible for her father's death. It was part of the reason she'd grown up hating him.

"How come she hates your guts?" Gabriella asked. "Is it true you killed my father?"

For as long as she could remember, Uriel had always been there, lurking in the background like an unwanted guest. Her mother scorned his presence, consistently telling him to go away, and Gabriella had always mirrored her mother's dislike by treating him with the same contempt. She went for blood, not expecting to get it. She expected Uriel tell her to mind her own business, or snarl and call her names. She even expected him to get up and storm out of the room. What she _didn't _expect was for the Light of God to take a shuddering, uneven breath as he made eye contact and then quickly turn away, his eyes curiously bright as though he were about to cry.

For the first time, she realized her uncle's eyes were not blue like the others, but green…

"No," Uriel said, his face turned away so she couldn't see it. His voice was quiet and his wings trembled as he spoke. "It was what I _didn't _do. I was ordered to protect your mother and not help your father, so I protected your mother and didn't help your father. It was a mistake."

"Uncle Bezaliel says she should forgive you," Gabriella said. "He said you were only following orders."

Uriel looked down at his hands. He looked down at the floor. He looked down and started picking a piece of lint that had stuck to the strange, dorky breeches the Father made the Unfallen wear that looked like something out of a Spartacus movie. Gabriella waited, the silence stretching between them. If there was one thing Gabriella had learned to manipulate, it was how much the others couldn't stand silence.

"It was more than following orders," Uriel finally said, finally looking up and finally making eye contact. "For millions of years, your father was the only one the heavenly Father trusted to watch his back. And then … all of a sudden … the Father cast your father down from heaven and promoted _me _to watch his back. I was too eager to please him. To quick to follow orders. I didn't ask questions. I _should _have asked."

For the first time in her life, Gabriella realized how good looking her uncle was. She'd been so busy treating him like shit because that was how everyone else treated him that she'd never really taken a good look at him before. He was different from the other angels, with reddish-brown hair and wings that had black and cream stripes through the feathers. Like a red-tailed hawk. When the sun hit them just right, his razor-sharp feathers looked as though they were the rays of the sun. Or covered with blood.

"Are you going to get cast down from heaven, too?" Gabriella finally asked. "Like he did to my father?"

"I don't know," Uriel said, looking down and attending to a loose cord on his vambraces with intense interest. "He probably should."

"Because you have the hots for my mother?" Gabriella blurted out, wishing she could take back the hateful words even before they left her mouth. She didn't even fully understand what she was talking about. Gabriella had only just gotten her growth spurt the past year and had never paid much attention to boys before now. She was merely repeating something she had overheard Ishtup-sin, Shu-mama and Taribum joke about after Uriel had left with the Grigori offspring four days ago.

Uriel's head snapped up. His expression turned cold, the vulnerable expression he had allowed her to see for the first time she had known him gone.

"That's none of your business, young lady!" Uriel snapped.

Gabriella leaned back into her seat, her back hunched to hide her blossoming breasts which unfortunately came to eye level of just about every single Nephilim male, and feigned an intense interest in the 'Converse' logo of the high top sneakers she had found while scavenging an old high school several weeks ago. With size 13 feet, there were precious few shoes sized for girls that fit her large, boyish frame. At least _these_ sneakers looked cool. If masculine.

Gabriella spent the next 20 minutes silently watching her uncle from beneath her eyelashes as they were forced to wait for her mother to finish up another dreadfully boring meeting with the Savior. Mary Magdaline was interesting. So were her parents. But Yesua? Gabriella got some weird vibes off the so-called 'Savior.' Like he was all god-complex or something. Well … he _was _a god. But Gabriella didn't like the way he looked at her. As though she were some tasty morsel he was saving for a midnight snack. If there was one thing Mama had taught her, it was to be very suspicious of the motives of anybody with the power of a god.

Uriel sat there. Waiting. Waiting for her mother to finish whatever it was she was doing so he could escort the both of them back. The only reason Gabriella had been dragged along for this boring little meeting was because she was still grounded for her little stunt in Afghanistan four days ago. Instead of thanking her, they'd grounded her. What else was new?

"Don't you have anything better to do with your time?" Gabriella finally asked, giving her most sullen _'I hate your guts and think you're a piece of shit'_ expression.

"Yes," Uriel said, the unreadable expression back upon his face. When Gabriella looked into his eyes this time, she realized they had turned back to blue. A bit murkier than the others eye color. But definitely blue. His eyes changed color with his mood?

She decided she liked them better when they were green…

"I meant … um," Gabriella stammered, trying to get out of her own way and get the conversation back on track to answer the question she had _originally_ wanted to ask him before she'd stuck her size 13 feet in her mouth. "I mean … ah … um…"

"What is it that you want, daughter of the Left Hand of God?" Uriel asked coldly, turning the tables on her now as he sensed she wanted something from him.

"Is it true, what the creature said about my father?" Gabriella asked, looking down at her hands and slumping her wings. "Is he like being … tortured … or something?"

"Yes," Uriel said emotionlessly, enjoying giving back the dig she had given him earlier.

"Fuck you!" Gabriella said, lurching to her feet with tears in her eyes. Asking Uriel _anything _had been a big mistake. Before he could react, she teleported the fuck out of there to the furthest, most remote location she could think of. Let the fucking asshole explain to her mother why she had left! Until her mother made him get the fuck away from the _both _of them, she wasn't coming home!

X X X X X

"Where's Gabriella?" Audrey said, coming out of the conference room and spying Uriel standing alone in the waiting area, anxiously wringing his hands.

"Um…" Uriel stammered.

"Bathroom break?" Mary Magdaline volunteered, looking at Uriel with one raised eyebrow.

"She…" Uriel started to stay, his wings anxiously flared as though he expected to need to use them to shield himself from bullets at any second.

"Yesua wants you to take a look at the latest fragment pairings," Mary Magdaline said loudly to Audrey, grabbing her by the shoulder and herding her towards the opposite end of the lobby towards a door marked 'danger … level 1 security clearance needed beyond this point.' "Uriel … we might be delayed. Could you please take Gabriella to the canteen to get a bite to eat?"

"Oh … yes … please do that," Audrey said.

"But…" Uriel started to say. Audrey never heard him complete the sentence. Mary Magdaline had already shoved her through the double doors into the high security area and handed her over to the guards to sign in. The doors slammed behind her before she had a chance to really hear the muffled words Mary whispered to him.

"She goes to the base of the cliff where her father was sacrificed as a sin offering when she's troubled," Mary hissed. "Go get her and bring her back, you jackass, before her mother finds out what you said to her to make her cry!"

"Um…" Uriel said, clueless as to how to handle this deception Mary was advocating he keep from the Prophet.

"You _owe_ me," Mary hissed. "And you'd _damned _well better apologize to her. Now get moving!"

Uriel decided he'd better do as he had been ordered to do and go retrieve the sullen, moody, exasperating offspring of his former rival whom the heavenly Father had ordered him to protect with his life.


	195. Chapter 194

Chapter 194

"I wanted this time to speak to you alone," Yesua said, his unearthly blue eyes looking through her as though she were a puzzle piece he was trying to fit in a larger puzzle. "Without Mary present to hear what I have to say."

Audrey looked at the young man who she had once given her life to save with suspicion. Although Yesua had done an admirable job of helping her poor sorry species reconstitute themselves back into some semblance of civilization, her trust was as thin as the fake smile she now gave him. She hadn't fought to save him because he was the Savior. She'd been as skeptical _then _of pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by promises as she was now. Audrey had taken on Gabriel because letting a big bully kill a helpless baby had just plain gotten her Irish up.

Everything she'd learned about heaven, hell, and the fucked-up deities who ruled the universe _since _then had only reinforced her initial impression that it was all a crock of shit. Yesua's so-called 'family' was every bit as dysfunctional as her _own _family of origin. Worse. At least her parents had never killed any of their own offspring or wiped out entire species because it was self-serving to do so. Although there _had _been the incident with the dog…

Audrey waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Yellowstone is about to blow," Yesua said, plopping his still-gawky seventeen-year-old mortal shell down upon the executive chair in his office. "That's the event which was _supposed _to signal the official transfer of power on this planet from my Father to me. Although, to be honest with you, nobody's heard from him in fifteen years so maybe it's already happened."

"The Fallen are ready," Audrey said. "Shemihaza has made certain that every city under their command has prepared for three years of darkness followed by another four years of murky sunlight. Pharoah has laid in his stores of grain."

Audrey referred to the biblical dream interpretation Joseph had given Pharoah about the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine in Egypt. In this case, it had been fifteen years of frantic activity, growing and harvesting as much grain and other resources as the Great Plains could yield before the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted and buried everything within a thousand square miles underneath a pile of volcanic ash fifteen feet deep.

"The earthquakes everyone in the North American continent have been feeling are growing to crisis levels," Yesua said, absent-mindedly twirling the miniature globe of Earth he kept upon his desk. "The sleeping giant that lays beneath Yellowstone is shaking off its 640,000 year slumber."

"You already covered your evacuation plans at this morning's meeting," Audrey said, not bothering to hide her annoyance at being summonsed into his office for a repeat of what he'd just spent the past seven hours covering.

"It's time for your daughter to fulfill her destiny," Yesua said.

"No!" Audrey said firmly. "She's just a little girl."

"She's a young woman," Yesua said. "And Gabriel's appointed heir. The only one who can wield the horn on his behalf. As it is … I've overlooked your refusal to force her to choose a mate and get married as soon as she started her monthly cycle as is my law. She has one of the most unique genetic profiles on the planet!"

"Fuck your law!" Audrey snarled.

The room shuddered as rebar inside the concrete resonated to the anger in her voice. Yesua winced at the reminder from his Mother's agent to watch his step. Audrey took a deep breath, turning to stare at the mural Phhoung had painted of a rural scene in Cambodia to get the dark power of the void under control before turning back to finish the conversation.

"Gabriella is emotionally very immature for her age," Audrey continued, enunciating her words smoothly and evenly to force herself to be calm. "Like her father was at that same age. She only hit her growth spurt within the past year."

"I only remember Gabriel as being an adult," Yesua said. "I wouldn't know. I wasn't even born yet."

"But I _do _know!" Audrey said, tapping her head. "He left me with his memories. Even after the Father rammed his pre-pubescent consciousness into an adult body so he could force Gabriel to fight for him, it took a long time for Gabriel to become aware of the nuances of many things human adolescents just … know. That's why you had problems with him never learning to exercise his own judgment. The Father forced him to grow up and assume an adult role before he was emotionally ready!"

"That's no excuse," Yesua said coldly, his eyes turning nearly white with contempt. "He was no child when the Father ordered him to kill me. He should have known it was wrong!"

Audrey worked with Yesua because that is what her species needed to do to survive, but her days of assuming he was an improved version of the Father were long gone. Yesua was an _undamaged _version of the Father. The jury was still out on whether or not he was 'improved.' Dealing with Yesua was what it _would _have been like to deal with the Father if he hadn't gotten chewed up and spit out by the void. The 'god' who forgave all sins spoken of in the New Testament was really Mary Magdaline. She helped him understand what life was like when one wasn't a god.

"And who's going to _make_ me obey your law?" Audrey asked sweetly with a smile.

Yesua sighed. There wasn't an angel on the planet who would lay a hand on her. Neither would the Grigori. Those heavenly host she had taught to shape a mortal shell were loyal to her, while those who still ran rogue upon the Earth were too terrified of the kiss of death. Humans believed she and her deceased husband were extensions of the Savior. And those who knew better understood she was the Mother's counter-balance to anyone who got too big for their britches. Including Yesua. Audrey was the Mother's wild card.

"You're setting a poor example!" Yesua complained. "You've refused to remarry and bear more offspring, and now you're preventing your daughter from doing it as well. Your genetic heritage is unique. Why won't you help improve your own species?"

"Ask your wife," Audrey said caustically at the thought of being considered breeding stock. "Let _her _explain it to you."

"She already has," Yesua said. "She refused the comfort of the one my Father sent to replace me."

Audrey's eyebrows raised in surprise. "You _knew _Michael had a thing for your wife?

"It was part of the original wager I made with my Father," Yesua said. "I _asked _him to send someone to alleviate her grief. It was either Michael … or Gabriel. It's why the Father sent the both of them to stand at her side as she was forced to witness my death and turned off the emotional-dampening features of the control collar so they would feel empathy for her."

"Michael … or Gabriel?" Audrey asked, dumbfounded. "You mean? You just tossed a coin or something? What made him choose Michael?"

"The Father had problems with Gabriel and Hagar even _with _the control collar working," Yesua said. "It took him a long time to wipe that accursed woman from Gabriel's memory and get him to be obedient again. So he chose Michael. It was lucky for me that he _did._ Michael had enough common sense to _hide_ his willfulness after my wife sought her own death."

"But Gabriel never…" Audrey murmured. She had searched Gabriel's restored memories of Hagar and, although Gabriel had loved Hager and Ishmael, his emotions had never grown beyond a deep-seated protectiveness.

"Control collar," Yesua said, tapping his neck. "Kills the emotions. Besides … Hagar was already married. To Abraham. They didn't have divorce back then."

"You mean you manipulated Michael without his knowledge or consent?" Audrey asked. "Michael was unattached! How could you send him to form a soul-mate bond with your wife without _warning_ him when you knew Mary would never return it? He carried that torch for her for over 2,000 years!"

Yesua looked down at his hands, drumming his fingers together in thought. Audrey waited, refusing to allow him off the hook. It was a lesson from the 'Gabriel school of contemptuous silent treatment 101.' Everybody felt uncomfortable when there was silence. Even a god.

"The whole thing started out as a game," Yesua finally said, looking up and making eye contact once more. "The Father was doing his best to build a world he would proud to have me inherit and I kept second-guessing him. I bet him I could do a better job with one hand tied behind my back. The whole virgin birth thing was to take away my memories for a few years and see how well I did. But before I hit the age when I was supposed to get my memories back, I met Mary. By then, it was too late to back out of the wager."

"You deities and your stupid wagers!" Audrey snapped. "When are you going to learn that _people _aren't chess pieces?"

"I'm working on it," Yesua said. "The wager is deeply ingrained in my species as a form of conflict resolution."

Audrey's anger softened at the sheepish expression Yesua gave her. Jackass or not, Yesua had inherited Charlie's blonde hair and good looks. It gave him a slightly vulnerable appearance that was hard to resist. Even when she wanted to smack him.

"Mary radically changed my perception of what humans were capable of," Yesua said. "I started preaching _against _the empire my Father was supposedly building in _my _glory. Rome. He got ticked off. We had wagered I didn't have the kahonas to both live and _die _as a human. The Father used that loophole as an excuse to send the heavenly host to rile up the Pharisees to rat me out to the Romans."

"So Michael told me," Audrey said. "He wanted to get you the hell out of Dodge before you brought down the house."

"Dodge?" Yesua asked.

"Social reference to a movie about a gunfight at a horse corral," Audrey reminded him. "The Okay Corral."

"Yes," Yesua agreed. "My Father wanted me out of … Dodge."

"So you just … left … your wife?" Audrey asked. "Pregnant? And alone?"

"Actually," Yesua said, a bit of color rising to his cheeks. "Our last child during that lifetime was conceived posthumously. We did a lot more when I came back on the third day than just talk."

"You really are an asshole," Audrey snapped. "Stupid wagers!"

The only thing Audrey knew for certain was that, when Gabriel had made an offer of his life in exchange for a 'get out of jail free' card for _her, _it had solved a whole slew of problems for the three deities related to thousands of interconnected wagers that were falling down upon their collective heads. Whether he had been raised to believe it or not, Gabriel was the son of two gods. Unless all of the other circumstances from the other wagers which had necessitated the acceptance of his offer as force of law were resolved, there was no way Audrey could spring Gabriel from the Keep.

"Yes," Yesua said softly, his eyes darkening to a dark, navy blue. "I am. But it doesn't change the fact that Judgment Day is upon us and _somebody _needs to blow that horn. Otherwise … everybody who's stuck in Sheol, stays in Shoel."

"Arrghhh!" Audrey groaned, tearing off her black khimar in frustration. "You guys are all … fucked up! I'm not interjecting my daughter into the middle of your mess!"

"Would you deprive Belaziel of the opportunity to free his wife?" Yesua asked softly. "One blast of that horn and Gabriella can simply lead the people in the Garden back to Earth."

Audrey paused. Although her relationship with Belaziel had never progressed beyond companionship, she _had _grown to love him. The hole in Belaziel's heart bled every bit as painfully as her own. Audrey wasn't the _only _one who went to their deceased spouses' tomb every night to hold a lengthy conversation with a spouse who was no longer there. Would she _really _force Belaziel to continue to suffer if it was within her power to free his mate?

"Okay," Audrey said, giving Yesua a withering glare. "But before I ask Gabriella to do _anything_, I want full disclosure. Everything you know about all these wagers so I can figure out how the fuck to unravel them all without bringing the universe to a screeching halt. No tricks. No games. If you double-cross me, it will be _you _who gets sent to the Keep to suffer a punishment of my choice!"

"I can't just leave," Yesua started to say. "The universe can't run without me!"

"You're one child of over a thousand," Audrey snapped. "Don't give me _that_ bullshit! The only thing separating _you _from _them _is the Mother kept you away from the Father long enough that he didn't stunt your growth! Mary could probably run the whole shebang with one hand tied behind her back."

Yesua first looked angry, and then smiled as the second half of what she said sank in. He knew she was right … about Mary, anyways. His wife made Pepper Potts from the Iron Man comics look disorganized.

"Agreed," Yesua finally said. "We'll start right away. Where _is _your daughter, by the way? I no longer sense her life energy in the area."

"Uriel took her out for a bite to eat," Audrey said.


	196. Chapter 195

_Note:__ I'd like to give my thanks to all those great readers who keep reading and reviewing, or just letting me know they're still watching from the numbers. As you may have noticed, I skipped ahead and added new characters after Gabriel's death. The reason is deliberate. Gabriel ran out of time to fix things. It felt disingenuous to then go 'oops … NOW everything is fixed' after how horribly he died. But now time has passed. Things are happening. Puzzle pieces are falling into place. Soon … it'll be time for Gabriel's little girl to blow that horn he left behind for her. But she's never been to heaven before. She needs somebody to show her the way. And then maybe our Little Prophet will finally figure out a way to spring Gabriel from the Keep! I hope everybody keeps reading!_

X

Chapter 195

Uriel emerged from the space 'between' approximately 30 feet from the tallest summit of Red Ridge National Park. The peak where the current human mother of the Savior and her protector had climbed trying to escape the death sentence of the heavenly Father and nearly been killed by Gabriel before the Father changed his mind.

Gabriella was not here, but he could sense her presence nearby. Movement caught his eye on the ground directly beneath the cliff. Uriel leaped off without thinking, tucking his wings tight against his back like a hawk to make the descent as quickly as possible.

It was only moments before he neared the bottom that it occurred to him that all the Father had to do was pull the holy fire from his wings, as he had done to Gabriel, and it would be _him _whowould be laying broken at the bottom of the cliff. Fallen from grace. Abandoned to suffer and die. Alone. Cut off from the light of the heavenly Father which, despite its inconsistency the past fifteen years, Uriel could still feel.

Wasn't _he _now the one guilty of blindly following the Father's orders without figuring out what the Father really _needed?_ Why should _he_ be treated any differently than his brother, who had been cast down after millions of years of loyal service?

For the first time in his very long existence, Uriel was afraid. He banked his wings into the braking position and frantically flapped to make his landing, his heart racing in terror as it occurred to him they might not work. Much to his relief, today was not his day to fall from grace. Even though all 598 of his remaining brothers were making it clear he _should _be cast down for the sin of letting his brother die, the Father obviously didn't agree. Or didn't care. Given how the Father had not been seen in fifteen years, it was probably the latter.

It was the noisiest, most ungraceful landing he'd ever made…

"Go away," Gabriella sniffed, her black-brown wings wrapped around herself so that nothing was visible but feathers. Tremors disturbed them, making it appear as though tiny waves of wind were ruffling the surface of an ebony sea.

"I'm sorry," Uriel said breathlessly, his heart still racing from his epiphany about how easily he could be cast down to walk in his brother's shoes.

Gabriella, or more precisely the enormous trembling ball of black feathers which hid Gabriella from his eyes, did not answer him. Uriel stood, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, until it occurred to him Gabriella possessed the _same _infinite patience her father had been known for. If she didn't feel like speaking to him, she would simply ignore him for however long it took for him to go away.

"I shouldn't have said what I did," Uriel said awkwardly, not sure how to handle a female half-angel. "About your father."

Silence. Only the tremors which disturbed the glossy dark feathers indicated he'd been heard.

Uriel had no memories of his 'sister-angels.' Nor had he had much interpersonal experience with humans. Especially _female _humans. Half-humans. Moody, adolescent female half-humans who hated his guts because he'd stood by and done nothing while her father had been killed right in front of his eyes.

Uriel was not a patient man. In contrast to Gabriel's solid, limitless patience and Michael's ability to think through an infinite number of scenarios in milliseconds, Uriel had always been a man of action. The past fifteen years, however, had forced him to be patient and hold his tongue. Without the Father to guide his every action, for the first time in his life Uriel was being forced to think for himself. But Gabriella? Audrey was going to be very angry at him for making her cry. He had absolutely no _clue _what to do to make her stop.

Heck! Until four days ago, Audrey had pretty much refused to even acknowledge he was there! For millions of years humanoids had bowed down to him and treated him like a god. Now … they practically spat upon him. Even his own brothers cursed his name! But when Audrey had made eye contact with an expression in her eyes other than her normal grief or contempt, it had done things to him.

He wasn't going to let Gabriel's bratty daughter stand in his way…

"I'm not leaving until you come back with me," Uriel said haughtily, projecting every ounce of heavenly authority he could muster into his voice.

Silence.

"Fine," Uriel said, twitching his reddish-brown wings. "I'll wait."

More silence.

Uriel stood. And stood. And stood some more. The sun started to set. Audrey would be getting out of her second meeting by now and getting worried when she realized neither him, nor the recalcitrant daughter she had grudgingly allowed him to come along to keep an eye on while she was otherwise occupied, were in the area. It was time to move things along.

"Your mother is going to be very angry with you for not coming home," Uriel said.

"I'm not _going_ home," Gabriella said in a feather-muffled voice that was half sulking, half crying. "Ever! Not until my mother makes _you _go back where you came from. So just go away and leave me alone!"

Uriel's wings twitched with a combination of anger, annoyance, and fear. Anger because Gabriella was being defiant. Annoyance because her behavior was illogical. And fear because … because … he wasn't sure why he was afraid. All he knew was that, at some point, carrying out the last order the Father had ever given and protecting his brother's wife and child had become his only reason for existing. Uriel was an archangel … without a god to command him. He was lost.

"Look," Uriel said, attempting logic. "I already said I'm sorry."

"Apology not accepted," Gabriella said angrily. "So go away! I don't want you following me around anymore! You … you … stalker!" She pulled her wings tighter around herself, scrunching into a little black ball of feathers no big than a cherub instead of the seven-foot-one, extremely muscular young woman she had become.

Uriel stood there, at a loss for words. Now what? There had been a brief period of time, the first ten years of her life or so, when he would have been able to just pick the stubborn female up and carry her home under his arm like a football. Those days were long gone. Even amongst full-blooded angels, Gabriel's half-human daughter was a giant. With the exception of the six remaining archangels, Gabriella could probably pin the others to the ground and pluck them like a chicken dinner if she so chose.

Audrey would be worried about her daughter. Should he leave her here and dash between the dimensions to tell her what had happened? Mary Magdaline had indicated that would be unwise. Should he just stay and wait it out?

"Listen you little brat," Uriel said. "It's getting dark out. Pretty soon, it's going to get cold. I'll just wait."

Gabriella didn't answer him. Instead, she fluffed out her feathers for warmth. It was late-August and they were in the middle of the Mojave desert. Cold probably didn't concern her right now. He waited. And waited. And waited.

Uriel's stomach growled. Until he had begun to spend extended periods of time in the material realm and the Father's holy fire had begun to get uneven, Uriel had never needed to eat. Now … although he didn't need to eat often, there were times when it felt as though the Father had abandoned them. His body would react by displaying bizarre urges. Such as thirst. Hunger. Or …

Ugh! Uriel's face turned red with mortification at the very thought of what happened _after _an angel was forced to consume mortal sustenance. The first time it had happened, he had thought he was going to cast himself into the void in mortification. No one had even warned him! It was a curse _all _the Unfallen now experienced from time to time. Depending on what kind of day the Father was having doing whatever it was he had been hiding in his workshop doing for the past fifteen years and refusing to come out, Uriel might be filled with limitless strength, only have a mediocre performance, or feel as though the Father had shut down the spigot of holy fire down to a tiny trickle.

Uriel ignored his grumbling stomach. He always ate as little as possible. But…

"I'll just wait for you to get hungry," Uriel said. "You're mortal. You're going to get hungry _some_ time."

"I've got a couple of Power Bars in my book bag," a little voice that sounded suspiciously as though she were crying said from beneath the ball of trembling feathers.

"Power bars?" Uriel asked.

"Uncle Michael said they were one of my father's favorite foods," Gabriella sniffled. "He said he would hide them nearby so my mother would find them and have something to give him once he started to regain his strength. They're very nutritious."

And then Gabriella began to cry in earnest. Big, sniffling sobs that sounded as though somebody had stepped on a cat.

_Now _what was he supposed to do? If he brought her home like this, Audrey would grant Gabriella her wish and banish him. The thought of being driven away frightened him for reasons he cared not to think about. Ever since he had been given this assignment, it felt as though he had been on an emotional roller coaster. Some days, he felt as though he lived or died depending upon the Prophet's mood.

Like the day Gabriella had cornered the host-possessed warlord and Audrey had touched his face…

Better not to think about that. The Prophet must give him … indigestion? Or something. Why else would he always feel as though he were about to drop his sword on his own foot or throw up whenever he got near her?

The sobbing got louder. Off in the murky dusk, coyotes howled in answer to Gabriella's plaintive cries. Perhaps he should try another tact?

Bonding. Michael had urged him to do something called 'bond' with the infant Gabriella. Only he had omitted the instruction manual. Since then, Uriel had been attempting to learn on his own, with mixed results. Actually … unsuccessful results. Truth be told, every attempt Uriel had made at forming any kind of 'bond' with Gabriel's moody daughter had been rebuffed.

"I … uh …" Uriel stammered. "I didn't mean what I said. Earlier. About your father."

"Yes you did," the sobbing ball of feathers responded in an accusing voice.

"I mean …" Uriel said. "We don't know for _sure _your father is being … um … tortured."

"I'm not stupid, you know?" Gabriella sobbed. "The whole _reason _you get sent to the Keep is to be punished."

"The Father … uh … um …" Uriel stammered. Should he tell a pleasant lie? Or the truth? Bonding. Which answer was more likely to result in the elusive 'bond' Michael urged?

"He didn't torture the Grigori," Uriel said, stating the only truth he could think of that was somewhere in the middle.

"That's just because the Mother threatened to unravel the entire universe if he did," Gabriella said. And then she began to cry louder.

The moon started to rise. Audrey was going to be worried. And angry. But if he left his charge in this condition, he knew she would teleport to a more secluded location where even Mary wouldn't be able to pick up on where she was. He didn't dare leave.

And Gabriella's crying was beginning to get to him. It never had before. He'd seen many humans cry. Usually because somebody died or they were in physical pain. All he'd ever felt was contempt for weak humans allowing their base emotions get the better of them. If he felt anything at all, that was. Usually he didn't. It was more comfortable that way. For as long as he could remember, he could never remember feeling anything about anything at all until the day the Father had sent him to protect the Prophet and her unborn child and forbidden him to help his brother.

And then … all of a sudden … everyone had been spitting mad at him and he had … cared? Why?

"The Father offered Gabriel amnesty shortly before he died," Uriel said, saying the only truth he could think of that might bring the young woman some comfort. "I think he just wanted him to go home. Perhaps he is so glad he's back that he isn't doing anything bad to him?"

"Then why won't he let my daddy come home?" Gabriella wailed, finally dropping the protective circle of her wings to make eye contact. Her face was red and puffy from crying, the pinkness making her unearthly blue eyes look all the bluer.

Uriel looked into Gabriella's eyes and saw straight into her soul. Just for a moment, he thought he was looking at his brother. Yes … why _wouldn't _the Father let Gabriel come home?

"I don't know," Uriel said softly, his voice almost a whisper. "I used to think I knew a whole bunch of things. But now I realize I don't know anything at all."

"He's there because of _me!"_ Gabriella wailed. "It's all my fault! If I hadn't been born, the Father wouldn't have taken him and then my mother wouldn't cry all the time."

Uriel felt as though someone had just shoved a sword into his heart and kicked him in the gut too boot. Hadn't his next-to-the-last words to his dying brother been to call his child an abomination and tell him he _deserved _to suffer for the sin of conceiving her?

And the worst thing was that Uriel couldn't tell Gabriella she was wrong! The sacrifice which had caught Gabriel up in its wake had been because he had fallen in love with her mother and wished to marry her.

He felt like his knees were about to give out from underneath him. He sat down. Next to her. After a long silence, the only sound being Gabriella softly weeping, his stomach growled again.

"Here," Gabriella said, her sobs quieting down to the occasional hiccough. "Eat one of these. It will take the edge off."

Uriel hesitantly took the brightly colored little rectangle and followed Gabriella's lead, peeling off the wrapper and placing the corner of the bar into his mouth. He bit down. An instant sensation of pure revulsion shuddered through his body as he attempted to first chew, and then swallow the vulgar sustenance.

"You _like _these?" Uriel asked.

Gabriella silently hunched beside him, thoughtfully chewing on her own Power Bar before answering him.

"Not really," Gabriella said, turning at last to make eye contact with her red-rimmed eyes and wiping some snot from her nose. "They're kind of gross. But it makes me feel closer to my father."

Uriel couldn't help but wonder if they fed the inmates Power Bars in Sheol…


	197. Chapter 196

Chapter 196

"Where is he?" Audrey snapped.

"He's … uh … busy," the human guard said, stepping in front of the door of the so-called 'gate room' of the former Bridge Studios where, for reasons which perplexed humans and angel alike, the Savior persisted in keeping as his world-wide headquarters seated underneath the now-crumbling movie prop of a defunct television series.

"Let me pass!" Audrey snarled, the anger in her voice causing the steel in the door frame to resonate.

The guard hesitated. Everyone knew who Audrey was. They had standing orders to give her direct access to Yesua whenever she asked. However, the guards tried to protect what little free time the Savior had whenever they could. Most people, if it was pointed out to them the Savior was busy, would wait. This was obviously not going to be one of those times.

"Okay," the guard said, stepping aside and calling into his two-way radio. "Hey … Rogers. Got a live one coming through. Let the Reverend know the Prophet is on her way in."

The security Yesua had been assigned by his human protector and stepfather, Jeep, made that of the former President of the now-defunct United States appear lax in comparison. Whether Yesua wanted security or not, humanity had lost him once already 2,000 years ago and were determined not to lose him a second time.

Audrey stormed down the access hall, glowering at the guard as she paused for a retinal scan and placed the palm of her hand over a scanner to confirm they matched. The computer Jose' had rigged up confirmed her identity and automatically unlocked the door. Audrey squeezed through before the automatic door had fully swung open, fixing to give Yesua a piece of her mind.

'_Goddamned sonofabitch arrogant … asshole!' _Audrey rehearsed the words she was going to say to him in her mind as she stormed towards the other side of the enormous former sound stage where a skylight had been cut into the ceiling. Yesua was experimenting with creating plants and trees that would cleanse the Earth of the excess sulfur and carbon he was anticipating would be spewed into the atmosphere once Yellowstone blew.

'_Who the FUCK do you think you are, sending my daughter off on an errand with Uriel without asking ME first…"_

The lights flickered and went dark as she passed, her anger so extreme that, at this point, she didn't even need to use her voice to make every single conductive material in the building resonate with her passage. When Audrey was angry, they had finally figured out, she was a walking electromagnetic pulse. The destructive aspect of the void, which recycled all matter and made it available again for reuse. In human form.

When she got _really_, really angry, Audrey was a walking miniature black hole…

Just like the Mother.

'_She's just a little girl!' _Audrey muttered, rehearsing the conversation she was about to have in her head so that, when she reamed him out, it would get though Yesua's thick, arrogant skull. _'Just because YOU'RE too fucked up to understand what it means to give a shit about another sentient being doesn't mean the REST of us are.'_

Audrey stormed past the gigantic ring Yesua had chosen to symbolize eventual expansion of the human race out into the galaxy, which they had learned was part of the so-called 'inheritance' Yesua would receive the day Yellowstone finally blew its top and Gabriella blew her father's horn. A movie prop. The least the little weasel could do would be to make a _real _functioning star gate instead of borrowing movie props from old science fiction movies as he urged humanity to hurry up and replenish their numbers so he could start populating the stars.

'_You don't give a shit about anybody but YOURSELF!'_ Audrey screamed at him in her mind. It was a good thing the movie prop star gate _wasn't _real or the waves of void-enhanced anger pulsating off of Audrey right now probably _would _have opened a wormhole to another part of the galaxy using the fictitious interstellar transportation device. Angels didn't _need _a star gate to travel to another world. All they had to do was _think _about it and they would go there.

Audrey stormed past the beautiful, flowering bushes that sucked methane and sulfur out of the air that Yesua had created, ignoring their beauty, and also the beds of orange daylilies and pachysandra which absorbed poisonous fluorine gas, all hazards of excess volcanism on the larger global climate. She stomped through the tall, lush grass Yesua had already been naturalizing worldwide which sequestered enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and had already made a significant dent in the damage global warming had done to her world in the last century. A mosquito bit her and she swatted at it, shoving out of her mind the fact that this particular mosquito _immunized _everything it bit from every known pathogen instead of _carried _disease.

Yesua was a prick … and she was going to have it out with him once and for all!

She burst through the underbrush into a clearing just in time to see…

Yesua.

Rolling around on the ground with one of his three current human offspring.

"Wheee!" Yesua laughed, crawling through the grass, his clothing covered in grass stains, as he crawled on his hands and knees after the middle three-year-old of his brood. "The doggies going to get you!"

In response to that, the _real _doggie, a female golden retriever with five puppies, which it appeared Yesua was pretending to be one of, barked and wagged her tail. The _real _puppies yipped playfully and clamored all over Yesua and his offspring.

Yesua's third child, still an infant, sat cooing happily in the arms of the now-five-months-pregnant-with-their-fourth-in-this-lifetime-child Mary Magdaline while she laughed at her families antics. The minute Yesua's mortal shell had matured enough to resume his 'duties' as a husband, he and Mary had picked up right where they had left off the _last_ time they were here together. Being fruitful and multiplying as much as was humanly possible.

"You're a bad influence," Mary called. "It's going to take me _days _to get those grass stains out of his clothes!"

"Grass," Yesua said, eyeing his child and pretending to eat some of the grass like he was a horse, "tastes good. Yumm!" Yesua bent down to grab a mouthful of grass and shake his head with it, silliness which earned him peals of laughter from his son.

On the ground nearby, _also _crawling on the ground playing 'horsie' with Yesua's eldest child, a five-year-old little girl, was Auntie Lena. The second disciple. The most beloved 'aunt' of Yesua's children.

"Hey!" Lena protested in a mock whiney voice which had the little girl sitting upon her back in giggles. "That's _my _grass. What's a poor horse supposed to eat?"

"That's hay … h-a-y!" Yesua called back, spitting out the grass and resuming acting like a puppy once more. "Not hey … h-e-y."

Audrey stopped dead in her tracks, the lights flickering and then growing bright once more as her anger evaporated.

Okay. Maybe Yesua _did _have a clue.

"He's not what we were taught to expect," a voice said from behind her. "Is he?"

The Reverend. Audrey turned to see her old friend and now leader of the free world, second only to Yesua himself. Grey now graced his temples, giving him a distinguished look, but otherwise he was _still _the spitting image of a young, fit Elvis Presley.

"No," Audrey said, glancing back just in time to see Yesua roll over and pretend to act like a dog waiting for his belly to be scratched in front of his wife. Mary burst out laughing and reached out her bare foot to 'rub' his belly. Yesua pretended to be trying to scratch at the air with his legs like a _real _dog would sometimes do when their belly was rubbed. All three children plus Lena burst out laughing at his antics, even the dogs barking in delight.

"But then again," Audrey continued, glancing around and noticing the 'garden' Yesua had created in this place for the first time. "It's moments like this that I realize he's _everything _we hoped for in a Savior."

As she watched, Yesua clamored to his feet, took the third child from his wife, affectionately rubbed her pregnancy-swollen belly and bent down to speak to the fourth of his offspring currently in the works, and then pulled Mary into his arms for a passionate kiss. Audrey's heart hurt. They reminded her of what sheand Gabriel had been like before he'd been killed. If Gabriel had lived long enough to spend time with his child. Having seen how good Gabriel had been with Anu and Ningizzada, Audrey knew he would have been a good father.

"How can the immortals understand what it means to be a father when their own Father was so cold to them?" Audrey asked. "I have Gabriel's memories of eternity. Yahweh couldn't stand to have the cherubs anywhere near him. He only tolerated Gabriel because he hid underneath the Father's workbench and wouldn't move for hours on end so the Father would forget he was there."

"Ehyeh showed me what _their _father had been like when I underwent the Okipa ceremony," the Reverend said. "The Fathers' father. The Father wasn't always damaged and the Mother craves physical contact. They inherited the need to connect to others from _both _parents. It's unfortunate the Father's experience in the void damaged his consciousness. The need to connect is like breathing to them. It's why they're capable of bonding to _us._ The Father created us to fill the void he sensed within his own soul."

Audrey unconsciously touched the little bag of feathers she wore against her heart, the note Gabriel had left her the day he died folded neatly into the bag. He hadn't known for _certain _he was going to die that day. In fact, for the first time, Gabriel had expressed hope that maybe he would be given a chance to work things out and fix the problems that not only _he_ had created, but also problems going back to the birth of the universe. Problems which originated with the Father's shattered consciousness which had been glued back together after his trip through the void but never fully healed. Gabriel's dying wish had been that Audrey would find it in her heart to _forgive _the heavenly Father for everything he had done and find a way to help him finish healing.

As if! What could _she _ever hope to do to heal a god?

"Yesua really is an asshole," Audrey whispered to the Reverend, saying the words she had been rehearsing earlier in her head. "He sent Gabriella on an errand with Uriel last night and didn't even ask me first. They're not back yet. Belaziel just informed me they haven't returned to Toronto, either. She's just a little girl!"

"Uriel will protect her with his life," the Reverend said. "Even if he _doesn't _have a clue what she's all about. Perhaps that was the purpose of the mission? To get them to bond? Gabriella's going to need one of the Unfallen to guide her when she blows that horn and it's better if the person guiding her is someone she trusts."

Audrey paused, watching Yesua gather up his three already-born children into his arms, the baby on his knee, and begin to tell them a story. Mary plopped down in a chair next to him and rubbed her stomach, an enormous smile upon her face. Happy. They looked like any other normal, blissfully happy family who loved one another. Auntie Lena plopped down on the grass next to them, the dog coming over and putting its head upon her lap, while the puppies curled up around Yesua's kids. They looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Or a child's illustrated version of the New Testament.

_This_ part of the New Testament, at least, had been real…

"You didn't hear what Uriel said to Gabriel about her the day he died," Audrey said, emotion choking up her words. "He called her an abomination. An abomination! My little girl? I've always tried to keep Uriel away from her unless it was absolutely necessary to protect her from a threat."

"You haven't forgiven him," the Reverend said. It was a statement, not a question.

"No," Audrey said, tapping her head to indicate she was accessing her deceased husband's memories. "Gabriel fully anticipated none of his brothers would defy the Father's orders to let the Grigori kill him. But he _didn't_ expect Uriel to spout such hatred at him as he lay there dying. His last thought as his life spark left his mortal shell was fear that Uriel's hatred would cause him to be lax in his duty to protect us from harm. I don't _trust _him with her! And I don't trust Yesua!"

The Reverend put his arms around her and gave her the hug she so desperately needed. Audrey began to cry.

"Give Yesua a chance," the Reverend said. "I know he didn't turn out to be the solution you trekked through the country for two-and-a-half years to find. But so far he _has _been living up to his 2,000 year old promise to unite humanity and shepherd us into a better world."

"He hasn't forgiven Gabriel for trying to kill him," Audrey sobbed. "It's been almost eighteen years and he still hates his guts. Why won't he forgive him? Gabriel did everything he _could _to show Yesua he had changed!"

"Gabriel ran out of time," the Reverend said, releasing her at last and leading her away from where Yesua was playing with his family to another section of the garden dedicated to zoological experiments. "The Father knocked Gabriel down pretty low to get you to forgive him. Yesua wasn't there to see that. None of us were. By the time you found _me, _he still had problems, but the big change … having his ego knocked down to size and his attitude about humans adjusted to view us with something other than contempt, had already happened. Yesua never had a chance to really see that."

"Have you tried to talk to him about it?" Audrey said.

"Extensively," the Reverend said. "It's … complicated. Yesua _already _bore hard feelings for Gabriel from the _first _time his mortal shell was sacrificed."

"So this was really about a 2,000 year old grudge?" Audrey asked, reaching into her handbag for a tissue and blowing her nose. "How come Gabriel left me with no memories of that?"

"The grudge was one-sided," the Reverend said. "Although Yesua _knew _going into the crucifixion that the angels would not dare disobey the Father and help him as he was nailed to the cross, it was _one _thing to know it in his head. It was another thing entirely to be forced to endure all that pain and have your brothers just stand there, even brothers you'd had almost no contact with your entire lifetime, and do nothing."

'_Just like Uriel…' _Audrey thought silently to herself.

"But Yesua forgave Michael," Audrey said aloud.

"Michael sheltered Mary and his mortal children from the Romans as long as he could," the Reverend said. "Mary taught him to sequester some of his thoughts so he could keep them private. When the Father sent the Romans to kill her after Yesua's new religion didn't die with him, Michael hid their descendents. And then … when the Father ordered him to kill Yesua directly, well … you were there. Michael rebelled. Nearly every person who's alive today has at least _some _of Yesua's blood running through their veins. Including you. Because of Michael."

Audrey stared off in silence at a little experimental pond where tiny fish fed off of a type of plankton that devoured oil spills. The small fry were, in turn, used to feed fish used for food. A small indoor pasture housed a Jersey cow and her calf, the cow capable of producing seven times the amount of milk a normal dairy cow could produce without needing to be fed grain. Just ordinary crabgrass. In another part of the garden, chickens happily ate potato horn beetles off of a kind of potato that produced six times the amount of spuds per acre without the need for chemical sprays or damaging the plant, and then used the protein from those pests to lay five times the normal number of eggs. A dairy goat and her two kids came over and nuzzled Audrey's hand, looking for a snack. The goat's milk produced antibodies that would help anybody who ate unpasteurized dairy products from that goat defeat cancer instead of needing to undergo chemotherapy. All of these experiments were still in the early stages, not yet ready to unroll on a massive scale, but they were in the works. Yesua had been a very busy young man.

"Gabriel knew Yesua wanted him dead," Audrey said, placing her hands down upon her head. "But he hoped Yesua would someday forgive him if he did enough good acts to make up for some of what the Father had him do. He had an entire catalog laid out in his mind of what he wanted to do to show Yesua he had changed."

"Gabriel ran out of time," the Reverend said, placing his arm around her and giving her a fatherly hug. "The immortals don't think the way that we do. They have great power. But in that power also lays their greatest weakness. What is it Mambo used to say about Jose' before Mary fixed his biochemistry? The immortals are socially and emotionally retarded. It's up to _us _to teach them how to function in a material realm where mistakes are easy to make and very, very difficult to fix."

"When they screw up," Audrey said, thinking of some of the doozey's the Father had pulled. "They screw up on a grand scale. It's like … don't they have any common sense?"

"No," the Reverend said. "In a way, they're like toddlers who nobody ever told 'don't touch the stove … it's hot.' Without anybody to hold them accountable, defects in their personality go unchecked until something really bad happens. Like the Father's temper tantrum that just … eliminated … nearly half of his own children. It's kind of like when you raise your voice and blow out every window in the building with the power of the void. You don't mean it to happen … but it does."

"But I try very hard to moderate that power," Audrey said. "You just can't go around shattering all the windows in the room because you're having a bad day."

"And how did you learn not to do that?" the Reverend asked, raising one eyebrow.

"By blowing out all the windows in the room and then cutting my feet on the glass," Audrey said. "Or having everybody complain because they were cold and the rain was getting our gear all wet."

"_Physical _discomforts," the Reverend said. "The immortals ability to feel physical pain is almost nonexistent while residing in the higher realms. They don't need to eat or sleep. They don't age beyond physical maturity. And they almost never feel fear. Their emotions become dulled from their very long lifetimes because nothing surprises them anymore. And there's no impetus to hurry up and finish a project because they live forever. The only way they can experience these things is by coming here. With us. It's up to _us _to teach them."

"The Mother's not like that," Audrey said. "Or at least not nearly as bad."

"The Mother grew up in the void," the Reverend said. "I only had the privilege of meeting her as she let Azrael pass into the void to heal my mortal shell. But having been there once, I can tell you right now the discomfort of living _here _is a cake walk compared to life inside the void."

"I don't remember my time there," Audrey said. "Only fragments. A shadow-world. Where the echo of things that no longer exist still linger." Her voice trailed off.

"Audrey?" the Reverend asked.

"Huh?" Audrey said, jolted back to the present by his voice.

"You were a million miles away," the Reverend said.

"I just had an idea," Audrey said absent-mindedly. "Probably nothing. I need to talk to Azrael."

"What about Yesua?" the Reverend said. "Do you still want to speak to him?"

"No," Audrey said, hurrying back in the direction she had came. "Let him spend time with his family. It's the only way he's going to ever get a _clue _what it's all about."


	198. Chapter 197

Chapter 197

Audrey walked back into the luxurious condominium unit that had, briefly, been her home. Anu and Ningizzada had taken over the rest of the 28th floor, the highest floor before the building narrowed into an observatory, but left this flat as Audrey had abandoned it the day Gabriel had died. For fifteen years, she had not been able to bring herself to walk into this apartment. The last place they had been together before the Father had taken him from her.

It had been Ningizzada who had found a cheap, plastic bag in Gabriel's dresser drawer with the note and downy black under-feathers from his wings after Gabriel's death. Audrey never asked _why_ Ningizzada had been going through his things. _She _had refused to come back here, to the brightly painted nursery, the colors she had painted and pictures she had hung on the wall, all symbols of the false hope she had felt then that at _last _things were going to turn out all right. That Vancouver was going to be there permanent home. Gabriel's own city, close to the Savior he had sworn to serve. The chance he so desperately yearned to have to prove to Yesua that he had changed. Hope.

It had all been a lie…

"We send a cleaning lady in once per week to freshen it up," the doorman said, carrying up her bags. "But other than that, nobody goes in here. Ningizzada has ordered that anyone who violates this sanctuary will have to deal with _him._"

"Thank you," Audrey said, fighting to keep her tears from flowing until the doorman had shut the door behind him. "I really appreciate that."

The doorman hesitated at the door. It was the _same _doorman who Gabriel had found squatting in the lower floors with his sole surviving daughter after the apocalypse and put back to work to alert them to trouble.

"We didn't know your husband very long," the doorman said, his expression filled with compassion. "But for the short time he was here, he made one hell of an impression. Everything we've done _since _then to rebuild this city … well … to this day we ask ourselves what Gabriel would have wanted."

"Thank you," Audrey said again, the tears starting to flow. The doorman hesitated at the door, and then turned to leave.

"If you need anything," the doorman said as he shut the door. "Anything at all. You just call me. You hear? I'll make sure you get it."

Audrey shut the door and put her forehead against the back of it. She stood that way a long time, feeling the warm wood, unable to turn and face the room. Fifteen years. For fifteen years she had refused to come back. Belaziel had understood. No sooner had Audrey collapsed than the only angel amongst the Fallen to ever lose their mate had instantly teleported her to Toronto where he could protect her. There had been much distrust between Yesua, Fallen, Unfallen, Grigori and humans in those days.

Audrey's grief and the need to come together to protect the child of a brother who had technically neither been Fallen, nor Unfallen, had finally shamed the brothers into reconciliation. _All _of the brothers. Including Yesua. With the Father locked into his workshop and refusing to answer the door, the job of running heaven had fallen to Michael. That had left Yesua with exactly two angels he trusted to carry out his command. Anu and Ningizzada. Although very young, _they _were the generals who now commanded Yesua's hybrid army consisting of humans and those Nephilim who chose to follow him.

The apartment was exactly the way she had left it. On the wall and scattered about on the furniture which had largely been left behind by the previous owners were pictures Audrey had asked Jose' to print out depicting the disciples, and especially Gabriel, performing various acts during their journey. Many of the photos gracing the walls and furniture were pictures she had printed out, but never had a chance to frame. Somebody had finished framing them and hanging them in a manner she found pleasing. Ningizzada, most likely. The boy had always been very observant about what she liked. Like Gabriel had been.

Photos had been added. Somebody had snapped a photograph of Gabriel teaching the boys and some citizens of Vancouver how to use a sword. Somebody else, probably Lena, had scrounged up a photo of Gabriel singing in the Mormon Temple the day he had proclaimed his love for her to the heavens even though nobody except the Reverend had understood enough of the language of heaven to understand he sang for _her._

Anu, on the other hand, had most likely been the culprit who'd 'commandeer' the original El Greco painting 'Gabriel Making the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary' out of the Museo del Prado Madrid and hung it on the wall opposite the sofa where Audrey had once stated she wished she had something to hang there. The figures in the painting looked nothing like Gabriel or Mary of Nazareth, but somehow El Greco had accurately captured the expression of fear on Mary of Nazareth's face when he had told the young girl she was carrying the Savior.

The boys had been disappointed when she had refused to return here. She hadn't been the only one, she now realized, to lose their guiding star that day. Only the most devastated.

Young men … she corrected herself. Both were married and in the process of producing the largest families they possibly could in order to meet the mandate of the Savior to be fruitful and multiply. Being third-generation, it had been expected their children would be born wingless, but they'd all been wrong. Wings, it turned out, were a recessive gene like blue eyes and blonde hair. While notbeen present when the Fallen had first descended to Earth and intermarried with humanity 4,500 years ago, it was _abundantly _present now. Almost every single person who had survived the apocalypse had DNA from just about every single angel that had fallen 4,500 years ago. Not only had those fifth-generation lucky enough to survive the great flood gone on to reproduce, but they had thrived.

It was time to go to bed. Audrey had not slept there since the night before Gabriel had died. It was the last place they had lain together, after making love, and whispered their hopes and dreams of a life spent together and a large family to each other. Someone had put the pictures back on the walls Gabriel had knocked off with his wings that night, but had the sensitivity not to repair the scrape-marks where his tough outer primary feathers had gouged the sheetrock. Tears sprang into Audrey's eyes as she stepped up to the wall and traced each gouge-mark with her finger.

She could almost feel the wind his wings had created that night as he had fallen over the precipice and been unable to control the involuntary urge to take flight with her as they had achieved ecstasy together. Holy union. Audrey put her back against the wall and sank to the floor, great sobs wracking her body as she felt her loss as though it were yesterday all over again.

"Gabriel," she cried, pulling the small cloth pouch of feathers out from underneath the long-sleeved black shirt she always wore, even in August, and opened the bag. Pulling out one of the feathers, she put it up to her nose and inhaled its scent, rubbing the soft, glossy black feather against her lips. His scent had long since faded, but all she had to do was touch his feather against her flesh and her skin remembered what it had felt like to be loved by an angel.

She pulled out the yellowed, dog-eared letter.

X X X X X

_My beloved little Prophet:_

_For the first time in more than two years, I have hope. Yesua is not a perfect god, but he bears great compassion for your people. It will take a long time for him to forgive my sin of blind obedience, but he has entrusted me the task of cleaning up this city. I look forward to the birth of our little girl (yes … it –is- a girl … the daughter I always dreamed of … but I didn't want to spoil it as I know you wanted a son. I hope once you hold her you will love her anyways). It is my deepest hope that we have a long, ordinary life together and produce as many children to love as you will tolerate bearing me._

_I pray that someday you will find it in your heart to forgive the Father, as you once forgave me. First I loved him no matter what, and then I hated him. Then … after two offers of amnesty, I finally realized something. The Father is a broken, fallen creature as –I- was once a broken, fallen creature. Thinking back, I can see the signs that the Father needed help, but we all gave him what he asked for. Not what he needed. I pray that someday I will be able to help him fix it the mistake he made with my sisters and help him heal from the damage that was done to him in the void or that, if I do not make it, that you continue this mission in my stead. Forgive him. For he truly does not understand what he does._

_I do not wish for you to grieve for me when I am gone. Our daughter needs a father and I can think of no fate crueler than for an angel than to be reared alone. We are pack animals, we angels. Born in a single day. I have asked one of my brothers who lost his wife to step in and raise our daughter in my stead and incorporate the both of you into his family. If, some day, you should learn to love one another, or any other man or angel, than it is my wish for you to remarry and bear more children. Brothers and sisters to love our little girl. Eternity is a long time to be alone and I want you to be happy. _

_In with this letter you will find some of my feathers. Please know that, in my dreams, you will forever be wrapped protectively in my wings. If anything happens to me, please know that nothing will ever wipe your memory from my soul. You are my heart. My soul. My entire reason for existing. We are one soul, you and I. _

_I love you more than my own existence…_

_Gabriel_

X X X X X

Tears streamed down Audrey's cheeks, dropping onto the letter which she clutched to her heart along with the tiny pouch of feathers. The paper was wrinkled and discolored from _many _nights such as this. Nights when she had to be away from home and could not travel to his crypt to weep in the presence of the blood he had shed for her. Some whispered that her grief was excessive. That it was time for her to move on.

They didn't understand…

"Gabriel," Audrey wept. "I don't know if you can hear me. But I want you to know. I have an idea. I have no idea if it will work. But when our daughter blows that horn, I'm going to be coming for you."

At some point she crawled to the bed and crawled under the covers, the note and small bag of his feathers clutched against her heart.

That night, she dreamed she was encircled in his arms and wings. It felt so real that, when the earthquake shook her awake the next morning, she was surprised that he wasn't really there.

It was as she stared across the harbor at the eerie red-tinted sky, sulfur from dozens of volcanoes around the world erupting simultaneously as Yellowstone began to awaken from its slumber, that she noticed that the compass rose, which had been nothing but a blank circle for the past fifteen years, had reappeared.

The Mother, it appeared, had finally decided to end her long silence.


	199. Chapter 198

Chapter 198

Gabriel blew the horn that signaled Judgment Day. The Father had given him a mission. Kill the mortal shells of anyone who dared defy him. Michael. Yesua. He had orders to kill them, and any who sheltered them.

He did not think about his mission. He did not feel anything about his mission. An archangels job was not to think or feel. As the second, and now first ranking general of the Father's armies, he only had one job. Carry out the Father's orders. Without question.

Underlings had been assigned to do this job. They had failed. The Father had ordered Gabriel to finish the job himself.

Gabriel kicked down the door to the seedy human diner. Someone had thrown Yesua into the air as he entered. A human male caught Yesua before he hit the ground and stared up at him, fear in his eyes. Gabriel swung the mace to kill both of them.

The male protectively cradled the baby and rolled just before Gabriel's mace made contact. Mild annoyance at his poor aim registered in Gabriel's body and was suppressed. Angels weren't supposed to feel. Emotion was a weakness.

Someone moved to his left. Gabriel turned. He had definitely seen movement, but the figure was indistinct. A blur. As though someone had _once _been standing there, but somebody had taken scissors and cut them out of the photograph. He stopped, confused. Emotion wracked his body. Remember. He was supposed to remember. The blur was important.

Emotion was a weakness. Michael shot at him. Gabriel used his steel-laced wings to shield himself from the bullets. Michael told the mother of Yesua's current human form and her weak protector to go. Gabriel would stop them after. First he had to deal with Michael. Michael attempted to reason with him, to appeal to his emotions. Emotion was a weakness, but he felt it anyways. It made him hesitate.

Wait a minute … there was that blur again. The couple holding Yesua left … and a blur. Gabriel forgot all about Michael. Forgot about the mission. He needed to investigate.

"Enough, brother," Michael said, touching Gabriel's face. "There's another way."

Wait a minute. What had just happened? Hadn't he just gone out the door of the diner after the blur? Gabriel winced in pain as he stabbed himself through the shoulder to stab Michael in the heart. The pain distracted him from his questions. Michael. Why had he just killed Michael? Michael was his brother. His only friend. He watched Michael dissipate.

Mission. Complete the mission. Emotion was a weakness. Gabriel tore the roof off the fleeing police car. Inside, Yesua and his human mother screamed as the weak male protector attempted to drive away. Gabriel reached down to crush the skull of Yesua's mortal form.

The blur again. Something about the blur. It was important.

Freefall. Gabriel went flying through the windshield. He encircled himself with his wings. The police car flipped and came to rest on its roof. As he was picking himself up off the ground, Yesua's two human protectors absconded with him. Gabriel started to go after them.

No. This wasn't right. He was forgetting something. Something important. He could feel it in his soul.

Emotion is a weakness. He could hear the command in his own head. Finish the mission. He started to fly after the humans when he caught sight of discoloration in the pavement. The blur. The _absence _of something in his field of vision where his heart screamed at him something was _supposed _to be.

Gabriel ignored the order to go after Yesua and the two humans and walked over to the stained highway. Nothing was there. As though something had been cut out of the picture. But around the nothingness was blood where no blood should have been.

Gabriel reached down and picked up a single scrap of plaid fabric. His entire body began to shudder with grief even though he couldn't remember _why._

"Father?" Gabriel asked, unable to stop the sobs of grief which incapacitated him.

Suddenly he was falling. Falling off a cliff. He had failed. He had failed his mission. The light of the heavenly father left his body as the Father stripped off his ability to fly and cast him down from heaven. Gabriel closed his eyes and accepted his fate. His own death. He cried out in pain as his body hit the ground and shattered.

Gabriel lay there for a long time, feeling mortal pain for the first time in his very long existence. Alone. Afraid. Empty of light. Coyotes howled in the distance, attracted to the scent of blood. He could feel them now, tearing at his flesh.

"Gabriel …. it's time to come home," the Father whispered. "Please. Come home."

Gabriel could feel the light of the heavenly Father reach out to touch him, surround him, build around him, just waiting for him to say he wanted to come home and all would be forgiven. It was everything he wanted. To be forgiven. Grace.

No. Something was not right. Something was missing. Something important. He could feel it in his soul. If he followed the light, he would lose it forever. Whatever it was, it was more important than the Father.

Pain. So long as he held onto the pain, the Father could not make him forget. Gabriel grabbed onto his pain. Embraced it. Wrapped it around his body and welcomed it into his soul. With the pain came something else. The blur. The thing the Father was trying to make him forget. Gabriel would not let him make him forget.

He would not let him force him to forget his soul mate…

"Audrey," Gabriel whispered, calling her name. He closed his eyes and called her memory into his mind. The picture of what she looked like had long ago faded. So had the particulars other than the fact that he had killed her and she had forgiven him. But she was important. More important than the Father. She was part of his very soul. He could almost taste her essence under his lips.

He could not remember what she looked like, but he could feel her in his very soul… She was part of him.

"Argh!" the Father screamed in frustration. "Why won't you come home?"

Remember. He needed to remember. Pain. Hang onto the pain. So long as he could feel the pain, the Father could not make him forget.

Gabriel blew the horn that signaled Judgment Day. The Father had given him a mission. Kill the mortal shells of anyone who defed him. Michael. Yesua. He had orders to kill them, and any who sheltered them.

He did not think about his mission. He did not feel anything about his mission. An archangels job was not to think or feel. As the second, and now first ranking general of the Father's armies, he only had one job. Carry out the Father's orders. Without question.

Gabriel kicked down the door to the seedy human diner.

The voice. Sometimes he heard a voice. Always far away. So far. Barely audible. But although he could almost never understand the actual the _words,_ the voice resonated in his heart and made him weep. It was familiar. It was important.

"_Gabriel,"_ the voice said. _"I don't know if you can hear me. But I want you to know. I have an idea."_

Someone moved to his left. Gabriel turned. He had definitely seen movement, but the figure was indistinct. A blur. As though someone had _once _been standing there, but somebody had taken scissors and cut them out of the photograph. He stopped, confused. Emotion wracked his body. Remember. He was supposed to remember. The blur was important.

"_I have no idea if it will work," the voice said. "But when our daughter blows that horn, I'm going to be coming for you."_

Gabriel paused. The holy fire surging through his body compelled him to move forward, to complete the mission, to kill, but Gabriel resisted. He was not a mindless machine. Summonsing every ounce of strength he possessed, Gabriel forced his body to move towards the blur to his left and reached through the emptiness to trace its shape. The holy fire left his veins, leaving him weak, but he fought on anyways. He fought to touch the blur.

A figure became visible from beneath the shape. A terrified young girl with a heart-shaped face, dark hair, provocative clothing, and eyes the color of dark blue velvet. He could not remember why, but the sight of her made him shudder with emotion.

He sniffed the air, attempting to read her scent, and found none. How could she not have a scent? _All _humans had a scent.

This wasn't real…

None of this was real. It was a vision. In the Keep. He was being punished.

But whoever this woman had been, she had been important to him. Even as his conscious mind searched for the memory and came up blank, his soul screamed at him to protect this young woman with his immortal soul. Gabriel reached out to touch the wraith who was not here and wept. Remember. Even if he couldn't remember _why, _he knew that no matter what happened, he couldn't go back into the light. Pain. He needed to cling to his pain.

Suddenly he was falling. Falling off a cliff. He had failed. He had failed his mission. The light of the heavenly father left his body as the Father stripped off his ability to fly and cast him from heaven. Gabriel closed his eyes and accepted his fate. His own death. He cried out in pain as his body hit the ground and shattered.

Blur. The blur was wiped once again from his mind. But his soul clung to her anyways. Whoever she had been. She was part of him. That part of her that was still connected to him would not let him forget her. If they made him forget her, he would lose her forever.

"I love you more than my own existence," Gabriel whispered as he welcomed the coyotes which came to tear the flesh from his bones. They devoured him alive.

Pain. So long as he clung to the pain, the Father could not wipe her from his soul.

Gabriel blew the horn that signaled Judgment Day. The Father had given him a mission. Kill the mortal shells of anyone who dared defy him. Michael. Yesua. He had orders to kill them, and any who sheltered them….

He flew down towards the seedy human diner with the large sign proclaiming a single word.

'Paradise…'


	200. Chapter 199

Chapter 199

"Drop and give me 50 pushups," Ningizzada ordered, pacing up and down the field.

"Awww…" Taribum complained, only bending his elbows . "I hate pushups."

"Make it 100," Ningizzada said, not amused. "And I want those arms parallel with your chest when you hit bottom or I'll double it."

"Chickenshit," Gabriella snickered at her classmate, easily doing the pushups better than the guys. There were times she hated the fact she had been born with her father's burly physique instead of that of her pretty, petite mother. This was not one of those times.

"No cheating!" Dickie Pena whispered. "Not all of us have wings." Dickie was one of the human recruits who made up the bulk of Yesua's army.

"Am not!" Gabriella growled.

"Not _you,_" Dickie said, giving Gabriella a shit-eating grin. "The _other _winged wonder. On your other side."

Gabriella glanced at Ishtup-sin, who was flapping his wings down as he pushed his wiry body up to lighten the load and whacking the human on the other side of him. Bobby Grady. A brand new recruit from Billings, Montana who'd just arrived in Toronto with the last batch of Yellowstone refugees. Bobby, still overawed by the presence of so many winged Nephilim amongst their ranks, was silently tolerating the inadvertent 'thwack' Ishtup-sin gave him with his long, golden primary feathers.

"You gonna let him get away with that?" Dickie called over to his fellow human.

"Yes," Bobby said quietly, a reverent expression on his face.

"Ishtup-sin," Shu-mama snapped. "You're such a wuss! Ba-gock! Chicken-arms! Quit using your wings!" He clucked like a chicken to accentuate his point.

"Gorilla arms!" Ishtup-sin retorted, using every bit of breath he had available to both speak, and do the next push-up.

"Wet noodles!" Shu-mama shot right back as he pushed up from the ground. "Loobity … loobity … loobity … loo! Look at them wobble!"

"Mammoth trunks!" Ishtup-sin huffed between sets.

Tarubum sing-song taunted from the front as he pushed up and down to the tune of the "Yellow Bikini" song, "he's got some itsy bitsy, teenie weenie skinny chicken arms, you weenie!"

"King Kong," Ishtup-sin hissed, out of breath.

"Little tweetie bird!" Dickie Pena teased and whistled like a song bird.

"Shut up, Godzilla!" Ishtup-sin shouted, loudly this time.

"Enough!" Ningizzada shouted, striding through the platoon of hundreds of soldiers undergoing their morning physical training exercises in Roundhouse Park beneath the CN Tower where Gabriella lived with her mom and Uncle Belaziel. Ningizzada spent half of his time here, in Toronto, with his family, and half in Vancouver overseeing the defenses of the Savior when Anu wasn't there.

"He started it!" Ishtup-sin complained, pointing to Shu-mama.

"Chicken-arms is using his wings to get out of doing a decent pushup," Shu-mama tattled. "And hitting Bobby over there in the back while doing it."

"Yeah!" Dickie said, his dark eyes glistening with mirth against his chocolate brown skin. "If he cheats any harder, Bobby's going to get knocked unconscious!"

"Bobby?" Ningizzada asked.

"I ain't getting involved with no fights between no angels," Bobby said, his eyes round with wonder at the sight of the seven-foot-tall, dark-winged angel towering over him.

"They weren't fighting," Gabriella said, attempting to come to their defense. "More…"

"Verbal sparring," Tarabum added. "Good naturedly."

Ningizzada raised one eyebrow at the bunch of them.

"Make that _two_ hundred pushups," Ningizzada said. "All six of you. And then when you're done, I want you all to run the circiot down the Boulevard to Queens Quay and back again five times. No flying!"

"Awwww…." Ishtup-sin moaned, pushups being the exercise which had started this little verbal sparring match in the first place.

"Make it _ten_ times around the waterfront," Ningizzada said, his expression unreadable to anyone except those who knew him well enough to see the slight crinkle around his eyes that signaled amusement. "Want to make it twenty? Wings don't do you any good if you're physically weak and don't have any stamina."

Gabriella stared sullenly at Ningizzada's retreating back. She hadn't participated in the name-calling, but she was being punished! She silently finished her 200 pushups long before the others did, especially Ishtup-sin, and did an extra 30 for good measure. As the others finished, she rose to her feet, arms crossed across her chest and back slightly hunched to hide her embarrassingly protruding breasts, and tapped her foot waiting for Ishtup-sin to finish.

"Why don't you just run ahead, Gabbi?" Dickie Pena said. "You know you'll be finished in twenty seconds flat."

"The whole _point _is he wants us to do it _together,_" Gabriella grumbled with a frown. "I overheard him talking to Uncle Belaziel last night. The Savior wants everybody to partner up, four humans to one angel, so we learn to work together and compensate for each others' weaknesses."

"Suck up!" Ishtup-sin taunted Gabriella, panting as he slowly clamored to his feet. "You always get special treatment."

Gabriella decided _not _to point out that he'd been shy 3 pushups of the 200 Ningizzada had ordered, instead starting her run. As usual, _she _was getting punished for _their _antics. If anything, Ningizzada was _harder _on her because she lived with his grandsire. Not easier. Yesua's two top generals were adamant she learn to take care of herself. They had started training her to defend herself from the moment she could flap her wings for balance and fly in perfect battle-formation by the time she was five. The second the others were standing, Gabriella left them behind in the dust for the 10 laps around the waterfront.

"You guys always fight like that?" the new guy, Bobby, asked, panting as he ran to catch up with her as she ran ahead of the pack.

Unlike the others, although Bobby appeared to be a bit older than her, he did not yet have the mate-ring demonstrating he was obeying Yesua's 'be fruitful and multiply' mandate. Unattached. Like her. Some days Gabriella felt like a freak, every other young woman her age already paired off and either married, or about to be married. Until recently, however, Gabriella had never any interest in the opposite sex.

Until a few nights ago, that is…

"Uh-huh," Gabriella acknowledged, breaking out into a sweat, although she wasn't sure whether it was from running, or the fact she had noticed Bobby appeared to be interested in her.

"Somehow … I always thought…" Bobby huffed, searching for the right word.

Gabriella noticed that, like the others, although muscular and attractive, Bobby only stood eye level to the mortifying, pain-in-the-ass protrusions sticking out of her chest which jiggled and bounced as she ran. Boobs! Why the hell did she have to go sprout _those _when she had no use for them? She noticed Bobby watching the rise and fall of her chest as they ran. Not her face.

"You thought angels would be angels?" Gabriella scowled.

"Yeah," Charles said, beginning to hold his side as a stitch pained him from running faster than he was accustomed to doing.

"I'm half human," Gabriella said. "The others are three-quarters human. We're not much different."

Bobby was beginning to fall behind, which was to be expected of anyone who tried to keep up with her. Gabriella moderated her pace just enough for Bobby to keep up. She ran in silence, unsure of what to say and hesitant to stick her wings in her mouth lest she end up spitting out feathers. Speech had never come naturally to her. Especially with the opposite sex. She envied the others their easy rapport.

They ran in silence, Bobby falling further behind and slowing her down. The others were beginning to catch up. At some point, Gabriella had a decision to make. Fall back into the rest of the pack to continue the conversation with Bobby. Or run at her normal pace and leave him behind in the dust.

Take a chance at friendship with the new guy?

Or push herself to the best of her abilities?

What would her father have done?

Bobby was a new teammate. So far, he appeared to be trying to be friendly. But she had no idea whether or not she'd be paired with him in the future. Bobby was in no danger if she completed her assignment without him. But she, on the other hand, was not running to her full potential. Her father would have wanted her to complete the assignment. No matter what.

Besides … Bobby was short and kept staring at her boobs. And since her 'all-nighter' three nights ago, Gabriella had found herself fantasizing about how good it had felt to sit next to a certain tall, red-winged angel and talk about what it had been like for the angels who had grown up in the garden.

Her heart sped up just thinking about it, bringing a small smile to her face. It was nice sitting next to someone who was taller than her for a change. Especially someone who understood what it was like not to just fit into every social group you stumbled across…

"I'm … uh … going to go ahead now," Gabriella said, attempting to be diplomatic about it and feeling slightly guilty about her Machiavellian streak as she did. "I'll … uh … see you around?"

"Yeah," Bobby huffed. "Okay."

Gabriella squelched her disappointment as Bobby slowed down and then sped up again at the easier pace the others were running, laughing and joking as they ran. How easily he fit into the pack! She sped up to her normal running pace, wings stretched straight out behind her so the drag of feathers designed to _catch _wind for flight didn't slow down her run. She loved to fly, but she also loved to run. And jump. And do everything humans liked to do to compete.

Athletics was the only area she seemed to naturally excel. Unlike the other part-angels, who tended to develop their wing muscles at the expense of other parts of their body, Gabriella's mother had always been adamant she develop the human portions of her physique to its fullest potential. Her father had been forced to do so through pure, brute repetition after falling from grace and discovering mortals didn't have magically self-repairing physiques. Mom had a scrapbook with grainy still-shots printed from webcam footage taken by Jose'. Her father, stripped to the waist, sparring with the Gunnlaeif and the others to build back his strength to pre-fall levels.

Gabriella glanced down at her own arms, pumping as she ran to increase her stride, and flexed the bicep Ningizzada had been trying to force them all to build up through the pure, brute repetition of push-ups. Strong. Just like her father.

She wanted to get stronger…

Yellowstone was awakening. Soon, it would be time to blow the horn the Father had left for her and help Yesua move to the next stage of his expansion plans. After that … she had a plan. A plan she didn't dare discuss with her mother.

She had made Uriel promise…


	201. Chapter 200

_Note:__ Wow … 200 chapters. That's a lot of mileage out of Kevin Durand's/Gabriel's single perfect tear. A lot of readers have asked where Michael is, so here he is. He's a pretty busy guy right now. I decided it was time to take a look at what's going on in heaven._

_Others have asked what happens on Judgment Day. So … I'm making things up. No biblical precedent here. Just … something that fits in with what I've written so far. _

_Gabriel's not here to carry this part of the story and I needed a male angel for the two female characters to bounce off of, so Uriel is getting some development. Don't worry … Gabriel will be back!_

_My thanks for everyone who keeps reading and reviewing! Those little emails in my inbox make my day._

Chapter 200

At first glance, all trips home to the garden were filled with starlight and sunshine. The first thing that always greeted him was light so bright it momentarily blinded him. Fluffy white cumulus clouds floated lazily across the electric blue sky, only dropping their burden of rain an hour before dawn each morning to water the flowers. In the background, heavenly choirs softly sang songs of praise in the name of the Father, while little tinkling sounds like wind chimes softly rang in the background. Heaven.

On closer inspection, Uriel could see things were beginning to fall apart at the seams. Saint Peter no longer guarded the gate, having given his notice, quit, and chosen to be reborn into human form the day the Father had interred Gabriel in the Keep. The iron on the gate was warped and rusty, the former from the Prophet's early fits of void-enhanced rage, the latter from neglect.

The paths he walked to the palace were only marginally tended, crabgrass growing up through the cracks of the flagstones like fingers reaching up from a vampires' grave. Flowers hadn't been deadheaded in years, giving the garden a raggedy, mange-stricken appearance. A distressing number of pest-species were munching away at the flora. The 'green pastures' humans pleaded to be _'layeth me down in'_ now resembled a brown, sun-scorched, inner city abandoned lot. All the Father needed was a junk car with a tree growing through the engine block and the garden would look just like Earth.

"Michael," Uriel said, reaching out to grasp his brothers' hand, forearm to forearm, as was the custom amongst the Unfallen, and touched their foreheads together in greeting.

"Thanks for coming," Michael said, his shoulders stooped as though he were carrying the weight of the universe upon his shoulders. "I needed to talk to you about what happens next."

"I want to come home," Uriel said, trying to hide the obvious plea in his voice by flicking his reddish-brown wings with a bravado he did not feel. "Please, Michael. I've been away long enough."

Michael sighed and sat down at a small, scuffed desk he had set up at the foot of the steps that led up to the throne of the heavenly Father to administer the duties of heaven. The chair creaked like the knees of an old woman with arthritis as it took his weight and wobbled like a drunken sailor as he twisted around to face the desk. It was yet another indicator of the reality Uriel didn't want to face. Nothing in heaven _ever_ creaked. Heaven was perfect. Things weren't _supposed _to wear out or grow quirky with age.

"I wish the Father had assigned someone to take over his duties," Michael said wearily, his voice thin and tired. "I'm only an archangel. Not even a Seraphim or a Throne. But when the excrement hit the fan, _somebody _had to step up to the plate. Everybody is afraid to incur the Father's wrath, so nobody stepped up to the plate. Just for a few days, they said. Another few weeks, they pleaded. And now? It's been fifteen years and not a peep. Would you like to exchange jobs with me, Uriel? Because _I'd _sure like to get out from behind this desk."

"No," Uriel said, shame creeping onto his cheeks like a pink blanket.

Michael looked exhausted. Were angels even _supposed _to feel exhaustion while residing in heaven? His armor sat rusting by the desk, no time to maintain it, much less use it. The bright light of heaven had grown murky as a Los Angeles smog, the yellow haze giving everything a garish tinge like a few drops of urine discoloring water in a toilet bowl. The clouds were angry and grey. The brilliant light of holy fire that had once shone in the throne room had grown dark with the Fathers' absence.

"I don't know how he did it," Michael sighed, gesturing to the stacks and stacks of paperwork piled everywhere around his desk. "I'm a soldier. Not a ruler. Who'd ever have thought the higher orders of heaven would devolve to bickering like an Earth-Congress in the Father's absence."

"Politics?" Uriel asked. "In heaven?"

"Everybody wants to dictate how things should be done," Michael said, placing his forehead down upon his hands and running his fingers through the hair at his temples. "But nobody wants to roll up their sleeves and do any of the actual work. Or make any sacrifices for the greater good. It's as the Father feared when Lucifer first rebelled. Heaven is splitting up into factions and _none _of them is looking at the big picture."

"Have you spoken to him?" Uriel asked, standing awkwardly in front of the desk staring at the paperwork which ran from the white marble floor to the clear, crystal ceiling, wall-to-wall.

"Not a peep in fifteen years," Michael said. "We only know he's still alive because the ambrosia Raphael leaves at the door to his workshop three times per day disappears and sometimes we hear him muttering through the door."

"Still … alive?" Uriel asked, his jaw hanging down as the thought it had never occurred to him to think suddenly intruded upon his brain and stuck there like a tick. "You mean … you've been worried the Father could … die?"

"It's happened before," Michael said. "To him … in the void and the day the Mother tore him to pieces after he dissipated our sisters. And to the others … the Father's sisters and brothers. I've been finding out a whole _slew_ of things the past fifteen years that I wish to Sheol I'd never had to know. Ignorance _is _bliss."

Uriel realized his jaw was hanging open. He closed it.

"How?" Uriel asked, horrified at the thought, his voice a mere whisper.

"We're comprised of consciousness," Michael said, looking up and holding Uriel's gaze with his troubled blue eyes. "A life spark that grows sentient and begins to accumulate matter the larger it becomes. In the beginning, it holds whatever shape some deity, or two mortal creatures when they procreate and attract a life spark assign to it. But once our consciousness grows powerful enough, we can shape our physical form in whatever shape we choose."

"But can the Father just … cease … to exist?" Uriel asked, unconsciously twisting his wings around protectively to the front so the feathers trailed reassuringly down along the sides of his thighs.

"The same way he exists in the first place," Michael said. "You become irrelevant. You stop growing. And then little by little you just fade away. Look at this place!" Michael gestured to the garden visible outside the crystal walls of the heavenly palace. The fruit trees were barren. Weed vines clamored up the side of the palace, obscuring the light. The marble floor had cracks in it and the entire place smelled … musty.

Uriel realized his feathers were trembling in his wings. Fear. Of a type he'd never experienced before. Or maybe … he had. Lately. Lately … when the Prophet refused to acknowledge his presence and spoke right through him as though he wasn't there. He felt … he wasn't sure what he felt but it wasn't too terribly different than what he was feeling right now. If he had to give it a name, he would say it was fear of abandonment.

"Please, Michael," Uriel said. "Let me come home. Tell me what you need to have me do to ease your burden."

"I need you to keep an eye on the Prophet and her daughter until we can figure out a way to spring our brother from the Keep," Michael said, pounding his hand upon the desk. He stood up, agitated, causing the chair to almost fall over behind him.

"Michael?" Uriel asked, perplexed. He knew Michael and Gabriel had always been close, which was why it had surprised him when Gabriel had obeyed the Father's order to kill him. And even _more _so when Michael had forgiven him and pleaded with the Mother for his life.

Gabriel's blind obedience had both shocked, and served as an example to the other angels, perplexed by the whole sordid affair surrounding the apocalypse. The Father had cast Gabriel down as a sin-offering to appease the Mother's rage and win back the trust of the Savior. The Mother none of them had even _remembered _until the day one-third of the universe simply ceased to exist and a tentacled, angry black thundercloud had descended upon the garden and grabbed the Father by the scruff of the neck and threatened to decapitate him if he didn't make things right.

Everything the Father had done _since _then had sent mixed messages. Gabriel was to be condemned for not obeying and coming home. But then … the Father had offered him amnesty. Twice. Now … Gabriel suffered in the Keep a punishment that was whispered was even more horrific than that visited down upon Lucifer. But instead of making the Father happy, he had retreated from the world and stopped responding. Nothing made sense anymore!

"I never realized how heavily the Father leaned upon our brother to keep things together until he was gone," Michael said, his brown-black wings drooping with dejection. "This … mess. It started the day the Father cast Gabriel down from heaven. It's only gotten worse since he interred Gabriel in the Keep."

Uriel opened his mouth to protest and then shut it, looking down at the ground in shame. When the Father had promoted him to stand in Gabriel's place, Uriel had jumped at the opportunity. He had eagerly carried out the letter of the Father's law with an unyielding hand unheard of since the times of the Spanish Inquisition. And yet … the harder Uriel tried to give the Father what he asked for … the more he had noticed the Father's disappointment. Uriel had been unable to fill his brother's shoes and not understood _why_. It was why he had been so ruthless in carrying out the Father's orders to let his brother die and force his wife to watch.

The woman he had grown to love…

'_No!' _Uriel pushed the thought out of his mind. _'Impossible! Such thoughts are blasphemy!'_

"You've fallen in love with your brothers' wife," Michael stated, looking straight through him as though reading his mind.

"I don't…" Uriel said, squirming uncomfortably and wondering whether it would technically lying to his commanding officer if he said 'no.' He didn't _want _to be in love with her. Would that make a denial the truth?

"Don't mistake the infatuation you feel due to withdrawal of the emotion-dampening properties of the control collar with the depth of emotion the Prophet shares with our brother," Michael said. "It will only lead to heartbreak. Trust me. This is something I know a little about."

"She…" Uriel said, unsure what to say next. His voice just trailed off as he stood their stupidly like a song bird caught in the sights of a raptor. He had overheard things the Prophet had said about Michael carrying a torch for Yesua's wife. Was it true?

"She has never given you one whit of encouragement," Michael said. "That, I know... And yet … these things sneak up on you when you're not looking. Bam! Suddenly you wake up one day and realize the need to be close to them is like breathing."

"It's a sin to feel attachment to a mortal," Uriel whispered. "I try … I try not to think about it."

Michael gave him a wistful smile, his expression sad, and in that instant Uriel knew the rumors had been true. When had Michael developed the ability to feel human emotion?

"Love is never a sin," Michael said, his eyes filled with sympathy. "It's just … you're wasting your time. Even if somehow you were able to ever convince her to accept you in Gabriel's absence, you would never be more than physical comfort for her mortal shell. Like Belaziel is to her now. She will leave you the first chance she gets and break your heart."

"They … haven't …" Uriel stammered, mortified at the direction of this conversation. "I don't … smell …"

It had taken years amongst humans and Fallen to interpret the subtle pheromones his sensitive nose could pick up on. But once he had, he'd begun to differentiate the scent of those who were mated versus unmated. Including when they 'sinned.' Although he often tormented himself with images of the Prophet sleeping encircled in Belaziel's wings, never once had he detected the odor of a mated pair. They smelled like … friends. Or brother and sister. Two individuals whose scents harmonized, but did not merge. He knew they slept together almost every night. And yet they'd never had sex.

It was all very confusing…

It also gave him hope. Perhaps _he _could be the comfort she sought at night without crossing that forbidden line into marital relations the Father had punished every angel who had ever crossed? Every night since the day she had finally touched his face and looked at him. _Really _looked at him. Not merely grudgingly acknowledged his presence as a minor annoyance. He felt… He could almost feel the touch of her fingertips tracing the scar she had marked upon his face, branding his shame for all the world to see. Marking him as … hers.

Uriel realized he was unconsciously tracing his own scar with his fingers and dropped his hands.

"She has refused to consummate a Levirate marriage," Michael said, staring through the glass at the garden beyond. "And Belaziel has not pushed her because _he _does not wish to replace his mate any more than _she _does. That's why I've called you here today. When Gabriella blows her father's horn, Tarum-arum has asked to be freed from the garden and descend to Earth to resume her lifetime with her husband."

"Oh," Uriel said. The momentary leap of joy his heart made at the news the Prophet was about to lose her security blanket was instantly dashed. The problem had never been Belaziel, who had treated him with nothing but compassion. The Prophet had practically spat upon him in the early years and merely learned to tolerate his presence in later years. The problem was the nightly scene he had been forced to barge in on the other night when he had needed to alert the Prophet that her daughter had gone rogue. The Prophet still grieved for her _true _mate. Gabriel.

"She's going to be very happy her friends' wife is now free," Michael continued, eyeing Uriel as though he were sizing him up. "And extremely emotionally vulnerable because, despite their lack of desire to form a mating relationship, she _has _grown to love him."

"Do you think…" Uriel blurted, hopeful.

"Absolutely not!" Michael said.

"It is forbidden," Uriel said, staring down at his feet in shame. "I should not be thinking such impure thoughts."

"The Father isn't around to say what's forbidden and not forbidden anymore," Michael said, his voice filled with resentment. "We've got Unfallen angels falling all over the place right now. Do you think you're the only one who's suddenly discovered they're attracted to mortal females since the control collars got all loopy?"

Uriel looked up. He wasn't the only one?

"Please, Michael," Uriel said. "Let me come home. Let me return to where things are … clearer. I'll even do your paperwork for you." He gestured to the reams and reams of papers stretched towards the ceiling.

Michael plopped back down into his chair, arranging his wings over the low back, and stared at a folder which had been sitting on his desk the entire time.

"The Father never _needed _paperwork," Michael said absent-mindedly to himself. "Would you believe he kept all this stuff straight in his head? I think he had a system to keep track of it. The hive mind, maybe? We haven't been able to figure it out."

Uriel stood there, at attention, waiting for his orders. Although the Father had never relied upon a mortal bookkeeping system, Uriel had just spent the last fifteen years living amongstmortal and quasi-mortal military leaders who _did _rely on keeping records. Folders always contained new orders. From the way Michael was hesitating to give them to him, Uriel suspected he wasn't going to like them.

"The Father isn't here to make these decisions right now," Michael said wearily. "And nobody else is stepping up to the plate. All I can do is do the best I can to figure out what steps I need to take to ensure the kingdom he built doesn't go to Sheol in a hand basket while he's doing whatever it is he feels he needs to do. Every day, I pray I don't screw anything up so badly that he can't fix it afterwards if he's displeased."

Uriel waited. He _really _wasn't going to like this order.

"Yellowstone has started to erupt," Michael said, stating the obvious. "Even _before _it started, we began encouraging those souls in the garden who wished to follow the Savior into the New Kingdom to begin incarnating back into human form through reincarnation and rebirth. It's why the Savior has been riding those under his dominion so hard to be fruitful and multiply. Rebirth is a guaranteed ticket back to Earth."

Uriel nodded. It was no secret that the souls of the saints in heaven had begun parting like the Red Sea the moment Yesua had asserted his authority to rule humans by defeating the Grigori. A victory that had only occurred because Gabriel had honored his wager to sacrifice his life and been the catalyst to broker an agreement between the various factions.

"The ones that have been here a long time have no families left alive to speak of," Michael said. "Most are amenable to rebirth. Like the Savior did. It's much less traumatic than descent and they get a chance to relive that period of their lives when they were innocent."

Uriel nodded. He hadn't been there to watch what had happened to Gabriel when he had been cast down into mortal form, but every creature in heaven had heard the Prophet scream holy blasphemy at the Father that she had had _enough _of watching him suffer. Gabriel had killed her, and yet watching him suffer had been worse. Descent must be a horribly painful experience.

"Family groups are clustering together in geographical areas so they can find one another," Michael continued. "Like Mary Magdaline and Yesua attempted to do before the Father messed things up."

"Rebirth has always been an option," Uriel said. "Although few ever chose it before now. Why the sudden change?"

"The Father stopped suppressing their memory and feeding them nonstop bliss the moment Gabriel died," Michael said. "It's been worse keeping a lid on a bunch of angry saints demanding their civil rights _here _than controlling the inmates in Sheol. Look at this place! It's falling apart at the seams and then there's that damned … vibration … that keeps getting louder the longer the Father is gone. Would _you _want to stay here?"

Uriel paused and registered the discord which vibrated up through the floor he now stood upon. The sound of the universe moving through the heavens, only the vibration was noticeably 'off.' Now that he thought about it, it had been building for quite some time. But after Gabriel had been cast down and refused to come home, it had gotten worse. It reminded him of the earthquakes the blue planet was experiencing as Yellowstone awakened from its 640,000 year slumber. The feel of tectonic plates shifting across fault lines that had always existed, but were now threatening to shake the place apart.

"What about the ones that still have family in existence," Uriel asked apprehensively. "Like Belaziel's wife? I thought they could just return to Earth?"

"The Father was supposed to solidify their physical forms into mortal shells on Judgment Day," Michael said. "So that there would be no discomfort in the transition. Unfortunately…"

"Nobody's seen or heard from him in fifteen years," Uriel finished. "Does that mean they're trapped here if they don't choose rebirth?"

"No," Michael said, sitting back in his chair and tugging at a feather from one of his wings. He yanked it out and stared at it as though it were a piece of a puzzle. "Every single consciousness that has achieved a certain level of sentience can choose to descend to the physical plain and become mortal. It's just … you have no idea how agonizing it is to suddenly carry the full weight of a mortal shell after being semi-incorporeal. It's like…" Michael's voice trailed off.

"Cutting off your own wings?" Uriel guessed.

"Worse," Michael said. "They were once human, so they will remember what they need to do to survive. But us…"

"Us?" Uriel said, panic tugging at his gut. He suppressed the unwanted emotion. "What do you mean, us?"

"The universe will survive in some form," Michael said. "Whether the Father does or not. It was built to be self-sustaining. So long as the Mother doesn't decide to crawl permanently back into the void and shut off the spigot, it will limp along in some way, shape or form, although it will become a very hostile and chaotic place without the Father's guiding hand. The Garden, on the other hand? It's entirely a figment of the Father's imagination. Once he goes, we go too."

"We'll … die?" Uriel asked, horrified. "_Really _die? As in … void death? Not just … dead?"

"We'll have a choice to make," Michael said. "Descend and become fully mortal. As Gabriel chose to do. Or dissipate and hope enough of our consciousness survives passage through the void to emerge as our brother Azrael did."

Uriel stood rooted to the floor like an oak tree, too horrified to speak. Michael waited, the burden of knowledge he had been carrying alone before now heavy in his blue-grey eyes. The Father. It was amazing how much Michael resembled the Father right now. Right down to his deep, abiding weariness. At last, Uriel noticed the folder Michael had picked up in one hand, fingering along the edge with the fingertips from the other as though feeling along the edge of a knife to test for sharpness.

"You have an assignment for me?" Uriel finally asked, nodding towards the folder. Michael nodded, as though relieved Uriel were asking instead of being ordered. Michael flipped open the folder.

"You have finally succeeded in winning a small measure of emotional connection from our little key," Michael said, pointing to a photograph of Gabriel's sullen, moody daughter. 'The key' was Gabriella's code name. The key that would open the gates of both heaven and Sheol on Judgment day. "Your assignment has now changed. Phanuel is being assigned to guard the Prophet. _Your _job is to guide the key as she completes her Father's mission."

"No!" Uriel cried out, his plea an anguished little whimper. "Please! Don't punish me! I haven't acted on my feelings! I won't! Please don't make me leave."

Uriel's face felt wet as his nose began to run. His heart raced in panic, while his stomach churned. Leave? The Prophet he had been ordered to protect with his life, for that is how Gabriel protected his wife and unborn child? With his life? And then his immortal soul?

Michael got up and strode around the desk to stand in front of him, reaching out to grasp the side of his face and pull his head in to touch foreheads. The cherubs boyhood gesture of greeting with the Mother who Uriel still couldn't remember. Uriel fought to regain control of the cyclone of emotions which felt as though it would tear him apart. Never, in his very long existence, could Uriel remember feeling such misery.

"Only moments ago," Michael said softly, his voice soothing and low. "You begged me to bring you home. Now? I never asked to be forced to play god. So long as –_I- _am in charge, your love for any woman shall never be forbidden. But the path you travel down right now contains nothing but heartbreak. The Prophet shall never, ever return your love. She already has a mate she loves with every ounce of her heart and soul. Even if she _does_ someday forgive you, which I think eventually she will."

"She can _learn _to love me," Uriel pleaded, his voice a whisper. "Let _me _be the next one she turns to for comfort in our brother's absence. I won't violate her purity. Only comfort her. I've overheard Belaziel talking to his sons about their relationship. It was Gabriel's wish that she not be alone."

"You deserve better," Michael said, withdrawing from his grasp. "It's better to nip things in the bud now before they progress any further rather than watch you impale your heart upon a thorn for no good reason. If you're going to choose to fall from grace, at least let it be for a woman who can love you in return."

Uriel turned from his brother and took deep, gasping breaths until he gained some semblance of control, hastily wiping his eyes and runny nose on his sleeve as he had seen Gabriella do that night at the base of the cliff. _Now_ who was acting irrational and moody? Was this what it was like for humans all the time? It was very awkward.

Michael's hand grasped his shoulder. Uriel turned, his face composed once more beneath an unreadable mask, only the slight puffiness around his eyes betraying his earlier fit of irrationality.

"I was … uh … evesdropping the night you had your conversation with the Key," Michael said. "Gabriella's … plan?"

"I didn't mean that," Uriel said, a small semblance of fear twitching through his gut. "I was … uh … just trying to save my own bacon and get her to come home with me before her Mother found out."

"She is your new assignment," Michael said. "She's never been here, so she doesn't know how to find it. _Somebody _has to guide her to find the garden and free the souls of those brave enough to risk cold-turkey descent as our brother once did. The Fallen and their offspring are all barred from heaven. Right now … I think she'll trust you enough to let you lead her here."

"What am I supposed to tell her to do?" Uriel asked, pushing down his disappointment at being permanently saddled with the sullen half-angel.

"That's the problem," Michael said. "Nobody knows. The Father isn't speaking to anybody right now. And Gabriel took that knowledge with him to the grave."

Uriel composed himself. He was standing in front of his commanding officer. The top-ranking general of the armies of heaven. Pleading to be allowed to continue an assignment that was likely to lead to the same unforgiveable sin that had earned his brother an all-expenses paid trip to the Keep and sobbing like a human infant. What was wrong with him lately?

"What do you need me to do?" Uriel asked, straightening his posture, clamping down on the irrational emotions that seemed to keep erupting at inconvenient times like the Yellowstone volcano, and tucking his wings tightly against his back in the formal 'dress wings' formation.

"It's the ones in Sheol I worry about," Michael said. "We don't have a plan for them. The Key is supposed to blow the horn to open the gates so Yesua can begin judgment, but none of us has a clue as to how that's going to happen. Not even Yesua. Many of them have damaged consciousnesses from prolonged exposure to punishment and the vapors of the Keep, so descent is unwise. While the people of Earth will be much less likely to obey Yesua's 'be fruitful and multiply' mandate if they realize the souls of the children they are birthing potentially belong to rapists, murderers, and lord only knows what sins."

"Didn't they have an agreement?" Uriel asked.

"No," Michael said. "The Father interred many people Yesua would consider valuable members of his New Kingdom. People like the twelve new disciples. But not everybody interred in Sheol is innocent. Many of them _belong _there. And with the two mixing together all these years, some people who _might _have been okay if returned to Earth have been corrupted by the truly evil influences."

"Gabriella wants me to lead her through the eighteen levels of Sheol to blow her horn at the edge of the pit to see if it also opens the Keep," Uriel said. "I gave her my word I would do it. I figured … it can't cause any harm. Either it opens it because it's _supposed _to open it. Or it does nothing."

"I heard," Michael said. "Which is why I'm reassigning you to her. You must _keep _your word. And also … the _other _promise you made her. Even if it results in the same response that _we _have all been getting the past fifteen years. Whether she is successful or not, it is up to you, Light of God, to light her way."

"I will obey," Uriel said, suppressing his disappointment at being reassigned. Or _partially _reassigned. He still had responsibility for _one _of his charges. Just not the one he _wanted _to protect.

"Send Audrey my regards," Michael said softly as Uriel saluted him and turned to leave. "I am glad you finally realized how special she really is. Just remember my warning. You deserve better."

Uriel silently made eye contact and nodded that he had heard, and then left, returning back down the pathway he had come.

As if he could tell his heart what to feel?


	202. Chapter 201

Chapter 201

"Again," Jose' said.

He adjusted the knobs on the portable sound equipment he had hauled with him to the old Toronto Opera House. They were attempting to recreate the acoustics of a building buried deep at the bottom of pit surrounded by cliffs. As a turn-of-the century theater, much of the opera house was constructed of brick and wood. Not rebar-reinforced concrete as modern buildings were. It was less risky that way.

Audrey sang the old hymn, "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho." As she did, Jose' carefully monitored an assortment of computer monitors. The monitors spiked promisingly as she sang the soprano chorus _'Joshua, hallelujah Lord,' _but the mock test 'wall' they had set up in the middle of the stage built out of a door from an old bank vault sunk into a granite wall did not register the desired readings.

"Sing the walls come tumbling down," Jose' said, typing several commands into the computer.

"And the walls, and the walls, and the walls, and the walls," Audrey sang. "And the walls came a tumbling down."

The room shuddered as Audrey dropped the song from a soprano chorus down into the deep base notes of the last two words of the hymn, but the 'wall' did not come a tumbling down as they had hoped.

Audrey slumped, feeling defeated. Jose' had been studying her ability to channel the power of the void, attempting to figure out how to use the gift without devolving into destructive holy blasphemy. Whenever Audrey _instinctively _wielded the power, it was because something caused her to feel enormous emotion. Now that she possessed Gabriel's memories of eternity, she knew what happened when a wielder of the power of the void lost control of their gift. She needed to teach herself to wield the gift like Ann's scalpel. Not Gabriel's mace.

"Why don't you try Alanis Morrisette?" Lyubitshke suggested, reaching over to nudge her husband who was sitting next to her. "You Ought to Know? That might do it."

"Talk about an angry woman," the Reverend said, his eyes sparkling with amusement which indicated the song must be some sort of private joke between the two of them. Whatever the joke was, the Reverend chose not to share it.

"That's a pretty heavy song," Mambo de Vivre said, her dark eyes crinkling with concern in her now-heavily wrinkled skin as she leaned upon her cane. "Alanis was angry because her boyfriend dumped her when she wrote that song. Not the case here."

"Just picture in your mind the situation you really _are _angry at when you sing it," Lena said. "That's what _I _always do when I'm performing a song that really doesn't apply to me _personally_ on stage to project the right emotion to the audience. For example … maybe you're picturing that guy who cut you off on the freeway on the way to work. Not some old boyfriend."

"There hasn't been a freeway in this country for over seventeen years," Four Bears interrupted. "At least not one which has been maintained."

"You get the idea," Lena snapped, fluffing him with her old feathered boa that she had felt compelled to bring along with her to the old theater. Lena was, and always would be, the consummate performer. A man in woman's clothing. She knew all about being one thing inside, and projecting a totally different image outside.

"Emotion counts," Mambo said, nodding at Audrey. "These aren't just musical notes, but the ability to disrupt the vibration that underlies matter. The song is merely the vehicle you are teaching yourself to drive to create the emotion you need to project. Like drumming and dance to bring about the state of possession."

Mambo knew all about creating desired vibrations. As reigning worldwide voodoo queen, Mambo helped Yesua train others to sense the higher vibrations and harness it to summons the light of heaven. Not that mere mortals could hope to do it with the same finesse as _he _did. Yesua had been born with the powerful consciousness of a god, but the Mother had taught him that if you nurtured talent and gave it enough time, eventually even a simple tube of clay could become a god-like creature. As Simbi had become.

The memory. The one Gabriel had severed from his own consciousness to ensure it didn't fall into the wrong hands. Audrey _still _hadn't figured out how to use it. Nor had she been able to replicate Gabriel's gift to both shape matter, and then breathe the life spark into it. All she could do was hope, once she gave it back to him, that _he _had evolved enough since the Mother first taught him to do it again.

"Who are you angry at?" Lena said. "Ignore the words. Picture what words _you _would write to that tune to express what you wish to say as you sing the song. It's okay to use the old familiar words. It's the emotion you feel as you sing them that counts."

Audrey nodded and skimmed once through the words on the video teleprompter of the karaoke machine Jose' had scrounged up to create background music so Audrey was not forced to sing potentially unknown songs a cappella.

"You seem very nice…" Audrey started to sing along with the background music. The words did not match the emotion she wished to project.

"Nothing extraordinary," Jose' said, looking at the readings.

"Move your body as you sing," Non Gae said. "Squeeze out words like you going into battle."

Speaking of 'squeezing'… Non Gae had been able to comply with the Saviors 'be fruitful and multiply' mandate by squeezing exactly two children out of her aging, middle-aged ovaries before menopause had put an end to her childbearing career. Gunn happened to be the father, but she had refused to marry him. Gunn had finally given up wooing her and married a pretty, wingless one-eighth Nephilim girl who was as tall as he was, producing seven more children, soon to be eight. But he and Non Gae remained close friends … much to the chagrin of Gunnlaeif's wife despite the cessation of the 'with benefits' portion of their friendship.

Audrey knew better than to judge. Who was _she, _who had slept in the comfort of her brother-in-laws arms for the past fifteen years, to throw stones? Soon enough, it would be _she _attempting to reassure Taram-uram that her interest in Belaziel, whom she had come to rely on very heavily, was only emotional fellowship.

"Put your heart into it!" Lyubitshke shouted above the music, adjusting her pregnancy swollen girth in the theatre seat and switching which ankle she had propped up on a box to alleviate the swelling in her ankles. The Romani woman was pregnant again with the Reverend's eleventh child. The couple was _already _eagerly talking about how soon they could conceive number twelve.

"… but you're still alive," Audrey sang, and then recalled why she had loved this particular song as a teenager. An ugly sneer marred her pretty features as she pictured one particular now-quasi-mortal person who she really _did _want to scream at for not living up to her ideal of him. Yesua. Not hatred, but anger.

"Something's happening," Jose' said as the monitors began to light up like a Christmas tree.

"And I'm here, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away…" Audrey sang, picturing not the person who went away who she hoped to someday free, but the person who was still here who wasn't being very helpful about helping her free him. "It's not fair, to deny me, of the cross I bear that you gave to me. You, you, you oughta know!"

Not just the wall, but the entire theatre began to shudder as Audrey pictured screaming her anger at Yesua. The Savior she and Gabriel had trekked more than two years across the country to serve. Who had then turned around and thrown Gabriel's attempts at serving him back into his face. Yes … Audrey was still here. And as long as there was a single breath in her body, she was going to remind Yesua that his unwillingness to forgive his brother and intervene on his behalf violated everything humans had been _led _to believeabout the Savior of the New Testament.

A brilliant white flash of blinding light burst into the room.

"Are you okay, Prophet?" Phanuel asked, the new angel Michael had assigned to protect her. The angels' grey-and-white striped wings, like those of a perigrene falcon, were flared, ready to fend off any attacker.

"Just a little sing-a-long," the Reverend called out reassuringly. "Nothing to worry about. You know how it is when the Prophet gets enthusiastic about anything with her voice."

"But…" Phanuel said. "They heard her all the way in Sheol. We couldn't understand why she was so angry."

"It's an angry song, dude," Gunnlaeif said, walking up and slapping Phanuel on the back. "Go with the flow."

Phanuel flinched. This was his first tour-of-duty as protector of a mortal. The Angel of Pennance wasn't used to mortals not being terrified or awed by his appearance. Much less being subjected to such familiarity.

"Angry … song?" Phanuel asked, his expression perplexed as though the thought somebody might create a song that was _angry _was something he had never considered before.

The disciples burst out laughing.

"Dude," Gunn joked, putting his arm around Phanuel's shoulders. "You need to get out of heaven more often."

"They don't let you out much," the Senator said. "Do they?"

"Kinda like the scientists in the movie Independence Day," Cindy chipped in, referring to a science fiction movie where aliens invaded the Earth.

"Like a virgin…" Lena sang, singing the bars from the old Madonna song. "Touched for the very first time."

"That's okay," Gunn said, making a lewd gesture. "We'll have Phanuel's cherry popped in no time."

Phanuel managed to maintain an unemotional expression on his face, but by the way he twitched his wings in disgust and curled them as close to his body as he could as though avoiding touching excrement, it was obvious he was having a hard time adjusting to the reality of his new assignment. Audrey took pity upon him.

"Enough!" Audrey barked, attempting to not upset her new babysitter by laughing in his face. "Phanuel is only trying to do his job. I'm fine. Now please … resume what you were doing before I so rudely interrupted you and tell everyone if they feel anything shudder to the tune of any strange song lyrics for the next few hours, just ignore it. We're just … singing. That's all."

Phanuel scrutinized her face carefully, trying to read her thoughts. He was breathtakingly beautiful, as all the angels were, with piercing blue eyes. Sharp, angular features like the falcon he resembled. And tall. All the full-blooded angels were so tall. The Unfallen could read most mortal creatures thoughts. But not hers. Or Yesua. Or Mary Magdaline. Or any of the Fallen, their offspring, or Yesua's disciples. The first thing anyone who obtained any familiarity with how invasive the hive mind did was learn to shield their thoughts and protect them.

"She's got all twelve disciples here to protect her," Muhammad said. "Plus Cindy. We've got it covered."

"Just call me if you need me," Phanuel said, assuming the formal 'dress wings' posture of a subordinate standing before a superior officer. He disappeared 'between' in the _same _flash of blinding light that he had appeared in.

Yesua was, of course, blissfully unaware of what she and the disciples were up to. Although all twelve of them loved Yesua and stood behind the mission to help him usher in the New Kingdom, they shared Audrey's pragmatic view of him. They loved Gabriel almost as much as Audrey did. Yesua did not. They wanted Gabriel freed. Yesua was letting old hard feelings rule his better judgment. Like the disobedient children of Eve they were, the disciples were determined to sneak behind the Saviors back and sneak a bit of the apple anyways. Gabriel had pegged the situation best in his letter. Yesua was not a perfect god, but he bore great compassion for humanity. He needed _them _to guide _him _as much as they needed _him _to guide _them_.

"I pissed off now, Jobu," Audrey cracked in a mock Cuban accent, quoting lines from the movie Major League. "Look, I go to you. I stick up for you. You don't help me now. I say "Fuck you," Jobu. I do it myself."

"That's the spirit!" Four Bears growled.

"If you want something done right," Muhammad said. "You've got to do it yourself."

"Well?" Audrey asked. Jose' queued up the background music so she could finish the song.

"That won't bust open the doors to the Keep," Thamuz said, walking around to inspect the cracks that had opened up in the mortar between the granite blocks on all four legs and thoughtfully twitching his tail. "If you kept that up at a mortal building, it might eventually crack, but it's not going to be enough."

"I agree," Jose' said. "You were channeling a lot more power the day Gabriel died."

"None of us was with you the day the coyotes came for your husband and you claimed him as yours," Thamuz said. "But whatever you did, the sound of your voice warped the hinges of the blast door that prevents anyone from entering the Keep and ripped them right out of the stone. It was what enabled me to pry open the door."

"Only it's been fixed now," Audrey said. "And reinforced, to boot. I know. Michael told me. Nobody gets in. Nobody gets out. Not even the angels who used to be in charge. Only the Father has access."

"Look at this," Jose' said, unconsciously striking one of his old gang-poses as he pointed to graphs displayed on the 12-headed monster he had set up to display all the data he was crunching. "When you sang the high notes in the Jericho song, the vibration in the rocks changed to vibrate in harmonic resonance with what you were singing. And then when you dropped down to sing the last bass-line, _that _was when the granite fractured. We need another song that does that. Sings really high, and then drops down into the sewers."

"What's Up?" Lyubitske suggested. "By Four Non Blondes?"

"The American National Anthem," Gunn shouted.

"Mariah Carey," Non Gae said.

"Flight of the Valkyries," Cindy suggested.

"No! No! No!" Jose exclaimed, waving his hand dismissively at them. "Not enough vocal range. And it has to be Audrey's _voice _that sets of the resonation as she channels the power of the void. Not the background music. Wagner's vocal pieces don't have the necessary range."

"I have a song that will work," the Rabbi said quietly from the back of the room. So quietly that Audrey almost didn't hear him. As usual, the Rabbi was quietly off to one side, silently minding his own business and reading his Torah.

Audrey had learned that when the Rabbi spoke, she'd better listen. She whistled and put her hand up to silence the other disciples. Whether she wanted to hear what the Rabbi had to say or not, he was the only disciple who had a proven track record of figuring out what the Father was up to on a consistent basis.

"Yes, Rabbi?" Audrey asked.

"It is the most technically difficult mortal opera piece ever written," the Rabbi said. "And it shall convey the mood you wish to project. The only song I have ever heard with a broader range was when I heard your Gabriel sing Song of Songs. The song is beyond your capabilities as you sing right now. You will need training from a classically trained singer in order to do it right."

Audrey suppressed her perpetual annoyance at the Rabbi. She was a reasonably competent hobby singer. She was no Mariah Carey. If the Rabbi said she needed additional voice training, then she would get the additional voice training. He hadn't said he thought she couldn't do it. If he'd _thought_ that, he would have _said _that."

"Tell me about this song," Audrey said.

The Rabbi told her the name of a song that wasn't even in English. The name meant absolutely nothing to her.

"Supreme…" the Reverend said, standing and giving a reverent bow to the Rabbi. "As usual … my esteemed colleague is a genius. If any song is going to work, it shall be that one."

Jose' pulled up an old YouTube video of a fat lady screeching in rage at some poor young girl crying upon the floor and shaking her fists. English subtitles scrolled at the bottom of the screen.

"Oh … yes," Audrey said. "That should do the trick."

Glancing down at her hand, she noticed the compass rose, which had finally started working again after fifteen years of silence, was pointed directly at the screen.


	203. Chapter 202

Chapter 202

_Gigantic gates blocked her way. Off in the distance, the deep thrum of a horn permeated the air. Slowly, the gates opened. The cobblestone road stretched before her, a narrow passage through buildings which had been constructed helter-skelter and looked like they would tumble down at any moment._

_Moans wafted through the putrid green vapors which permeated the city. All around her, the fetid stench of brimstone and decay assaulted her nostrils. Fearful humans darted around corners, fleeing the abundant predatory humans who filled this city like human refuse._

_She walked alone. Unarmed. Behind her, a group of filthy, ragged creatures that looked like they had once been human trailed behind her. Some cat-called to her. Someone new condemned to Sheol for damnation._

_One ran up to her wielding a club, as though to hit her._

"No!"_ Audrey shouted, using a defensive move that Gabriel had taught her so long ago. _"I am alive. You shall not molest the Prophet of the Savior or I shall destroy you and cast your soul into the void."

"Audrey?" Belaziel said, concern lacing his voice. "Are you okay?"

"_She is alive!" some of the inmates whispered. "We haven't had any live ones since the Nephilim escaped. Perhaps it is finally time?"_

"You must wait for the Savior to judge your souls," _Audrey said. _"I am not here to adjudicate Sheol. My destination lies at the heart of the city."

"_The Keep!" the inmates said, drawing back in fear. "You must not go there. It is too dangerous. Death. Even for the dead."_

"Only the void contains eternal death," _Audrey said._ "If I were you, I'd start thinking about what you say at your final judgment hearing to convince the Savior you are worthy of a second chance."

"Audrey?" Belaziel said. "Sweetie pie? You need to wake up. You're having a bad dream." Some part of her could register the sensation of a warm torso stretched alongside hers, but he was not her soul mate. He did not have the power to pull her back from a vision that Gabriel had possessed.

"_Bring me to the Keep," _Audrey ordered.

"_I shall show the Prophet of the Savior the way," an elderly man said, stepping forward with an elderly woman. The man was a giant. Nephilim. Fourth-generation. Returned to Sheol after his mortal shell had failed following baptism. And his human wife who had, unfortunately, died in the great flood._

"Shallurum,"_ Audrey said, instantly recognizing him as Belaziel's hilarious fourth-generation grandson who had chosen to get baptized despite the certain knowledge his mortal shell had become too degraded to survive. _"I am so glad to see you're okay."

"_As okay as one can possibly be in Sheol," Shallurum said, giving her a hug. "Things have been pretty quiet since the heavenly host decided to blow this place. Meet my wife. And those are my kids over … there. Since I got back, I've been busy baptizing anyone who wasn't already baptized, making them swear fealty. When he comes to judge us, we'll be ready."_

"Somehow, I always thought it would be Virgil who guided me through the nine layers of Hell," _Audrey said._ "But I'm glad it's you. I got a crappy grade in classical literature in high school. You're much better company."

"_I told them you would come for him," Shallurum said, tugging his wife into his side. "Nobody believed me. But I –knew.- Just as my wife knew I'd come back for her, somehow. I'll give you whatever help I can."_

_Audrey followed the Nephilim male through the streets of the city. The further in they got, the more ancient and decrepit the city became. And also more violent. On more than one occasion, they were attacked and she was forced to defend them with her 'voice.'_

'_Unfortunately," Shallurum said apologetically, giving her a toothless grin. "A lot of the souls interred here actually –belong- here. The Savior is going to have his work cut out for him separating the wheat from the chaff. But there's a lot of good people here, too. Oddballs and people who made honest mistakes. Like some of them disciples you had following you. All they need is a second chance to make things right and the Savior will have a lot of good people watching his back."_

"I think that's the general idea,"_ Audrey said, pulling her khimar over her face to completely cover her mouth and coughing as she struggled to breathe. The vapors had become so thick she could barely see a few inches in front of her face. _"God! What _is _that awful stench?"

"_We're here," Shallurum said. "I'm afraid I can bring you no further."_

_Audrey stared at the enormous wound which had been punched into the ground as though the Father had taken a screwdriver to a piece of Styrofoam. A bottomless pit spewing putrid green vapors that twisted all it touched and spread sickness. The mist temporarily cleared, giving her a view to the bottom. To the squat, ugly stone building which sat there, impervious even to a god. The Keep. Audrey couldn't help but shudder. The mists closed in around it, obscuring it from her view once more._

"How the hell am I supposed to get down –there?-"_ Audrey complained, staring in dismay at the glassy cliff walls, so smooth that even a spelunker would have trouble scaling it. _"You'd need … wings."

"Sweetie Pie?" Belaziel said, gently shaking her. "Wake up. You're beginning to scare me."

Audrey opened her eyes, staring into Belaziel's clear blue eyes. A vision. Although Gabriella's day had not yet come, it appeared hers _had._ The Mother was once again pushing her forward.

"I'm going to need to bring a parachute," Audrey said, the wheels already beginning to churn in her conscious mind even before her body had become fully awake. "Or a hang glider. Something to get down."

Belaziel hugged her close, inhaling her scent and checking to make sure she was all right. She had told him about the visions she used to experience, but this was the first time she had had one since Gabriel had died.

"You smell like brimstone," Belaziel said softly, his eyes filled with worry. He caressed her cheek and kissed her, this time, on the mouth. "Please … I don't know exactly what you're planning. But know it will pain me to lose _you _almost as much as it pained me to lose my first wife. Gabriel would never forgive me if I let you come to harm."

"You can't take me where I need to go," Audrey said, an open, sad feeling permeating her heart as she kissed her surrogate husband goodbye. "I saw Shallurum there and his family. They are okay. He will guide me to the pit once I get to the other side."

Belaziel pulled her close, his erection pressing against her side. He moved his hips back so that she couldn't feel it. For fifteen years, although both of their bodies had occasionally urged them towards consummating their relationship, always one, or the other, would reach a point where the transition from emotional fellowship to physical attraction would feel like betrayal. Tonight … Audrey felt tempted. Gabriel would forgive her.

But she would never forgive herself…

"I do love you," Audrey said, caressing the lines of his face, returning his kiss. "If not for the certainty that our mates wait for us just but on the other side, I _would_ have married you."

"I know," Belaziel said, pulling her close. "And I decided a year into our relationship that if you ever asked, I would put my heart into consummating our relationship and fathering as many children as you wished for me to give you. My wife and I come from a time when it was acceptable to have a physical relationship with more than one wife, although even back then we Fallen understood you could only form holy union with one soul. They didn't have ways to save mortal shells like they do now, and sometimes mates of our offspring would encounter accidents before one of us could be called in to heal them. We learned to be pragmatic about such things."

"Why, then, did you never push me?" Audrey asked. "You know that many times I was tempted."

"Because times have changed," Belaziel said. "I love you too much to force you to do something you would later regret. What was that movie we watched together that first year you came? The one with the man whose plane crashes on an island in the ocean and he's marooned there three years alone?"

"Cast Away," Audrey said. "With Tom Hanks. And Wilson. The volleyball."

"I've always known you were willing to move mountains to free my brother," Belaziel said. "But if we'd had children, you'd be trapped here. Like the lady was in that movie. You wouldn't be free to do whatever it is you're about to do now."

"Helen Hunt," Audrey said, nuzzling his neck. "She thought he was gone forever. But then he came back, but she was no longer free to go with him."

"It made me cry when she went back into that house," Belaziel said. "Back to the man she didn't love because she had a child who needed her father, while the man who was her soul mate sat outside in the rain. Gabriella is a young woman now. If we'd had children together, Gabriel would sacrifice his own happiness and urge you to stay with me."

"Yes," Audrey said, snuggling against his body and relishing the feel of a man who wished to make love to her. "He would. But I _do _love you. Just … not as much. I love Gabriel more."

"It would break my heart to be the man inside the house," Belaziel said. "The man who kept two soul mates apart. Taram-uram would grow to accept _you. _But I know that _you _would never accept _her._ Or being second-wife once she returns. It is not your modern custom."

"No," Audrey said, feeling desire which she had kept leashed gently flowing from her feminine core through the rest of her body. She knew the only reason she was coming alive was because the Mother had spoken through her. Given her hope. After fifteen years encased in ice, her heart was finally coming alive. The fire she felt now was adrenaline at finally instituting her plan pulsing through her veins. A heady aphrodisiac!

What surprised her was how openly, now that Belaziel knew she was going for her _true _husband, her surrogate husband was finally being about his desire. All these years she had assumed he had no desire, when in reality he was simply waiting for her to be the one to make the choice.

She had chosen Gabriel.

He respected that choice.

They kissed and petted until dawn, slipping their hands beneath the chaste pajamas each had worn to bed every night for fifteen years to touch parts of each others' bodies each had always diligently avoided, knowing this was goodbye. But both held back, avoiding those contacts that crossed the line from caresses into sexual intimacy, knowing they were soon to be reunited with the mate they had lost. He was beautiful, her surrogate husband. But he was not hers, and she was not his. It was time to return where they belonged.

It was time to let each other go…

The sun heaved above the eastern horizon of Lake Ontario, bathing their bower in the observatory of the CN tower in pink light.

"Go get your husband, my Sweet," Belaziel said, tears making his eyes glisten as he kissed her goodbye. "I will protect Gabriella with my life until her _real _father returns."

"You are the only father she has ever known," Audrey said, capturing the tear as it fell with her lips. "She is going to have a hard time adjusting. I hope you will continue to be there for her."

"You know I will," Belaziel said, gently pushing her towards the edge of the bed. To get up and leave him before his control broke and he begged her to stay. "I love her like she was my own."

"I have one more loose end to tie up before I leave," Audrey whispered. "Honey … while I do, could you please look into getting me a parachute?"

"Of course," Belaziel said, his lips turning up into a small, wistful smile that did not reach the sadness in his eyes.

"Uriel said Taram-uram has chosen to descend," Audrey said, tracing the line of his cheekbone. "It will be an extremely painful process for her. But she was once mortal. She will remember what her body needs to do to make the transition. The most important thing you can do for her is hold her and anchor her here until her body remembers."

"She has already been through the process once," Belaziel said. "When I retrieved her from Sheol. She is a strong woman. She will survive."

Hope erased the worry lines and sadness from his face. Already, his mind was turning from that he was giving up towards that which he was getting in return. Audrey wished to help the process along. Belaziel didn't know it, but there was no guarantee she would come back from this mission alive. In fact, it was almost guaranteed that she would _not._ She didn't want the man who had quite literally picked her up off the ground and pieced her shattered soul back together to grieve when she was gone.

"The Father gave her full amnesty and restored her original form," Audrey said. "When she returns to you, she will appear as you remember her from the time before you were interred in the Keep. She will be beautiful again."

"Taram-uram was never a beauty by your human standards," Belaziel said, his face now blossoming into a full-blown smile. "It was her strength which attracted me to her. If something needed to be done, well then, she did it. No complaints. Kind of like you. Only she never cussed like a longshoreman the way that _you _still do sometimes."

Audrey smiled and gave him an affectionate kiss on the mouth, slipping out the door before she allowed him to see the fear in her eyes over what she was about to do.

"Bye…" she said casually, as though going out for a morning jog.

"Goodbye," Belaziel said.


	204. Chapter 203

Chapter 203

"_Uriel!" _the voice called through the heavens.

He was being summonsed. His consciousness followed the voice to the source, his heart leaping and then feeling trepidation as he recognized who it was who called him. He leaped into the air of the garden and darted 'between,' emerging several feet from the owner of the voice.

"Prophet," Uriel said, carefully arranging his emotions into an unreadable expression. His wings. Michael had warned him he wore his heart on his wings. He deliberately tucked his wings into the formal 'dress wings' position and concentrated on preventing his feathers from trembling in anticipation like a dog awaiting his morning meal.

"Uriel," the Prophet said. "I wanted to speak to you. About Gabriella."

"Yes?" Uriel said.

For some reason, for the past several weeks, Gabriella had stopped sulking whenever he came around and actually appeared to _want _to spend time in his company, sometimes summonsing him to ask questions which appeared trivial. The Prophet, on the other hand, had continued her customary behavior of simply ignoring him. The cold shoulder now being all the more easier to give him by the fact she now had Phanuel at her beck and call.

"I … uh …" Audrey stammered, as though gathering her thoughts to say something extremely difficult.

Uriel inhaled her scent. He could smell his brother all over her, including an underlying pheromone that was more than just friendship, but not the scent of a human who had just committed a sinful mating act. She smelled like … something in between? Like one betrothed, perhaps. And something else. She had the slight odor of … brimstone? Perhaps she had been using matches to light candles? A romantic interlude, perhaps? Foreplay? Had she and Belaziel decided they were finally going to marry?

The Prophet twisted her hands together, as though trying to think of a way to say something she knew would be hurtful. Jealousy rose in his gut and was suppressed. It would make sense for the Prophet to desire to solidify her relationship. Her mate was, after all, interred in the Keep for all eternity. Belaziel's mate, however, was about to be freed from the garden and allowed to return to Earth. Why wait fifteen years, and then change your mind at the last minute?

"What is it?" Uriel asked, unintentionally making his voice sound cold and uncaring. Even to his own ears.

"I … um … I've noticed you're getting along with Gabriella pretty well lately," Audrey finally said.

"My assignment has been narrowed to protect only her," Uriel said. "It is Michael's desire that I be the one to guide her to the gates of heaven when she blows her father's horn. He has finally granted your wish to be rid of me."

"Oh, Uriel," Audrey said, her dark blue velvet eyes softening as an expression he might mistake for remorse came into her eyes. "I didn't call you to argue."

"You didn't?" Uriel asked with surprise, unable to suppress the excited little rustle his wings made against his volition. He sharply pressed the traitorous limbs back into 'dress wings' formation and forced his face back into its' unreadable mask, standing stiffly as though he were a wooden nutcracker doll.

"I wanted to thank you for protecting us all these years," Audrey said. "For protecting _me._ I know I haven't been an easy person to work with."

Confusion danced across his face before he realized me must look like an idiot. Damn human emotions run amuk! How he wished the Father would just turn the emotional dampening portion of the control collar back on so he wouldn't be inconvenienced by these vile … urges anymore. Like the one he felt right now. The urge to pull her into his arms and see what it would be like to taste the scent from her lips that always affected him like an aphrodisiac.

"I just want you to know that I appreciate all you have done for us," Audrey said, placing her hand on his forearm.

Uriel's flesh began to tremble beneath her touch. Touch. The thought darted through his brain that enjoying the touch of a mortal was forbidden. It felt as though the skin underneath where she touched him were on fire.

"I was just following orders," Uriel said, his voice wavering like an eleven-year-old boy who had just hit puberty.

"Gabriella has grown very fond of you," Audrey stated. "She looks forward to your visits now."

"I am just doing my job," Uriel said, annoyed that the conversation was already turning towards what had to be the _real _reason she had summonsed him. She wished for him to play fetch, roll over, or play dead for the sullen Gabriella. Although Gabriella had been slightly less prickly lately. A _lot _less prickly, actually. Gabriella had actually been being _nice _to him lately.

"She needs strong male role models in her life that she can trust to guide her," Audrey said softly. "Someone who _–I-_ can trust."

"I will complete my mission," Uriel said stiffly, misunderstanding the course of their conversation. "Belaziel has provided an admirable role model for her in her father's absence."

The Prophet must be unhappy that _he _had been assigned to watch her only child. He _knew _she didn't trust him! Because of what he had done to her. To Gabriel. To their unborn child, the one he had to watch because _he _had stood by and allowed her father to die. From the moment the child had become aware that she once _had _a father, the poor girl had blamed herself for his death!

Uriel unconsciously traced the scar which ran down one side of his face. His _'reminder not to be such an asshole in the future,' _as Mary Madaline had called it when she had restored sight in his eye. He _deserved _to be marked for life for what he had done!

He noticed the way the Prophet watched him trace his own scar and felt as though she could read his thoughts. His _guilty _thoughts… Was she also aware of how he felt about her?

"Sometimes a girl needs more than just a father-figure in her life," Audrey said quietly. "She needs a … confidante. Someone she can go to when she's feeling picked on, or sad, or maybe just wants someone she can bounce crazy ideas off of without feeling judged. I think she has started to look to _you_ to be that person."

"I don't understand," Uriel said, perplexed. He couldn't understand where this conversation was going. "You're asking me to … listen … to her. And not judge?"

"Yes," Audrey said. "I think … Gabriella is her father's daughter. She's never going to be satisfied with less than perfection. Just like _he _was never satisfied with less than his best effort. But that drive to exceed comes at a heavy price. It isolates you. Makes you stand apart from the crowd. Gabriella … needs … somebody she can always trust to be there for her when she feels like the rest of the world is against her. Someone to help ease her into fellowship with the rest of the world so she's not always standing alone."

Uriel stood there, stupidly, until it began to dawn on him what the Prophet might be referring to. When the shit had hit the fan, all 599 brothers had abandoned Gabriel to stand alone against the Grigori. But only _one _brother had also prevented his _wife _from standing at his side and forced her to watch.

"I'm so sorry," Uriel said. "I shouldn't have … I shouldn't have been obedient! It wasn't right … what I did!"

Small, soft hands reached up to touch both sides of his face, stopping him from verbalizing the self-flagellation he had silently been giving himself every single day since the day his inaction had killed her husband. The Prophet pulled his forehead down to rest against hers, even though she was nearly two feet shorter than him. The gesture of fellowship the cherubs used to greet one another. Uriel was unable to stop the tear which escaped his eye and dripped down onto her cheek.

"That's not why I asked you to come," Audrey said. "I've known for many years that you were sorry. It just took me a long time to reach the point that I was willing to see it."

"You forgave _him,"_ Uriel said.

"Yes," Audrey said. "I made him suffer as well. Only his was all bunched up at the beginning, in one big clump. While yours was spread out over many years. I'm only … human. We do that sometimes. Hold grudges."

Uriel straightened so that he could look down into her eyes. Her beautiful eyes that reminded him of the color of Lake Ontario on a stormy day. Dark blue. So blue they were almost black. He knew then that the rumors were true. Although the Prophet could not read minds the way angels pull information from the hive mind the Father had about a particular person, she could look straight into his soul and take the measure of his worth in a way not even the Father could do.

He looked into her eyes and realized, at last, the Prophet wished to see him.

He felt as though someone had stripped off all his clothes and left him exposed in the public square, naked, for all the world to see.

He felt…

"I have something I wish to share with you before I go," the Prophet said. "A memory. I think you will need it to shepherd my daughter into the future."

Go?

Before he realized what she was doing, the Prophet had reached up to slip her fingers around the back of his head and tugged him down for a kiss.

He stiffened… His heart raced in his chest. Warmth flooded his body and caused a reaction he wasn't aware he possessed deep in his loins. The kiss of death?

It didn't matter. If this is what death felt like, he would gladly die.

Stars flashed as suddenly the day the cherubs had been created by the Mother and the Father burst into his brain. Tears of joy flooded his eyes as he remembered the feeling of safety, of being loved, of both deities overwhelming feelings of hope and joy as they had gazed upon the thousand cherubs they had just birthed nestled safely in the garden they had created to rear them. Heaven had been created for _them._

The memory changed. Him. Rolling and tumbling in the garden with his brothers. And … sisters? And the Grigori. They had all once been friends.

And the Mother. He had a Mother. He remembered tugging at her wings and begging to be picked up. The joyful expression on her face as she had rolled in the grass with them and picked flowers and told them stories of love and happiness. The Mother had loved them. She had loved them all. He had forgotten what it felt like to be loved.

These were Gabriel's memories, he realized. Gabriel's memories of times that included _him._ Not his own. He had heard rumors that his brother had somehow left her with his memories, but he had never realized that had meant _all _of his memories. All fourteen billion years worth of them. It was the closest Uriel had ever come to remembering on his own what it had been like in those early years none amongst them could remember. None except for Gabriel.

Uriel trembled beneath her touch, his arms reaching around to grab her and pull her close, as though he wished to pull her into his own heart and keep her there. Acting of their own volition, his red wings circled around her, seeking to hold that which he knew could never be his. The Prophet held her kiss, but did not respond. The kiss was the way she was able to share memory. There was no passion in it. But there was … tenderness. She wished to teach him something.

"And now I want you to understand what _true _love feels like," Audrey whispered. "So that you will never mistake attraction for holy union ever again."

The memory shifted. This time, it was two memories of a single event merged into one memory. Audrey. And Gabriel. Stretched out in each others' arms after making love. The warm glow of happiness which surrounded them. Trust. Safety. The feel of her skin beneath his hand as Gabriel had caressed her belly swollen with Gabriella. Feeling the baby kick. His profound joy. Caressing each other. Whispering dreams of a future together. Two separate consciousnesses still intertwined and joined as one heart as they basked in each others' love.

Two separate consciousnesses intertwined, even now, even though fate had forced them apart these past fifteen years. He could feel it. He could feel that fragment of his brothers' soul living in his mates' heart, and he could feel the Prophet's connection to his brother trapped in the Keep. He could _feel _the Father attempting to hack away at the connection between the two of them. Trying to sever it. Trying to make him forget her.

Uriel leaned on her then, sobbing, as he realized what he had taken from her. Even though she had withheld the actual moment of union, those memories too personal for her to share, she had given him a glimpse of what it felt like to feel that depth of emotion for another sentient creature.

He loved her.

His love paled in comparison to the love the Prophet and his brother felt for each other.

He would never measure up.

"This is what holy union feels like," Audrey whispered, breaking off her kiss. "It is my deepest desire that someday you find it for yourself."

Her lips trailed up the scar on the side of his face. The scar she had given him the day he had tried to keep her from her mate, from trying to fight to keep Gabriel in this world with her. Uriel sobbed as her lips moved from his chin, up his cheek, over his tearful eyelids and up to the eyebrow which had been cleft in half by her war fan.

"I forgive you," Audrey said, gently extricating herself from his embrace and stepping back.

Uriel fell to his knees and sobbed, throwing his head into the air and howling with the grief he could now sense he had caused her. The grief he had never known he had the ability to feel.

Not _her _grief, he realized. But his own. _He _had lost a brother, too, that day. Uriel sat curled up in a fetal position on the ground, his wings wrapped around him to hide him from the world, much the way Gabriella had done that day when she had retreated to the base of the cliff, and cried for quite some time.

It wasn't until quite some time later that he realized the Prophet had left the room. Reaching out his senses to get a feel for where she now was, he could feel nothing. Nothing at all. It felt as though the Prophet was no longer in the material realm…

Go? Go where?

It wasn't until he had composed himself later that morning and went to fetch Gabriella to retrieve her horn that it was pointed out to him.

"Uriel?" Gabriella asked, reaching out to touch his face. "What happened to your scar?"

It was gone.


	205. Chapter 204

Chapter 204

"Hey … Gabbi," Ishtup-sin called. "Look at the news."

Gabriella watched the televised broadcast, taken live from helicopter, that showed the caldera of the supervolcano centered smack dab in the middle of Yellowstone National Park was finally beginning to blow its top. She stood there, glued to the television in horror, as the helicopter foolishly hovering above the volcano filmed sections of earth fracturing and smoke pouring out of the cracks. From above, it was clearly visible that this was not just one cracks, but rather dozens of smaller cracks opening up in a large, miles wide circle.

"They're going to get toasted," Dickie Pena said.

"Fried and stewed," Taribum joked.

"Damn," Bobby Grady said, his expression one of pure horror as he watched the soil around one of the fractures simply be swallowed up into the crack. "That's near my home."

"Ain't your home no more," Shu-mama said. "You's a Toronto boy, now. The Saviors telling us everything up almost until Chicago is going to get buried in fifteen foot of ash by that monster.

"Little, teeny-tiny shards of glass," Ishtup-sin added. "It gets into your lungs. Your lungs swell up. You can't breathe. You die."

"I'm prepared," Dickie Pena said. "My whole family stocked up on those N-90 face masks. If the ash cloud drifts this way, we're all ready to put them on."

"Thought it ain't supposed to get this far," Bobby Grady said. "That's what they tell us when we's evacuated to here."

"We're not going to get fifteen feet of ash," Gabriella said. "But we're going to get _some._ Maybe six inches to eighteen inches. Depending on which way the wind blows. The only thing that's going to be flying while this thing blows is _us."_

"You mean _you," _Dickie Pena said, giving her a shit-eating grin. "Be the first time in my life I'll be glad I ain't got me no wings. Better _you_ flying in this shit than me!"

"Attention!" one of the C.O.'s called. "General Ningizzada is in the city. Assembly. Outside. Roundhouse Park. Ten minutes. Full formation. Look sharp!"

Gabriella instantly forgot about the television and snapped to attention, tucking her wings neatly into her back as she shoved her friends out the front door. _General _Ningizzada? Her nephew, for technically he _was _her nephew, even if he _was_ born 4,500 years before her, only used his military title locally while in Toronto when he was here on official business. It was his turn to man the facility in Vancouver. Not Toronto. This must be official business.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the meeting was going to be about…

"Stand straight!" Gabriella hissed at Taribum. "You're making me look bad!" Taribum was slouched over, as always, his wings sloppily askew as though he had just rolled out of bed and not bothered to smooth his feathers.

"Miss Perfect Archangel," Taribum retorted, the good-natured grin he gave her taking the sting out of his words. "Stand straight. Run fast. Throw that mace boy, whup!"

The 'whup' at the end was Shu-mama giving Taribum a soft thwack off the back of the head warning him the C.O. was headed their way with a displeased expression upon his face.

"Gabriella," the C.O. snapped, a fifty-something ex-marine with a silver crew cut and a countenance like a bull-dog. "Your babysitter is requesting your presence. At the mosque."

"I'll be right back," Gabriella said to her friends.

"No," the C.O. snapped. "You won't be. I finally get you trained and now Vancouver is just swooping in and snatching you away from me like a bunch of frackin' vultures!"

Gabriel suppressed the urge to reassure the C.O. she'd be back. From the time she was a little girl, whenever she'd start to whine that they were pushing her too hard, her Mother and the other full-bloods would remind her that she had big shoes to fill. Her father's. Gabriella might be quiet, but she wasn't stupid. It was all over the news. It must be time.

Her babysitter? Gabriella's heart sped up a little more than usual as she became airborne and made the short flight over to the mosque where her father was buried. In her head, she knew Uriel spent time with her because it was his job to spend time with her now. Not her mother anymore. But in her heart … her heart was thinking all sorts of crazy things that made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Sunshiny, flowery, girlie type of things that made her want to brush her hair and pinch her cheeks so they were pink and wear pretty clothes like the other girls in the city liked to wear. Very _unlike _the tomboyish Gabriella.

"Uriel?" Gabriella said, bounding into the mosque like a cherub. The Imam would be most displeased if he saw her bouncing into the house of the Father, or Allah as the Muslim community called him, like she were playing hopscotch.

"Gabriella," Uriel said, his voice sounding thin and weak. "It is time. We need to open the crypt."

Gabriella paused. Uriel's wings were drooped down almost to the ground. His eyes were puffy and red, as though he had been crying. He looked … odd.

"Uriel?" Gabriella asked, it taking a moment to register what was bothering her about his appearance, besides the fact he looked like he had just been chewed up and spit out by a tomcat. "What happened to your scar?" She reached out to trace the line she had memorized in her dreams. The line that ran from his beautiful eyes that transformed from grayish-blue to green when he stopped playing tough-guy to the strong line of his jaw.

"My … scar?" Uriel asked, reaching up to touch his own face. His eyes grew wide as his fingers registered the absence of the scar that had been deliberately left to mar his perfect features for the past fifteen years.

Gabriella grabbed him by the arm and dragged him over to the men's room. She didn't bother knocking first, surprising one of the parishioners as she shamelessly barged in.

"Excuse me," Gabriella said, ignoring the man's glare as he practically dove into the urinal and frantically zipped up his fly. "Important business here." She dragged Uriel over to the mirror and shoved his face into it.

"It's … gone," Uriel said, his voice almost a whisper. "She really did it. She said she forgave me."

"Who?" Gabriella asked.

"Your mother," Uriel said. "She summonsed me to her quarters this morning to tell me she forgave me. And now … she's gone. I can't find her anywhere."

"Oh," Gabriella said. "That's nothing. She woke me up this morning for physical training and said she was going to Uncle Azrael's for the next few days. You know how hunting _him _down always is. He's into some pretty spooky stuff. Scares the crap out of my friends."

"Oh," Uriel said, visibly relieved. "The way she said … it sounded like … I was worried, that's all. She just disappeared before I had a chance to say thank you."

Gabriella realized she still had her hand on Uriel's face, the palm of her hand resting against his cheek where the scar used to be. His skin was hot. Far hotter than a normal angels. Or at least one of the Fallen. This was the first time she had ever really touched him long enough to notice his flesh practically burned with an internal heat.

"Holy fire," Gabriella said absent-mindedly aloud, forgetting to remove her hand. When she'd fantasized about Uriel being hot,she hadn't realized he was, quite literally, _hot._ Instinctively, she straightened up to her full height, almost as tall as he was, and flared her wings. His scent … he smelled so … male. Gabriella inhaled his scent and realized she'd never really noticed the way a strong, desirable male had a different scent than one of the run-of-the-mill ones she always hung out with.

"Um…" Uriel said awkwardly, touching her hand. "We're … um … in the men's bathroom. And we're late. For a meeting."

"Oh, sorry!" Gabriella stammered, color rising to her cheeks in mortification as she realized she'd just cornered him like a caged beast in the men's room. "I … um … I was just … surprised … yeah … surprised … to see your … um … scar … just um gone … like that."

She immediately resumed her normal slouching posture, staring down at her blue Converse sneakers that were already beginning to get raggedy around the toes.

"Okay," Uriel said. "We need to go down to the crypt. It's time to retrieve your father's horn."

Gabriella obediently trailed behind him, shoulders slumped, boobs hidden in her overly-large tee-shirt, scuffing the toes of her shoes as she walked, her expression sullen and withdrawn. Gabriella, begotten of the Archangel Gabriel, Word of God. Heir to herald Judgment Day in her father's stead.

How come she didn't _feel _like no stinking herald?


	206. Chapter 205

Chapter 205

"Will she let us pass?" Audrey asked.

"She has given her word," Azrael said, worry creasing his brow. "What happens after that … I cannot say."

Audrey looked up at the beautiful, ebony-winged Angel of Death who had become one of her closest friends. Out of all the angels in heaven, only Azrael could understand how difficult it was to control the power she wielded. The power of the void.

Audrey was human, struggling to learn to increase her ability to wield the power so that she could accomplish her plan. Azrael was immortal. Comprised of pure consciousness and what primordial void-matter he could capture and control. Still … they were flip sides of the same coin. As Audrey taught herself to increase her power, Azrael was learning to contain it. The power he possessed was so destructive that the mere brush of a single feather when he was distracted still meant instant death.

"You need to keep them distracted until I can make my way through the city and get inside," Audrey said. "If they realize what I am about to do, they will try to stop me."

"Please," Azrael said. "Be careful. I have taught you everything I know, but it is extremely dangerous."

"I will," Audrey said, looking down at her hands. At the simple golden ring which still adorned her fingers after all these years. "Gabriel suffers for _me._ I will not make a mockery of his suffering by throwing my life away on useless gestures."

"Good," Azrael said, his black eyes glittering with worry. "Gabriel would never forgive me if I helped you with a plan that had no hope of working. Although you humans continuously surprise me with what you can do with nothing but hope. What you're attempting is already likely enough to fail without adding unnecessary risks."

"Thamuz?" Audrey called, turning to the next member of her little expedition. "You coming?"

"Of course," the Twelfth Disciple said, lumbering over to the assortment of crates, both large and small, he had piled up in the center of the field. "Just let me free Brudei's main soul-fragment. He's big enough to hop along on his own."

Thamuz sheathed his claws and opened the door of a large dog carrier. Brudei, the heavenly host soul-fragment Gabriella had captured, hopped out, his bunny-nose twitching nervously as he twisted his long, furry lop ears back and forth. His other fragment-animals nervously chirped, grunted, or growled. The heavenly host Audrey had taught to hold physical forms got very nervous when separated from their other pieces.

"Are you ready, son?" Thamuz asked, the reddish-brown skin on his snout twitching with combined trepidation and excitement.

"Yes, father," Brudei said, his whiskers twitching as he vocalized words no true rabbit had ever spoken. "We will travel there of our own volition. You do not need to carry us in crates."

Crating the host when out of the confines of the reservation was standard protocol. More self-aware pieces of consciousness, such as Brudei's, naturally clustered together with other fragments of their former soul and acted in some semblance of unison once they were reminded of who they were. But many of the pieces were so fragmented that, even if they were able to get a name out of them, Thamuz had been unable to teach the clusters to deal with their underlying anger. The Father had encouraged them to feed their hatred for millennia by tormenting humans. There needed to be enough consciousness to be self-aware, an 'I' personality to work with. Like quilts. To heal a soul, you must first _have_ enough pieces to stitch together some semblance of a patchwork.

Thamuz quietly opened the rest of the crates, murmuring reassurances to them and fondly picking up smaller animal-hosts and tucking them into pockets in his armor and knapsack.

"What about Talorc?" Audrey said, pointing to a second assortment of much smaller crates. The biggest of the animals, a weasel, chittered nervously at them through the bars. Another Grigori son. Asmodeus and Amitea's. The combined creatures were far less intact than the nearly-complete pieces of Thamuz's son. But the creature remembered what its name had been and recognized its sire.

"We will need to carry his fragments in a crate," Thamuz said. "Without his sire here to remind him to maintain control, he devolves quickly back into the madness of the heavenly host."

Asmodeus had made headway with this particular cluster of soul-fragments of what was left of his child. It was the Grigori leaders hope that meeting one of her children and seeing the Savior had been making his best efforts to keep his promise might assail Amitea's madness enough that they might reason with her.

Thamuz was the only Grigori not prohibited by Audrey's Sharia law edict from rejoining his mate in the Keep. It was not Audrey's wish to keep them separate from their mates or interred in the Keep forever. Gabriel's sacrifice and her clever use of the Father's own law to bind him had bought the Savior time Thamuz and Mary to help the Grigori work on their anger issues. Nothing more. The moment she reunited with Gabriel, whether she succeeded or died trying, the twist of law she had used to keep them separate would be null and void. The Grigori would rejoin their mates in the Keep. The Keep she was about to break into and likely damage enough so it could no longer hold them.

It was why she had told no one except Azrael and Thamus the exact details of her plan. If she had, they would try to stop her. The other disciples knew she was going to bust down the front door and retrieve her husband and that it would negate the Sharia edict. They had quietly been preparing for trouble if the males were still unable to control their damaged wives consciousnesses. Belaziel only knew that she was going for her husband.

"Um…" Thamuz hesitated, his coloring waxing an earthy brown. "Just in case I can't keep Iofiels' anger in check and I get lost in her madness, I want you to know how much of a pleasure it's been serving with you."

"I feel the same way," Audrey said, reaching out to squeeze his clawed hand, the claws nearly sheathed like a cats. His skin was warm, like a mammals. Although his appearance was that of the dinosaurs which had roamed the Earth at the time Lucifer had created him, Lucifer had made their insides to be more like the brothers and sisters he had created them to play with. Including their personalities. In many ways, the Grigori dragons were more human than the angels.

"As soon as I reunite with her," Thamuz said. "Don't trust me. I will do my best to reason with her, but although I have mastered my ability to control my _own _anger, there is no guarantee once she compels me to lash out that I will be able to control it. If you have to defend yourself against me, please do so without hesitation."

Audrey nodded to her friend. She had worked with the Grigori enough over the past fifteen years to learn when one of them was losing control. In Thamuz's case, his skin turned a dark, angry reddish-brown. The color of Gabriel's blood spilled upon the Earth. She would know if he was about to lose it.

"Come," Azrael said. "Sheol awaits."

"I already know the way," Thamuz said, picking up the three crates that contained fragment-animals of Talorc, Asmodeus's son. "What is the saying you humans have? The horse knows its own way back to the barn?"

Azrael closed his bottomless pure-black eyes, his lashes long and lush over ebony skin, and concentrated. Although Audrey could visibly _see _no difference in his appearance, she had grown sensitive enough to _feel _what it was he was doing with his corporeal form. Then, he extended his hand.

Audrey reached out to touch him, her heart still racing with fear even though he was now capable of controlling his power. Azrael could now consciously choose to touch another living being without killing them and kiss his beautiful wife who adored him, Ann. But Azrael's base form still was, and always would be, chaos. Just like the Mother. The longer he held an innocuous form, the better he got at holding it, but many times he would get distracted and accidentally jolt his wife's soul out of her body. Only Ann's _equally _strong will to _stay _in this realm kept her at his side.

Azrael squeezed Audrey's hand and smiled. The Angel of Death cherished every touch a mortal creature dared give him, no matter how small or slight, drinking it in as though it were a sacred gift. Just like the Mother. Even if the Father were to appear and offer to shape him a new mortal shell to replace the one he had dissipated, Azrael would refuse. Although his current state of being was not where he wanted to be, his destiny was in his own hands. He preferred it that way.

"Go to hell," Audrey whispered.

The three of them, plus the soul-fragment creatures of the heavenly host, flashed 'between' in a flash of blinding white light.


	207. Chapter 206

Chapter 206

"Uncle Michael!" Gabriella exclaimed, running to hug her favorite uncle. After Uncle Belaziel, of course, who had always treated her like his other daughters.

"Little Archangel," Michael said, returning her hug. "It's been too long."

He glanced sheepishly at the other archangels gathered who gave him curious looks at this unaccustomed display of human affection from their supreme commander, leader, and at the moment, regent for the Father. Michael. Uriel. Raphael. Sandalphon. Phanuel. Zarachiel. Simiel. Sealtiel. Jegudiel. Barachiel. Anael. Jeremiel. Lucifer and Shemihaza. Only Azrael was still absent. And of course, her father.

"Why haven't you been to visit us lately?" Gabriella asked, remembering she wasn't a cherub anymore and was supposed to act more grown up. "It's been months since we last saw you!"

She pulled back, trying to behave like they'd been _teaching _her to behave. Like a soldier in Yesua's army. Although in this case, Michael still served the Father. _And _Yesua. Both. While the others served the Father. Except for Azrael, who also served the Mother. And Lucifer and Shemihaza, who the brothers had agreed would participate in the last judgment, being intimately knowledgeable of the inner workings of Sheol. Even though they served their _own _interests, which were probably more closely aligned with _humans _by virtue of the fact nearly all of the survivors of the apocalypse carried their blood.

"They put me out to pasture behind a desk," Michael groused, his eyes a combination of regret, annoyance, and humor. Although not nearly as expressive as the Fallen, whose time amongst humans had been quite extensive, Uncle Michael had a hell of a lot more personality than, say, Phanuel, who still treated humans as though they were excrement.

Her mom would get Phanuel straightened out…

Gabriella looked over at the crypt, enshrined in a room beneath the Toronto mosque. Her father's crypt. The crypt that was supposedly empty, except for the concrete which had been part of the floor and soaked up his blood when he had been killed. She had never liked coming here, the effigy of her father making her uncomfortable and sad. All her mother ever did when she came here was weep. Gabriella preferred to remember her father by the photo-album her mother had made up for her so she could get to know the father she had never met. In the photos, her Father was always doing things. It felt like he was still alive. Here … it was another reminder that, but for her, he wouldn't be dead.

"Hey, little archangel," Michael said, reaching out to touch her cheeks and bending in to touch his forehead to hers. A gesture only the cherubs shared amongst their peers and equals. He was treating her like an equal. "You don't need to be here when we do this. It's empty. Just rocks. But no one will judge you for wanting to wait outside."

"I'll stay," Gabriella said, hastily wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffling to prevent her nose from running. She backed up, away from the nearly eight-foot long statue of her father laying upon the marble, as though only sleeping, clutching his real-life mace. Her father had looked like _her._ Just like her. He carried his strong features a lot better than _she _did, she thought.

"Brothers," Michael said. "The catalyst is happening as we speak. It is time for Gabriella to complete the job her father is not here to finish."

"Where's Azrael?" Simiel asked. "Isn't he supposed to be here, too?"

"He contacted me and said he'd be delayed," Michael said. "He'll be at our side when we shepherd the souls of the saints who wish to descend back to Earth. His job is to make sure none inadvertently slip into the void."

The others stood at crisp attention, wings tucked tightly into their back, and then solemnly moved to encircle the enormous raised crypt. With a nod from Michael, they grunted with exertion as they heaved the enormous marble slab, over two feet thick even _before _the depth of the statue was added, to one side, holding it there so it would not crash to the ground and shatter.

Gabriella moved forward in morbid fascination to look inside.

Rocks. Only jagged chunks of brown rock. The crypt was empty. As they had said. On top of the stones lay a long, slender horn comprised of a metal that looked like gold, only it shown with an internal luminescence. Her father's horn. The one he had used to summons the end of days.

Now … it was up to her to finish the job he had started and usher in the final judgment.

"It is right that _you _are the one to retrieve it," Michael said, watching her expression carefully to gauge her mood. "If you feel comfortable doing so."

"Yeah … whatever," Gabriella said, automatically falling back on her default phrase, a crutch, whenever she was cast into an uncomfortable situation and didn't know what else to say. The other archangels looked horrified at her perceived rudeness. She realized she had just stepped into a hole, but Michael appeared unaffected by her inadvertent disrespect.

"It's … a human phrase," Uriel hastily added. "One in common use amongst her age group here on Earth. She meant no disrespect."

Gabriella breathed a sigh of relief and looked up to make eye contact with him, her forehead wrinkling slightly as she gave him a grateful look. Who'd ever have thought the too-formal Uriel would be the one to jump to her defense?

"Gabriella," Michael reminded her. "The horn? This lid is getting heavy."

Gabriella stepped up on the raised platform and hesitated, afraid to reach inside. Empty. It was empty. Only rocks. Gingerly, she reached in and touched the metal of the horn, curiously hot. Just like Uriel's skin had felt hot. The horn was filled with the same holy fire that filled the Unfallen. But her skin was not burned. Carefully wrapping her fingers around the slender tip, reverently she lifted it out.

It was then that she realized the rocks were not _naturally _dark brown. They were stained. Grey concrete stained with her father's blood. The blood he had shed to protect _her _and her mother, to pay in his own blood for their amnesty from the Father's wrath.

With a cry of horror, Gabriella yanked the horn out of the crypt, inadvertently banging it on the side and thwacking Jegudiel in the face, and stepped backwards to get away from it as quickly as possible, forgetting there was a two-foot step. Hyperventilating, she fell backwards.

"I've got you," Uriel said, grabbing her before she hit the ground and steadying her. "It's okay. I'm sorry. I should not have let them make you do that."

"How can we expect her to fulfill her duty if she can't even retrieve a simple horn?" Phanuel said disdainfully. "She's not even a full-blood. We should assign one amongst us to replace her."

"She's fifteen years old!" Uriel snarled, jumping to her defense. "You just made her reach into her father's crypt! What did you _expect _to happen?"

"Says the one who led the charge to stand by and do nothing as he died," Phanuel said, anger lacing his voice. "Did you tell her _that, _brother? That you held her mother back with her still in the womb and made her watch the Grigori scum murder her father?"

"I didn't see _you _jumping to his defense, _either, _brother!" Uriel snarled. "Any of you. Not even you, Michael! Every single one of you obeyed. So don't throw that guilt on _me!_ At least I've spent the last fifteen years of my life trying to make it up to them!"

"STOP!" Gabriella shouted, her grief transforming into the much more useful emotion of anger. "Just … stop! Please! Haven't you guys learned that this isn't the way to get things done? Shit! What is WRONG with you guys! What are you all? Fucking stupid or something?"

A low 'thrum' vibrated though the concrete walls of the basement room, including the rebar-laced concrete inside her father's crypt. The sound of metal resonating in harmonic resonance with the power of the void. The lights flickered and then resumed their normal brightness.

Phanuel's mouth dropped to the ground.

"It appears our littlest archangel has inherited a modicum of her mother's gift," Michael said, not looking at all surprised.

"You _knew!"_ the other brothers turned to him suddenly and accused.

"I suspected," Michael said, looking very much like an eagle who had just captured a nice, fat salmon from the river. "Unfortunately, Gabriella inherited our brother's even tempered disposition. She was always too perfect a child to tantrum like normal human children do or I would have known for sure a long time ago."

Gabriella had backed up until she couldn't back up any more. She realized she had backed Uriel against the wall, blocking his view with her wings. She tucked them against her back so she wouldn't thwack him with them and was surprised to feel a reassuring hand reach over them to rest upon her shoulder.

"Ignore them," Uriel said, his voice reassuring and low. "They don't understand what it's like to live amongst the humans. Let's just get this over with and then we can do what _you _want to do."

Gabriella turned to look at him, her heart doing a little pitter-patter as she realized his eyes had turned a deep, emerald green. What _she _wanted to do? Uriel nodded, as though reading her thoughts. Yes, what _she _wanted to do.

Gabriella did what she had seen her mother do many times when she was upset, or angry, or sad, to get control of her emotions and take charge of the situation. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and calmed herself, schooling her face into an even _more _unreadable expression than her emotionally retarded Unfallen uncles.

The shoulders slumped slightly. One toe scuffed the blue canvas sneaker into the ground. Gabriella put on her favorite sullen expression as though she were putting on a mask and copped her best 'attitude.'

"Whatever," Gabriella said. "Listen … Uriel and I are gonna blow this joint. I got this horn to blow. The rest of you … have a nice life."

Taking Uriel's hand and nodding to him, she placed her trust into his hands. In a heartbeat, he carried the both of them 'between.'

Blinding white light assailed her eyes. Sunshine and stars. The smell of honeysuckle and roses. Heavenly choirs singing in the background while birds chirped along. An enormous stone gate with an iron fence that looked like someone had twisted it into a pretzel.

"Welcome to heaven," Uriel said, holding her hand and helping her keep her balance as she adjusted to the feeling of not being entirely corporeal.

Her heart leaped in her chest as he gave her a small, rare smile. The first she had ever seen him give in the entire fifteen years she had known him. The hand which held hers was warm. Filled with holy fire and … something else. Uriel was proud to show her the garden he had begun to tell her about only weeks ago. He kept her hand, tugging her along the path with an eagerness she hadn't seen the entire time she'd known him. He looked … like a little boy.

Gabriella looked around as they walked down the flagstone pathway, the initial shock quickly wearing off. With her free hand, she clutched the horn against her chest, wondering what it had been like for her father to grow up here. Her naturally cynical mind, trained by a lifetime with her mother and the Fallen to be cynical of all things supernatural, began to pick apart what she was _really _seeing.

"Are you sure we're not in Detroit?" Gabriella finally asked. "And what the hell is that awful vibration?"


	208. Chapter 207

Chapter 207

"I'll wait three hours," Thamuz said, arranging the crates containing Talorc. "Then launch my little diversion."

"Will they let you bring Brudei and Talorc into the Keep with you?" Audrey asked.

"No," Thamuz said. "I'll hide them in the crevasse near the left side of the Keep. You can lead them in once you pry open the door. When you're interred, the Father strips you of everything. Including your memory. But we Grigori learned to get around that little nastiness a long time ago."

The Grigori dragon held out his paw and made a series of gestures, bringing thumb and forefinger together, and then thumb and other fingers, and then touching different parts of his body. She had noticed the Grigori possessed these odd little gestures before, but never thought anything of them.

"What are you doing?" Audrey asked.

"Muscle memory," Thamuz said. "It's similar to hypnosis. You store memory triggers in your muscles that override normal thought processes. Whatever the Father does to make you forget, it's designed to be reversible. He blocks the neural pathway to the memory, but if you trigger muscle memory, it leaps right over the block. We've trained ourselves to automatically go through all the triggers on a regular basis to make sure nobody is messing with our minds."

"That's … pretty useful," Audrey said, wondering what triggers Gabriel was using to hang onto his memory of her. She could still feel her connection to him, although it usually felt far away. Sometimes, it ebbed, but whenever she went to his crypt or spoke to him, the connection felt more secure. Now that they were just outside the valley where Sheol resided, she could already feel the connection getting stronger.

"Muscle memory isn't the only useful trigger," Thamuz said. "Taste. Scent. Touch. Those senses are older and much more primitive than the ability to see and think. Gabriel likely won't remember the _sight _of you right away_, _but he'll remember your scent. Just don't douse yourself in perfume. Perfume contains artificial pheromones. It might interfere with his ability to recognize you."

"Never wear it," Audrey said. "Got out of the habit after the apocalypse and never got back into it. Seems frivolous now."

"Scent," Azrael said, his nostrils instinctively flaring. "It's the only sense besides sight I can use without worrying about killing whoever I'm speaking to. I don't know what punishment the Father is making him reenact, but you'll have to get very close for your scent to override whatever moment it is the Father is making him relive. And touch. You will need to touch him in a way that is familiar to him to help him break through the hallucination."

"You sound like you've been through this before?" Audrey asked.

"Not me," Azrael said, his expression taking on the dark severity he often had when the soul he was reaping was an evildoer. "When Lucifer and his men were interred to the Keep, the Father forced us to watch our brothers go through a complete cycle of torment to make us fear his wrath. Lucifer's punishment was the worst. The Father simply locked him in a room with Asmodeus and Amitea and let them tear him apart as many times as they wished."

"That's awful!" Audrey said, shuddering at the memory of what they had done to Gabriel before he had died. "Why didn't you intervene?"

"We were all terrified of his wrath," Azrael said. "And convinced as to the righteousness of whatever line of reasoning he fed us. We were so afraid of _them…" _ Azreal said, pointing to Thamuz, "that we bought it hook, line and sinker."

"Standard megalomaniacal dinosaur-crap," Thamuz said, twitching his tail like a cat who's annoyed at a clumsy child attempting to pat it. "Keep them ignorant. Brainwash them about loyalty and patriotism. Wave a banner. And then keep them so fearful of some distant enemy that they never question anything."

"Tea, anyone?" Audrey asked sarcastically.

"Just be careful when you first approach him," Azrael said. "He probably won't recognize you. If he even notices you at all. The hallucinations are vivid. The rumor on the street is that killing _you _is the moment the Father is forcing him to relive over and over again. He didn't know you from a hole in the head when he accidentally killed you. He won't know you now."

"But …" Audrey said. "I can _feel _him. Here." She put her hand over her heart.

"Thankfully," Thamus said, "we Grigori were spared the indignity of punishment. The continuing choice of staying in the Keep with our mates, or leaving to search for our children, was punishment enough. Whenever one of us would escape, we'd search near and far. Including the void. And then we'd give up and come back because we missed our mates. Little did we know our offspring had been shattered into fragments and kept just over the wall. Just out of reach."

Bridei reared up onto his rear paws, putting one furry paw up on his sire's haunches, his nose twitching as his long, furry ears turned this way and that.

"You've found some of us, father," the main Bridei fragment said. "Don't worry. We'll find the others. And my children and grandchildren." Bridei's other soul-fragment animals squeaked and chattered agreement.

"You're mother is going to be so happy we found you," Thamuz said, his skin taking on a purplish tinge that Audrey associated with a dragon having a case of the 'blues' as he pulled rabbit-Bridei into an embrace. Tears sprang to his eyes. "Just … be prepared that she might not take it very well … your current condition. She's going to need time to adjust."

"Audrey," Azrael said, his head tilted as though listening to a distant sound. "They're looking for me. It's time to go."

Audrey silently pulled off the long, black-tiered Romani gypsy skirt she had taken to wearing the past fifteen years, revealing the too-short plaid skirt she had been wearing the day the apocalypse had struck. It had been patched and the seams let out, but otherwise it still fit. If having your butt-cheeks hang out the back as you walked could have ever been considered 'fitting.' Fishnet thigh-high stockings covered the tattoos on her legs, while she wore a skin-tight contrasting long-sleeved shirt underneath her leather bustier to hide the tattoos on her arms and chest while still giving the impression of promiscuousness. She slipped the black scarf she used as a khimar off her head and draped it around her neck as ornamentation, fluffing out her hair.

"Don't forget your face," Thamuz reminded her.

"Got it," Audrey said. She reached into the front pocket of the backpack she had brought with her and pulled out a bag of makeup. Using the little mirror, she thickly smeared several layers of foundation over her skin so that the tattoos became blurry, and then layered on garish layers of colored eyeshadow, blush, eye liner and lipstick to complete the look.

"Here," Thamuz said, reaching down to touch the soil under his paws and reaching over to smear dirt on her face and clothing. "You've just died in a volcanic eruption. They won't expect you to look pretty."

"You look appropriately dead," Azrael said. "It's not common knowledge I can contain my power in limited circumstances. They'll assume the problem is at _their _end when they can't read your mind, but you'll need to keep your thoughts shielded at all times."

"Let's do this," Audrey said, nodding that she understood. She held out her hand, waiting for Azrael to give her the signal that it was now safe to touch him. The familiar mix of trepidation and warmth spread through her body as the Angel of Death gently encircled her hand with his as he did when he was reaping a soul.

Azrael took her 'between' the last little bit from where they had stashed Thamuz and the Grigori children-fragments and the gates of Sheol. She was surprised to see there was a line thousands of people long waiting to get inside the gates. Accompanying each soul were black-winged creatures that, if they had a shape at all, vaguely resembled bat-winged cherubs. Death spirits. An enormous stone wall hundreds of feet high stretched on both sides of the valley as far as the eye could see. Straight ahead lay the largest set of doors stretching as high as the wall went that Audrey had ever seen. Cut into one of the big doors was a tiny doorway, barely large enough for one person to walk through at a time, heavily guarded. Greenish-grey vapors wafted up above where the wall met the roiling, sunless sky.

"Is there always a line?" Audrey asked, her brow scrunching up with confusion. The wall and gate was expected. As were the vapors and darkness. The line … was not.

"Yellowstone has finally erupted," Azrael said. "We were ready for it. Every available death-spirit has been deployed to shepherd the souls of those too foolish to heed the Savior's prophecy where they belong so none are lost to the void."

"That means …" Audrey said, her voice trailing off. She knew when she had come that, if she didn't succeed, Gabriella would lose _both _parents. But she was a young woman now. Largely self-reliant. Surrounded by the uncle and family who had adopted her, her military unit, and friends who loved her. Her daughter had stopped needing her in her capacity as nurturer several years ago. As for confidante … Audrey hoped Uriel would honor her dying wish if she didn't make it and be the confidante Gabriella needed to help her make up for the loss of her mother.

Perhaps it had been Machiavellian of her, but Audrey had shamelessly manipulated his guilt and love for _her _to get him to agree to continue guiding Gabriella once she was gone. When she had shared one of her most intimate memories with him, Audrey had caught a glimpse into Uriel's soul. He had changed. Just as Gabriel had changed. Audrey now felt certain Uriel would do his best to support Gabriella the way that she had asked.

It was too bad Uriel was her uncle…

Although, then again, the Grigori had technically married their aunts/half-sisters. Lucifer, their father, was the brother of their wives, while the Mother, who had breathed the life-spark into them, was also their wives' mother. The angels spanned all the races that now existed on earth, so the connection which bound them all together appeared to be something other than pure genetics. Audrey wondered if the same prohibitions against close inter-familial relationships existed for immortals as for humans?

In fact, since the same Father and Mother had created _humans _as had created angels, did that mean Gabriel was also her brother? Great-great-great-umpteenth grand-uncle?

Weird.

Didn't Egyptian pharaohs always marry their sisters or something? Or was that Greek gods marrying each other after their father ate them? Abraham marrying his half-sister? Lot having sex with and impregnating both of his daughters? Blech! That last one was definitely mega-creepy. If Uriel and Gabriella were born fourteen billion years apart, did it even matter? Audrey decided it was too convoluted to think about and pushed the train of thought out of her mind.

More death-spirits appeared with human souls and got into line behind them. Audrey looked around at those waiting to enter Sheol. They all looked scared.

"When we get to the gates," Azrael said, his voice low enough the others couldn't hear, "they're going to sense something's amiss because they can't pull up your sins. You will feel dead to them because you already died once and your soul passed through the void, but they will also sense you are still alive. It will confuse them. You're a paradox."

"So how do I convince them I'm bad news and let me pass?" Audrey asked.

An expression of genuine humor lit up Azrael's features, causing the stern countenance most people associated with the Angel of Death to disappear and revealing the softer, more sensitive side Audrey had come to know.

"The same way you _always _get people to back off," Azrael said. "The brothers that guard Sheol are every bit as arrogant as your husband was when you first met them. They will leap to automatic assumptions about who you are based upon your appearance. Let them. Give it to them with both barrels, but make sure you don't channel any holy blasphemy while you're doing it or it will give you away."

The line moved up further.

"Azrael!" one of the angels guarding the gate called, gesturing for them to move forward. "We didn't see you all the way back there! Come! You're too important to make wait."

"Stay focused," Azrael murmured, giving her hand a small squeeze as they moved up to the enormous door which dwarfed their presence.

"Munkar," Azreal greeted. "Nakir. It's been a while."

"Who do we have here," the first of the angels asked, Munkar, scrutinizing Audrey. "Must be a really bad one if they sent _you _for her."

"She's destined to the inner circle," Azrael said, towering over Audrey in a menacing manner as though he were threatening her to behave. "Level seventeen. Closest to the Keep."

"I don't have anyone slated for that realm on my checklist," the second angel said, Nakir.

"I don't _reap _the ones on the list," Azrael said, his black eyes glittering with intense satisfaction. "I reap the ones that become a problem. This one is a problem."

"Let me see," Nakir said, reaching out to touch her forehead. "I'm not reading anything on her. Hey … this one's still warm. Are you sure she's dead."

"Fuck you, motherfucker!" Audrey snapped, giving him her best leer. "Get your fucking hands off of me, you creep. I demand you take me home." She did her best pouty-teenager act. It may have been almost eighteen years since her parents had been alive, but she still remembered how to cop an attitude that would have set Gabriella off on a fit of giggles.

Azrael wordlessly lifted his hand, showing where he held Audrey's hand, and give Nakir a knowing grin.

"Yeah … stupid question," Nakir said, unconsciously stepping back so that _he _wasn't the one inadvertently touching the Angel of Death, who's mere touch was deadly. "Sorry. It's been a rough day."

"Right now we're so busy," Munkar said, "that she's going to have to just find her own way to where she's supposed to go. Every available angel has been reassigned to manage the descent of the saints from the garden. This place is a zoo."

"I'm just the errand boy," Azrael said. "This one is bad news. What you do with her after I turn her over to you is _your _responsibility. Don't blame me if all hell breaks loose the minute I'm gone."

Audrey held back on her urge to crack up laughing. If things went as planned, that was _exactly _what was going to happen.

"Get inside," Munkar said. "What's her name?"

"Audrey," Azrael said. "Just Audrey."

"Audrey," Munkar said, scribbling down the name on his list. "Okay, missy. Time to go inside."

Azrael gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, and then let go of her hand, giving her a nudge through the door. His expression was intense as she stepped through the gates of Sheol and was swallowed up by the stream of human refuse that was streaming through the gates.

Fear rose in her gut as she was shoved through first a second, then third, then fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh set of gates, the teaming mass of humanity shoving her through before she could get her bearings. The story Seraphina had told her in Santa Fe came back to her, of Princess Innana pounding on seven separate sets of gates to gain entrance to Hell. Audrey had just been shoved through as though it were nothing. It appeared the Father had become much less picky about who he confined to Sheol these days.

The city closed in around her. Tall, dilapidated buildings leaned precariously over narrow, cobblestone streets meant for walking. The overwhelming stench of brimstone and decay assaulted her nostrils. As she moved further into the city and the crowd of newcomers began to dissipate into the existing residents, she noticed human predators tugging aside the newcomers and molesting them, usually looking for contraband, supplies, or simply to assert their domination.

"Mother," Audrey said, glancing down at the compass rose on her hand and making sure she was headed in the right direction. "I sure hope you were right about my guide."

She'd been spotted. Behind her, a group of seven rough-looking men, one with rotted teeth, began to taunt and cat-call. The compass rose would lead her in the right direction, but only a guide familiar with the city could help her evade the worst of the hazards.

"Mother?" Audrey called.


	209. Chapter 208

Chapter 208

"That's it?" Gabriella asked, looking down at the horn she had just blown with disappointment. "Just … toot? And we're done?"

"I … guess," Uriel said, his expression hovering someplace between his customary unreadable one and confusion. "Did you … uh … do it right?"

"How the hell do I know?" Gabriella scowled. "It's not like anyone ever told me what to do!"

They looked at the gate to that portion of the garden where the souls of humans existed. It was forbidden for the angels to go inside. Only the so-called higher orders of heavenly beings were allowed to tend the souls of the 'saints,' humans allowed entrance into the garden by virtue of having met the Father's strict admission mandates. Or an edict of amnesty.

Nothing... The gate sat there, closed, just as it had been when they had first arrived.

"Blow it again," Uriel suggested. "Maybe if you … I don't know … put your heart and soul into it this time?"

"Like I didn't put my heart and soul into it the _last _time I blew it!" Gabriella snapped.

"It's just that … um," Uriel said, shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to another. "When you blew it the last time, it sounded more like you stepped on a duck than the night your father blew it to signal the end of days for the apocalypse."

"Oh," Gabriella said. "Well … it's not like I was around back then, so I wouldn't know. So … how –_do-_ I make it sound like when my fatherblew it?"

"Like…" Uriel said, pausing as though searching his memory. "It felt as though the foundations of heaven itself moved. Kind of like when you got angry at my brothers a little while ago and channeled your mothers' gift to vibrate the walls. Only it was a lot stronger. It was a terrible, deep sound you could feel resonating down to the core of your bone marrow."

"I'll … uh … try?" Gabriella said. She lifted the slender horn to her lips, extending its significant length horizontal to the ground using both hands to stabilize it, and blew with all of her might.

"Quaaaaackkkkk…." the horn went with an indignant little whistle that sounded exactly as Uriel had _said _it sounded. Like somebody had stepped on a duck.

The gate didn't budge.

"Um," Uriel said uncomfortably. "I don't think that was it."

A small, black face peered through the bars.

"Hello," the little girl said, a beautiful white smile lighting up her ebony skin. "Are you having a spot of trouble with that?"

"No," Gabriella said, slouching with mortification. "I've got it."

"Yes," Uriel interrupted. "Could you please go get somebody in charge so we can open this gate?"

"I'm in charge," the little girl said. "At least … in charge of helping _you_. You're Gabriella … Gabriel's daughter. Right?"

"How did you know?" Gabriella asked.

"We've been expecting you," the little girl said. "I'm Seraphina. A friend of your father's. Gabriel promised me that someday I could help Jesus, so the others said I could be the one to help you open the gate."

"You knew my father?" Gabriella asked.

"I'm from Santa Fe," Seraphina said, grabbing one of the climbing wisteria vines that grew along the stone wall next to the gate and agilely scaling the wall like a little monkey. She dropped effortlessly to the ground, with a practiced motion that indicated escaping was something she did often. "Your father was in the hospital at the same time as me. The day he got shot. I was too sick to save, but he asked Azrael to make himself visible when he escorted me here so my big brother would be okay with it. Now … it's time to return the favor."

"Azrael came for you personally?" Uriel asked.

"He's very nice," Seraphina said, her sunny smile brighter than the discolored sunlight that lit up the garden. "I like him. A lot. He took me right to my mama so I wasn't scared."

Gabriella noticed the way Uriel's expression of wariness turned into one of warmth. She was so used to Uncle Azrael flitting in and out of their lives that she had never given the significance of what soul he reaped much thought other than the fact her friends were scared shitless of him. She'd accidentally run into his arms a few times as a toddler before he was ready and been jolted out of her body. It was a peculiar experience to suddenly realize you were still standing while your body had just dropped to the floor like a piece of clothing you had shed and tossed aside. Uncle Azrael would just smile and tell her it wasn't her time and make her pick up her heavy body and put it right back on. Like when her mom made her don a sweater.

"Azrael only comes for the worst of the worst." Uriel whispered to her. "Or the most pure souls of all. Saints even amongst the saints. Perhaps she can help us?"

"Uh…" Gabriella said, a mixture of sullen irritation and embarrassment making her face burn hot. "We don't know … um … what we're doing. This thing didn't come with an instruction manual." She waved the horn out in front of her as though it were a stick.

"To open _this _gate," Seraphina said, "you have to picture the most beautiful, happiest thought you can imagine. A single moment when you feel all your hopes and dreams are there for the taking. And then … blow it with all of your might, as though you were blowing out your birthday candles and making a wish so it might come true. Only channel the happy memory through the horn so the gate will respond."

"That's it?" Uriel asked, twitching his reddish wings with surprise. "If that's all there was to it, then why hasn't anyone done it before?"

"Only Gabriel had whatever it was that was needed to open the gate," Seraphina said with a shrug, "which is why most of us just started climbing the fence and choosing rebirth once the Father made him die. If you can't open it, it's no big deal. The rest of us will just help each other over the wall. The other angels can help us descend."

"But won't that be … difficult?" Uriel asked, his voice laced with concern. "I've heard that descent is very … painful."

"Azrael's wife knows how to help us make the transition without too much discomfort," Seraphina said with a casual shrug. "But we figured we'd give Gabriel's daughter a chance to blow the horn … in his honor. If she can't open the gates, it's no big deal. The Book of Revelations only says a horn will blow, not anything about the gate opening afterwards. You already _did_ that. It's not like any of us are going to sit around waiting for Godot now that we've got our memories back."

"A happy memory?" Gabriella asked. For most of her life, she'd been relatively content. As happy as a sensitive, moody, slightly awkward child can be who had a deceased father she'd never met and a mother who still grieved over his loss. She had lots of little memories of feeling happy when an uncle or disciple showed up and gave her a trinket, but she didn't think those memories fit the description Seraphina described. Still stinging from the skepticism the other archangels back in her father's crypt, Gabriella felt she had something to prove.

"What is your hearts' desire?" Seraphina asked. "Think of it, and then wish for it with all of your heart as you blow your horn."

"Think, Gabriella," Uriel said, turning to face her and placing both of his hands upon her shoulders. His normally stern face softened as his eyes shifted from a murky blue-grey to a deep, emerald green, accentuated by his auburn hair. "What is the happiest thought you can think of?"

Thought. Happy thoughts. Several came to mind, but no single one felt right for the occasion. She wished her father would be freed so her mother wouldn't cry anymore. That brought anger … at the injustice of how he'd been treated … not happiness. She wished the brothers would get along, both Fallen and Unfallen. That brought annoyance, along with the strong urge to slap them. She wished the heavenly Father would stop being such a dick and get a life. That just made her want to throttle somebody.

She wished… She wished… She wished…

Her nostrils flared at Uriel's close proximity. Damn! He smelled so good! The scent of a strong male made her feel … feel … feel. The impulse overtook her. Bending forward, she leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

Uriel's wings flapped in surprise. After a moment of hesitation, he responded, his hands reaching out to gently cradle her cheeks as he realized what wish it was she had been carrying in her heart and helped her manifest it into reality.

A girls' first kiss…

Fire blossomed in her heart. In that millisecond, Gabriella finally understood what emotion was needed to open the gates of heaven.

"I'm ready," she whispered, searching Uriel's beautiful emerald green eyes. He nodded, his hands trembling as he removed them from her cheeks and stepped back. She lifted the horn once more to her lips and blew.

The sound was high and pure, with dozens of undertones like an entire heavenly chorus singing the most beautiful song that had ever existed. Tears sprang into her eyes as she blew, so beautiful was the sound of love and hope and joy transformed into pure sound by the heavenly horn of judgment.

The iron in the gates resonated in response, as though they were strings on a gigantic harp. The latch on the gate gave a soft 'click' and swung open of its own volition.

"See," Seraphina said with an enormous smile that would probably power the state of Texas for a month. "Straight from the heart. Just like your father. I'm glad we waited."

Behind her, hundreds of thousands of people began to line up. Some wore clothing made of animal hides, although not many. A couple of people didn't even look fully human, but rather some earlier version of humanity which had long since become extinct. Some wore simple linen shifts from neolithic times. Others wore attire from different times in history, ranging from biblical-inspired robes to modern denims. As the people streamed past the gate, Gabriella stared awkwardly at the ground, embarrassed. Had she _really _just kissed her uncle?

"Gabriella?" someone called. A couple came hesitantly towards her. A man and a woman. The woman looked just like her … mother?

No pictures existed of her grandparents. According to her mother, they had been in the process of moving when the apocalypse had stranded them at the Paradise Diner. Her mom had never been able to find the moving van to retrieve any momentos of her childhood. And yet … Gabriella just _knew _these were her grandparents. The man … his facial features looked nothing like her mother, but when she looked into his dark blue eyes, she realized where her mom had inherited them from.

"Grandmother?" Gabriella asked. "Grandsire?"

"We're very pleased to finally meet you," Sandra Anderson said, the woman who's name Gabriella bore as a middle name.

"We're your grandparents," Howard Anderson said. "On your mothers' side."

"Hello," Gabriella said hesitantly, tucking her wings in close to her back and unconsciously slouching as she realized she towered over _them _as much as her mother. It had never occurred to her when she had begun this journey today that it would mean she'd gain additional members of her family. Her _real _family. Not just extended family who'd taken her in after her Father had died.

"You're as beautiful as we imagined you would be," Sandra said, reaching out to take her hand and clasp it between both of hers.

Gabriella twitched her wings in surprise. Beautiful? Nobody had ever described her as beautiful. Usually, when others of her kind spoke of her, they spoke of how much she resembled her father. Crueler members of the community often called her a tomboy, or even commented she had 'mannish' features due to her size.

"We chose to descend so we'd get to meet you," Howard said. "We wanted the chance to get to know our grandchild."

"You waited for … me?" Gabriella asked with surprise.

"Of course," Sandra said. "_And _your mother. We realized after we died that we'd made a mess of our lives. But it was too late to go back and change things. We'd hoped … we wanted the chance to let your mother see we'd learned from our mistakes and could do things right."

"A noble sentiment," Uriel said softly. "Everybody deserves at least one second chance. If they're sorry and they really mean it."

Gabriella knew he referred not only to her grandparents, but also to himself. How was it the man she had grown up being taught to hate had become so important to her?

"Come!" Seraphina called, taking Sandra and Harold's hands and tugging them along. "This isn't the only stop Gabriella has to make today! You're distracting her! You can talk later … _after_ you've solidified back into your mortal shell."

"We'll see you back on Earth?" Sandra asked, more of a question than a statement.

"I guess," Gabriella said, not certain how she felt about suddenly having grandparents. She'd never _had _grandparents before. At least not _nice _ones. Neither the Father nor the Mother really counted, since she'd never met them and most people feared them. From what she'd gathered from her mother, her relationship with her _own _parents had been less-than-stellar.

"Remember…" Seraphina called out, shepherding the last of the soon-to-be-incarnate 'saints' of heaven down the path towards the precipice to descend. "It's what's in your heart that counts when you blow your horn!"

The last 'saint' disappeared around the corner of the path, leaving her and Uriel there alone. Gabriella froze, not sure what to do next.

"And a little child shall lead them," Uriel said softly, reaching out to take her hand. "Isaiah 11:6. I never understood what that verse in the book of the Fathers' law meant before now. Now … I understand. Come … we have another gate to open."

Gabriella looked down at the large, strong hand that held hers. Uriel looked hesitant, as though not certain what he was doing was the right thing to do. Color rose to her cheeks as she realized what she had just done.

"I'm sorry," Gabriella stammered, suddenly taking an intense interest in the hole that had developed in the toe of one of her canvas sneakers. "I made you … sin."

"Michael is in charge at the moment," Uriel said gently. "He said that so long as he is in charge, love shall never be a sin."

Gabriella looked up. Up into his beautiful, emerald-green eyes. Love? Was he referring to the emotion she'd just realized she bore for _him_? Or were her feelings not entirely one-sided? Up until this morning, as far as she knew, her uncle's affections had leaned towards her _mother._ Not her. Gabriella knew she was merely the pesky assignment he'd been saddled with by Michael. Uriel's job was to help her do _her _job. Was he only doing his job?

Probably. The gate had needed opening, and she had needed to feel a certain emotion to make it open. He'd helped her get the job done as he'd been assigned to do. No more.

"What happens next?" Gabriella asked, retreating behind her most unreadable expression to hide her hurt feelings. She felt … stupid.

"Yesua is not ready to deal with the souls in Sheol yet," Uriel said. "We'll deal with them once Yesua figures out where to send the ones he judges deserve a second chance. But … there is another gate that I _would _like to see you open. Michael said he doesn't think it will work, but he doesn't object if you give it a try."

"He knows?" Gabriella asked, feeling a bit let down. All this time she'd been viewing Uriel as her co-conspirator when, in reality, he'd just been doing his job.

"Either it's supposed to work," Uriel said. "So it will. Or it's _not _supposed to work. So it won't. There's no harm in trying."

"Take me there," Gabriella asked, daring to look up hopefully into his eyes. Her father. She had to try. "Please."

"As you wish," Uriel said. Gently squeezing her hand, he carried them both 'between' the dimensions to the gates of Sheol.


	210. Chapter 209

Chapter 209

"Looks like we've got a new one," the one with rotted teeth sneered, swaggering as he walked. "Here … kitty kitty kitty. We just want to pat a little pussy."

The fat one smooched kissing noises at her while the others chattered like a pack of rats gnashing their teeth at a garbage truck.

"Back off," Audrey warned, her anger rising in her veins. She clamped a lid on it. Azrael had warned her not to use her power until she was at the Keep or she might tip off the guardians someone was here who didn't _belong _here. They had already wasted one of her precious hours waiting to get through the line at the gate. If she didn't get to the rim of the pit which contained the Keep before Thamuz engineered his little distraction, the guardian of the Keep might spot her parachuting down the sheer cliff face.

"Just one kiss," the tall gangly one wearing some sort of medieval peasant garb begged with a feral grin. "You be nice to _us, _and we'll be nice to you."

"Real nice," a fourth one sneered, grabbing at his crotch.

It had been a long time since Audrey had been forced to defend herself. The Fallen enforced the law in the cities they ruled with zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. Either you towed the mark. You were expelled. Or you were dealt with … severely. With an assortment of angels, both Fallen and Unfallen, perpetually hovering around her, especially the ever-present Uriel, no one had _dared _lay a hand on her in a very long time.

It was the first time Audrey realized she _missed _having her ever-present babysitter. She made a mental note to express her appreciation for Uriel's fifteen years of service, despite her sniping and biting remarks. _If _she survived…

"Piss off," Audrey hissed, sliding her backpack off her back and letting it hit the ground. She assumed the fighting stance Gabriel had taught her … arms flared at her sides … legs shoulder length apart. Ready to move in any direction. She casually slid her hand over to her hip to feel for the sharp, unearthly blade Gabriel had left her with. Because Azrael had been the one to escort her in, the gatekeepers hadn't frisked her like the other recent inmates.

"Ooooh," the one with rotted teeth sneered with a grin. "This pretty pussy has claws." The others began to circle around her.

"Mortal weapons won't work here," the tall, gangly one chuckled in a sound that sounded almost like the croak of a frog.

"Yeah," a short, scrawny one seconded like the echo of a super-villain sidekick. "We're already dead."

All around her, dirty, fearful looking characters faded into alleys and doorways, most with apologetic expressions upon their faces. The most palpable emotion in Sheol was fear. Fear … and hatred. No one dared intervene.

"Any time now, Mother," Audrey muttered under her breath.

The seven ruffians rushed at her, reaching to tug at her skirt and twist her breast as they chattered like hyenas circling a kill. Audrey slashed at them with Gabriel's blade. The ruffians yowled with surprise when the blade actually made contact with not-quite-corporeal flesh, hacking chunks of flesh out of their grasping limbs.

"You shall not molest the Prophet of the Savior," Audrey snarled, slashing the one with rotted teeth with Gabriel's unearthly blade. "Or I shall cast your soul straight into the void."

"This one's alive!" the rot-toothed leader yowled, holding his arm where Audrey had just sliced almost to the bone. "She's got an angelic blade!"

"Hey!" a voice shouted. "Get the heck out of here you hoodlums!"

Audrey glanced up to see Shallurum. Her surrogate husband's great-grandson come to guide her.

"Thank you, Mother," Audrey said, slashing at one last hoodlum for good measure.

"I knew you would come," Shallurum said, coming up to shake her hand. "Nobody believed me when I told them you would come for him. But I _knew _you wouldn't just leave him there."

Audrey looked up at her guide. Although not as tall as his full-blood grandsire or winged Nephilim sire and grand-sire, Shallurum still towered head-and-shoulders above the average human. The decay of undead flesh, neither alive nor dead, was gone. She hadn't noticed it when he'd still been alive because of the sores caused by interment alive in Sheol, but Shallurum strongly resembled his great-grandsire patriarch. Belaziel.

"Gabriel's not out yet," Audrey said. "Can you guide me to the edge of the pit?"

As she spoke, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her long, black Romani skirt and pulled it over her too-short one. She fiddled with the khimar, undecided whether it was appropriate to wear now that she was going for her husband, and decided to wear it. No point in inviting more unwanted male attention.

"It's a long way down," Shallurum warned. "Only a creature with wings can scale the walls and approach the Keep."

"I come prepared," Audrey said, picking up her backpack off the ground and hoisting it back onto her shoulders. "You just get me there. I'll do the rest."

"This way," Shallurum said, leading her off the main street and down through a series of sheltered allies. "We don't want word to get out that another live one has infiltrated Sheol. Those hoodlums are known for stirring up trouble. No one will believe them."

"Belaziel sends his love," Audrey said. "He said when Yesua finally gets his act together and begins to free those he judges worthy of a second chance, he will sponsor your entire family in his city. That seems to be the direction they're leaning right now. At least as far as the first wave of refugees goes. The ones they're certain won't disrupt the New Kingdom Yesua is trying to build."

"I assumed he would," Shallurum said, leading her to where a small group of people waited outside a cluster of reasonably well-kept houses. At least by the standards of Sheol. "We heard you married him after your mate was killed. Grandsire was devastated when his own wife unexpectedly died. I'm glad you found each other."

"Not exactly … married," Audrey said, turning toward the woman her vision had showed her was Shallurum's wife. "More … companionship. We are unmated. Is this your wife?"

Audrey deftly changed the subject and held out her hand to greet Shallurum's wife. Her peculiar relationship with her not-quite-surrogate-husband was difficult to explain. Now that she was going for her _real _husband, she did not wish to discuss the modern notion of 'just friends' to someone from 4,500 BCE.

"Why … yes," Shallurum said, a pleased expression lighting up his face. "You seem to know what's about to happen even before it does. Has the Mother sent you a vision?"

"Yes," Audrey said. "Last night. She said you would greet me after I encountered these men. Although the dream only showed four, not seven. Prophecy is not an exact science."

Shallurum introduced Audrey to his wife, his children, and members of his community who he'd baptized once he'd gotten back in preparation for the day Yesua would begin the final judgment. Just as Audrey had foreseen in her vision.

"I'm running behind," Audrey said, looking at her watch. "If I don't get to the edge of the pit in another hour and forty-five minutes, I'm going to miss my diversion."

"Diversion?" Shallurum asked.

"One of the Grigori sires is going to turn himself in," Audrey said. "It should keep the guardian Powers occupied while they strip him of his belongings and force him to undergo the memory-wiping procedure. I need to act while they're distracted."

Shallurum gestured to her to follow him down a series of labyrinthean alleys and roads, avoiding the main road as much as possible to avoid the riffraff who preyed upon newcomers to the city. With so many casualties caused by the eruption of the Supervolcano back on Earth, they barely aroused any notice.

"Been quiet in here ever since the heavenly host left," Shallurum said as he led her through the gloomy city. "Ironic … isn't it? My human mother-in-law, who always harped on me so much it made the heavenly host seem tame in comparison, got an all expenses paid ticket into the garden while we all got sent here."

"Blah blah blah," Audrey said with a smile. "Talk about the same old sins…"

They both cracked up laughing as they walked towards the next gate, eliciting curious stares from the other inmates. Laughter … in hell. Who'd have thought?


	211. Chapter 210

Chapter 210

As had happened with the first seven gates, the gateway to the eighth circle of Sheol was unguarded. The line of casualties being herded into the city caused by the Yellowstone eruption forced them through the gateway so fast Audrey had little time to even inspect it.

"I was expecting to have to take off a layer of clothing at each gate," Audrey said. "I came prepared with extra layers of clothes so I don't greet my husband stark naked."

"That's the last six rings and then the Keep itself," Shallurum said. "The outer rings were added _after_ the Father's sister came barging in here like gangbusters to free one of her human lovers after he'd been sentenced here for bad behavior. Caused quite a stir. Not only did she tick off the _Father, _but rumor has it that somehow she also managed to tick off the _Mother, _as well_._ They wanted to teach her a lesson about humility. It was one of the few times we ever saw the two deities agree."

The earth shuddered beneath their feet. A few slate shingles slipped off of roofs of crooked buildings and shattered on the cobblestones below.

"What was that?" Audrey asked.

"Ever since the apocalypse," Shallurum said, "the tremors have been getting worse and worse. Especially around the Keep. The three innermost rings of the city have been nearly been completely flattened by tremors."

Shallurum diligently led her through three more rings of the city until they came to the twelfth gate.

"I thought there were only nine layers of Sheol?" Audrey asked.

"You must be talking about that long poem by Dante a lot of newcomers quote when they first arrive," Shallurum said. "First there was just the Keep. It's designed to incarcerate ascended beings who no prison can contain. And then the Father added the inner circle to contain _us._ The pesky offspring of the Fallen who kept trying to spring our sires. Everything else has been added over the years as Earth's population grew. Most growth occurred after the Savior cut an agreement to inter souls the Father previously just tossed into the void for destruction. Especially the last couple of hundred years."

"Earths' population exploded the last few centuries," Audrey said. "That's probably why."

"How are you planning on getting past the guard?" Shallurum said, pointing towards a strange looking creature that had wings like an angel, but the torso of a lion. "Powers. That's what guards the gateways from here on in. They guard the worst of the worst."

"I have an invitation," Audrey said, boldly walking up to the gatekeeper.

"You shall not pass," the Power said. "Unless you belong."

"I was told to proceed to the Seventeenth level of hell by Azrael," Audrey said. "I have kin there. I am to be escorted to the ring by this human."

"Name?" the Power asked.

"Audrey," Audrey said. "Just Audrey. No last name. I'm on the list."

The winged lion perused the list and then signaled some sort of helper spirit that looked like a bird with two sets of wings to open the gate.

"You may pass," the Power said. "Follow this road until you get to the next gate. Shallurum is already known to us. He has permission to pass freely between the gates."

"Aren't I supposed to give up an article of clothing or something?" Audrey asked, pointing to the black leather bustier which was squishing her boobs so badly she was aching to get rid of it. She wore a comfortable knit shirt beneath. It was hotter than … well … hell … in Sheol. She was sweating like a pig.

The Power appeared highly amused by this comment.

"The Mother made Inanna relinquish one of her immortal _powers _as she passed through each gate," the Power said. "Not her _clothes._ Ascended deities can no longer teleport between the dimensions once they enter the main gate of Sheol. As they pass each gate, a different power is lost. Why? Are you a god?"

"No," said Audrey, dismayed she might find herself standing at the gates of the Keep and discover her ability to channel the powers of the void were lost. "I'm just … Audrey."

"You don't seem the type to be sentenced there," the Power said, the fur on his leonine forehead wrinkling into a very humanoid expression of concern. He leaped down off the stone gate-post and gave her a curious sniff, snorting with confusion at the light odor of brimstone mixed with what appeared to be the scent of someone still alive. The Mother had somehow altered Audrey's scent during the vision to fool the guardians of Sheol.

"Would you like for me to see if you're eligible to dwell in a less hostile part of the city?" the Power added.

"No," Audrey said. "My mate died before me. I've been miserable ever since. I'd rather be _with _my husband in Sheol than apart from him in heaven."

"As you wish," the Power said. "I've noted on your chart I think your case warrants reconsideration if you request it in the future. But you're not the first person who didn't need to be here. Isn't that right, Shallurum?"

"Yes, Guthae," Shallurum said, obviously familiar with this particular gatekeeper as he knew his name.

"Go," the Power said in a feline rumble. "I will notify the other gatekeepers to let you pass. I see another procession coming at us from down the road. You'd best get ahead of them. This one looks like bad news."

"Thank you," Audrey said. The four-winged birdlike creature opened the gate just enough for them to pass and then shut the door behind them. The gates opened in such a way as to keep whatever was inside the wall _in._ Who the heck would break _into _Sheol?

As soon as they were out of earshot of the leonine creature, Audrey hissed at Shallurum, "why didn't you tell me about giving up my _powers?_"

"You harness the power of the Mother," Shallurum said. "Not the Father. They don't recognize that power down here because none of them really _remember_ her."

"Thank heaven for small favors," Audrey asked. "The higher orders of heaven? Is the Mother _their _Mother as well?"

"I don't believe so," Shallurum said. "Actually … I don't really know. One day the Powers just appeared down here right after the Father started expanding the city for _us._ Word on the street is the Father tinkered with mortal creatures to breed them because he didn't have enough angels for the job."

"Or he was worried about rebellion once he started forcing brother to inter brother," Audrey said as they walked through the streets towards the next gate. "He needed to hire … or in this situation create … mercenaries who wouldn't be tempted to refuse the Father's punishment. Just as he harnessed the shattered souls of his grandchildren to create the heavenly host."

"That makes more sense," Shallurum said, his expression thoughtful. "Our first-generation Nephilim grandsires, the half-bloods? They felt certain another 200 full-blood angels were about to follow them to free their brothers. It's why we followed them when they rebelled. Not that we had much choice … the Fathers' human patsies tried to exterminate us. And then … nothing. The great flood came. A lot of us drowned. Those who didn't were picked up and thrown _here."_

"I've had dealings with the undecided," Audrey said. "They tend to remain … well … undecided. The angels are too damned obedient."

Another earthquake rumbled through the city. Longer this time. It felt much the way the entire North American continent had been rumbling the past fifteen years as Yellowstone and her sister-volcanoes came to life after a long slumber. Was it possible the two were somehow connected?

"_You_ got them to follow _you,"_ Shallurum said after a period of silence.

"The price was too high," Audrey said softly. "In the end, it was two quarter-blood Nephilim boys who shifted the balance. Not me or Gabriel." Hastily, she wiped away the tears before they started in earnest. There was no time to rehash old wounds.

"My understanding is that they acted to defend _you,_" Shallurum said gently. "_Because_ Gabrielhad taught them what was right. They were both parts of your mission neither deity saw as important because they were neither fully human, nor fully angel. Not part of Yesua's original wager. Wild cards."

"They tried to save him," Audrey said, the tears now falling. "They didn't know how to teleport back then. Yesua did something to their DNA so they could after that. They're the only two angels, besides Michael, who Yesua trusts."

"The very young do not always do as they are told," Shallurum said. "But often their reaction is the correct one. They acted from the heart. My understanding is it put the rest of the Fallen to shame."

"Yes," Audrey said. "Every single one of them was willing to stand by and watch their brother die, but watching two twelve year old boys stand with him against 400 Grigori jolted them out of their denial. Now … even the Unfallen see the Father is not well and _hasn't _been well for a very long time. They're no longer falling all over themselves to give him what he asks for, but rather asking what the Father _needs._"

"He needs a good swift kick in the pants!" Shallurum snapped, and then gave her an embarrassed grin.

"You're singing to the choir…" Audrey said.

They made their way through the next set of gates.


	212. Chapter 211

Chapter 211

Somewhere from high above Sheol, a horn sounded. A beautiful, high-pitched sound with countless undertones, almost like when Gabriel had used to sing Song of Songs. The horn evoked a feeling of hope. No matter what they were doing, the inmates stopped and looked towards the sky. Several who'd been embroiled in a fistfight stopped mid-punch and embraced. People in the streets began to murmur, then shout, and then dance for joy. Many began to cry.

"The horn!" the inmates shouted. "Judgment Day is upon us! The Herald will signal _us _next to line up for final judgment."

"Gabriella," Audrey said, a mixture of love and pride swelling in her heart. "My baby girl."

"She's done good," Shallurum said. "Rumor had it there was a serious question about whether or not anyone would be capable of wielding that horn after your husband died. I hope it's not too long before they're ready for _us_."

"Yesua needs to figure out where to put the ones who aren't clear-cut cases," Audrey said. "If the Father hadn't stepped in and screwed up Yesua's timeline, the eruption at Yellowstone would have pushed humans to populate colonies on the moon, Mars, and several asteroids. The problem inmates could have been sent to distant colonies where, hopefully, they would have been so busy trying to survive they wouldn't have time to cause mischief. Now … with the supervolcano blackening the sun for the next seven years, there won't be enough supplies on Earth to feed all of them. They might have to wait until the dust settles."

"Seven years isn't a long time in Sheol," Shallurum said. "But Yesua better get his tail feathers down here then and explain that to the inmates. Maybe he can institute some sort of retraining program for their new duties while we're waiting so people know he's not dicking them around? The inmates are going to riot if our day doesn't come reasonably quick."

They stopped at the third gate, once again guarded by one of the leonine Powers. They were waved through the gate unchallenged as soon as Audrey stated her name. Guthae had sent word she was to be allowed to pass.

"Since they're not going to make me strip," Audrey groused as soon as they were through, tugging at her too-snug bustier. "I'm taking this thing off on my own. It's hot in here!"

A fearful looking woman with ragged clothing and broom-straw matted hair grabbed the article of clothing as soon as Audrey tossed it aside and disappeared into a doorway with it.

"Where do you guys get supplies?" Audrey asked. "And food?"

"We're dead," Shallurum said. "We don't need food. As for clothing and supplies, you get what you carry in with you. If you come in buck-naked, then you have to wait for someone like _you _to come through and cast off items you don't need. That article of clothing will fetch a high price on the black market."

"Oh," Audrey said, reaching up to feel the reassuring strap of her backpack against her shoulder. "That explains the aggression towards newcomers. Mug them and steal their supplies."

They walked through the next three gates with little challenge. The closer they got to the Keep, the closer each concentric ring was to the next one. The last three rings of the city had been decimated by earthquakes, many of the buildings flattened. This part of the city was practically deserted. What few people there _were _walked around as though shell-shocked. It wasn't what Audrey had expected from the inner circle of Sheol.

"Isn't Judas Icscarot supposed to be interred here?" Audrey asked. "For betraying Yesua?"

"Judas was doing the bidding of the Father," Shallurum said. "And then … he was a liability. An embarrassment the Father did not wish to acknowledge. The Father tossed him straight into the void as a sin-offering."

"Oh," Audrey said. "I never felt sympathy for Judas before. But now that I understand the heavenly host was sent to whisper in his ear, it sounds like he got a raw deal. God! What the hell is that awful smell?"

Audrey pulled her khimar over her face to filter out the stench. Putrid greenish-yellow fumes billowed out of the ground ahead of them. She had seen this in her vision. Even before Shallurum answered, she knew she was looking at the pit which contained the Keep.

"This is the source of the foul vapors which sicken any who come to this city alive," Shallurum said. "If you're unable to get past the front door, then I suggest you turn yourself in and think of an excuse to get the hell out of here. You're full-blooded human. You'll be as bad as our matriarch, Taram-uram was within a few years."

"Either I come out of here with my husband," Audrey said, fumbling with her backpack and pulling out the colorful nylon parachute Belaziel had been able to scrounge up for her. "Or I don't come out of here at all. The closer we've gotten to the Keep, the stronger my connection to him has grown. I can feel his life spark … right here … resonating with my own."

Audrey tapped her chest over her heart to accentuate her point. She had never realized just how aware she had been of Gabriel's soul resonating in harmony with her own until he had been stolen from her, but now that she knew what it was she was feeling, she would never overlook that sensation again. The closer she had gotten to the Keep, the more her heart had begun to sing out with joy. Holy union. The sound of two souls melding into one soul. Similar to the sound Gabriella's horn had made.

How had Gabriella known how to recreate that sound?

"Grigori!" several inmates shrieked in terror, pointing through the sky as a reddish-brown dragon flew through the air and circled several times around the rim of the pit, trumpeting his return as he called out to his mate.

"Thamuz," Audrey said. "My distraction." As he circled down, Audrey noticed the soul-fragments of the Grigori children rode clinging to his back, except for Talorc, who Thamuz gently carried in his paws.

"They break out," Shallurum said. "And then they always return, enraged they've been unable to free their mates. Usually they land within the city and wreak havoc first. If you die in Sheol, there's no place left to go but the void."

"So I've heard," Audrey said.

Audrey finished arranging the strings to the parachute, and then looked at her watch. Thamuz was to land, quickly help the animal soul-fragments hide, and then trumpet at the door so they'd recapture him. As the only Grigori not prohibited from returning by her Sharia edict, the Powers guarding the Keep were going to be scrambling to get him settled back in after fifteen years. With all of Sheol being short-handed thanks to the eruption of Yellowstone causing a flood of new inmates, she was counting on confusion to institute her bold plan.

"Good luck," Shallurum said, shaking her hand as she prepared to leap. "I'll be waiting right here for you when Gabriel flies you back up."

"This may take a while," Audrey said. "Don't wait. I'll feel better knowing you're not implicated for participating in this plan."

Without further ado, she closed her eyes and, with a silent prayer to the Mother, leaped off the cliff. The air was too thick with vapors to see the ground racing up at her, a blessing as it helped her suppress her natural urge to scream, but a curse as it meant she wasn't sure when to open the parachute. Too soon, and she'd easily be visible to any guards who might happen to look up. Too late and …. Splat!

It finally occurred to her to watch the compass rose. All of a sudden, a picture of a parachute appeared on her hand. Audrey pulled the string…

And suppressed a shriek as the vapors suddenly cleared and she realized she was a mere stones-throw from the ground. The parachute opened and yanked her back up to the sky, just barely in time to flare open and slow her fall before she tumbled none-too-gently onto the ground.

"Ouch…" Audrey whimpered, forcing herself to remain silent as she quickly pulled the colorful parachute towards her and frantically rolled it up into a ball before one of the guardians spotted her. The squat, ugly stone building sat around a thousand feet from where she landed. It was surprisingly small. The most imposing feature was two enormous doors that took up one entire wall.

She breathed a sigh of relief as more vapors spewed out of a crevasse in the ground and obscured the building from her view. If she couldn't see _them, _chances were they couldn't see _her, _either. The Keep, she realized, must largely exist under the ground.

"Prophet?" a small voice called. Furry paws reached up to tap her thigh. Brudei-rabbit. Behind him, Brudei-mouse, Brudei-beetle, and Brudei-chicken stood waiting for her to lead them, as well as the three soul-fragment animals of Talorc.

"It's time," Audrey said grimly, reaching down to pick the smaller soul-fragments up and tuck them into her backpack. If she had to make a run for it, she didn't want to leave any of them behind. As now-living creatures, they would suffer from the same negative effects _she _would.

Striding towards the gate, she remembered the story the little girl in Santa Fe had told her which had inspired this entire crazy idea in the first place. The story of a princess storming hell to free her husband.

How dare they try to keep her soul-mate from her?

For the first time since she had begun to realize what power she inadvertently brought back with her from the void, Audrey gave herself permission to indulge her anger, feeling the righteous indignation over what the Father had done. She did the opposite of everything they had been teaching the Grigori and their fragmented offspring to do to contain their anger. She fixated on all the rotten things the Father had done and tapped into that bottomless reservoir of rage she had suppressed all these years.

"Prophet?" Brudei whispered, his nose nervously twitching as he backed away from her. "I am afraid."

Her eyes turned black with power as she prepared to sing the song Jose' had shown enabled her, when she unleased her anger, not just to hit the right notes that would cause anything remotely conductive to resonate until it twisted like a pretzel, but also make _all _matter resonate.

"Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen…" Audrey sang in German, waves of hatred spewing off her body towards the Keep which had kept her separate from her beautiful angel all these years as she sang the song aptly nicknamed 'The Queen of the Night's Revenge Song.' She hated this building, this foul building which prevented her Gabriel from returning to her. As she trilled through the wordless F3 coloratura trills, her shrill anger screeched out of the pit so that all of heaven could hear. The smooth walls of the pit, comprised largely of volcanic glass, began to make a crunching sound as tiny hairline fractures opened up all around her.

The vapors cleared. Leonine winged guardians streaked down from the city above, attempting to stop her before she hit the final note of the song.

Too late…

"Hort, Rachegotter, Hort der Mutter Schwur!" Audrey sang, suddenly dropping the high note into the base cleff and hitting a note so low it was more a hateful moan than anything you would expect a person to sing. Hear, Gods of Revenge, hear a mother's oath!

Mozart had been a 33rd degree Freemason. The Masons had dabbled in forbidden knowledge, including knowledge of the Mother. His entire opera, the Magic Flute, was loaded with hidden keys to unlock all kinds of powers. One of those powers had been harnessing the power of the void.

The walls of the Keep began to buckle as another earthquake she had just caused hit the building and made it buck like a rodeo bull. A loud whine like fingernails on a blackboard screeched through the air. The metal in the door bowed in response to the vibration, but would not budge. Audrey was only human. She was not the Mother. Her mortal lungs could only hold a musical note for so long.

From the perimeter of the pit far above, a second sound permeated the air. A horn. Not nearly as powerful as the voice of the Mother's agent, but funneling just enough of the same power that it pushed things over the top. With a 'snap' that was nearly anti-climatic, the enormous stone blocks shifted. Hinges popped out of the mortar. In slow motion, the door fell forward and fell with a thud.

"Prophet … quick!" Brudei said, tapping at her frantically with his paw. "Get inside. The Powers are upon us!"

Brudei bolted for the door, hopping as fast as a dog-sized rabbit could hop. Bending to pick up Talorc-weasel, Audrey dove inside the front door, narrowly missing being grabbed, and ran down the stairs. The winged lions landed outside the door and roared at her to come out, but did not enter. Only the assigned Guardian of the Keep dared enter without express permission from the Father, and no one had heard from him in over fifteen years.

"Where now?" Talorc-weasel chattered, sniffing the air as the narrow stairs down landed in an enormous room with hundreds of doorways.

"My sire went that way," Brudei-rabbit said, sniffing at one of the doors. "Talorc and I will go after him. Hopefully we can find out mothers."

"Good luck," Audrey said, reaching down to pat the both of them. "I hope someday Yesua figures out a way to get you all put back together properly in one body." Gently, she picked the other animal soul-fragments out of her backpack and did the same, bidding them farewell.

"This isn't so bad, Prophet," Talorc-weasel said, his little nose twitching as his little body wiggled in excitement. "We have a purpose now. We will plead with our mothers to be reasonable."

"I smell a scent different from the others," Brudei-mouse said, his tiny whiskers twitching. He ran towards one of the doors. "It smells like one of the Unfallen."

"Thank you," Audrey said, opening the door for them which they had indicated Thamuz had been taken. It opened into a long corridor that curved down deeper into the ground. Her little friends hurried down the hall.

Pausing in front of the door the mouse had indicated held promise, Audrey checked the compass rose on her hand. It pointed straight ahead. Pulling open the door, she stepped into the corridor.

The door shut behind her.

Pressing back against the door, she realized it had locked behind her. It was a steel blast-door. Nearly as strong as the one she had just shattered to get inside. She was trapped. There was no way to go but ahead.

"Mother," Audrey whispered as she silently crept down the hall. "I sure hope you didn't bring me all this way for nothing…"


	213. Chapter 212

Chapter 212

"Those are some _big_ doors," Gabriella said, staring at the imposing hundred-foot-high gates to Sheol. She glanced at the slender horn she still held in her hands. "I'm supposed to open _that _with _this?"_

The stench of brimstone assaulted her nose. They were surrounded by people, an undulating throng of the recently deceased being herded like cattle in a Texas stockyard towards a 'processing plant' where they would be turned into hamburgers. Dead. These people were all dead.

Gabriella recoiled.

"Don't be afraid," Uriel said, still holding her hand. "It's not what your mothers' people have been led to believe. At least … not exactly. It's more like the West Bank of Jerusalem. Lots of checkpoints. The occasional suicide bomber. Lots of crime. But just … people."

"The West Bank sucks," Gabriella said, holding back. "Muhammad had me bring him there a few times to rally his people. Couldn't we just … teleport … where we need to go?"

"Sorry, Little Archangel," Uriel said softly, pointing up to show the sheer height of the outer wall which appeared to stretch all the way into the clouds. "Sheol was originally built to keep _us _prisoner. Not just humans. The first thing we relinquish as we step through the gate is our ability to teleport."

Something shoved at her back.

"Get moving," the black, furry bat-winged creature said, giving her another nudge. "You're holding up the line."

Gabriella felt that familiar feeling of her spirit suddenly being jolted out of her body. Uriel grabbed her, putting his arms around her, to make sure she didn't get catapulted out completely.

Gabriella froze in his arms. Scent. She inhaled his scent. So … male. Why had she never noticed his scent before today? His scent anchored her back into her mortal shell before she inadvertently let it drop to the ground like a pair of dirty underwear.

"Hey!" Uriel snapped at the death spirit. "Be careful. This one's alive. She's only half-angel. She's not used to dealing with your kind yet."

"Oops … sorry!" the black creature said with a sheepish grin on his furry face which appeared to be halfway between that of a human child and a cat. "You looked like a full-blood from the rear. I didn't realize you were a girl."

Gabriella looked into Uriel's beautiful emerald green eyes, which were filled with concern. Her heart sped up at the feel of his arms around her as he held her spirit, which had temporarily become loose, until she solidified the connection. Uriel's scent was … different … than it had been before. Male ... and something else. An excited little flutter beat in her chest. The urge to kiss him again was nearly overwhelming. She hastily stepped back before she made an ass out of herself.

"I'm okay," Gabriella said, pretending to take a sudden interest in her shoes to avoid holding that intense gaze. "Uncle Azrael has jolted me more than once. I'm smart enough to hang onto my own mortal shell."

She scowled at the death-spirit who had accidentally jolted her.

"You're big for a half-blood," the death spirit said, herding his charge, a rather seedy looking fifty-something man who reeked of alcohol, his gait still staggering from the alcohol he had obviously been consuming in excess before he had died. "Are you being interred here? Or just visiting?"

"You will address the Herald of the Savior with the respect she is due," Uriel thundered, his face turning purple with anger as his hand unconsciously tightened around her arm. "Don't you know who this is?" He pointed to the slender horn Gabriella still carried in her hands.

"Oh … pardon me," the death spirit said, giving her an apologetic grin. "My bad! We were told the gates of Sheol weren't going to be opened until Yesua figured out what to do with them all."

"We're not," Gabriella said, realizing the death-spirit was only trying to be friendly. The jolt had been inadvertent. "At least … not today. We're just … scoping out the situation. For later. So I know what to do when the time comes."

It wasn't a lie. Not really. Eventually, she _would _have to open the imposing gates they were getting shoved towards and let out the inhabitants, and she likely _would _do a better job if she wasn't scared shitless of the very thought of Sheol or apprehensive about whatever emotion needed to be channeled through the horn to make the gates respond.

"Move!" several death-spirits hissed from far behind them on the line. "You can talk for all eternity once you're inside."

The line to get in was thousands of people deep. Most of them had the appearance of people from America or Canada. Casualties from the Yellowstone supervolcano. People too pig-headed or foolish to heed the Savior's warning to evacuate. Gabriella noticed the death-spirits who guided the recently deceased varied in appearance, ranging from little more than non-corporeal ghost-like black blobs to fairly well-defined shapes such as the catlike bat-winged cherub who had jolted her. A few even vaguely resembled angels.

"Why do you all look different?" Gabriella blurted out.

"Shhhhh…." Uriel hissed. "It's impolite to grill a death-spirit about what form they take. We're not supposed to talk to them. They work for Azrael."

"It's okay," the catlike death-spirit said. "I call myself Cheshire. After the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. The Mother allows us to pick our own names and shapes. Some of us are better at it than others, that's all."

"You speak to the Mother?" Uriel asked, as though this thought surprised him.

"Of course," Cheshire said. "Nearly every day. She's downright awful at teaching us how to assume a corporeal form, but she loves us nonetheless. The Mother is very good to us."

Several of the death-spirits in line around them vocalized agreement. Although most possessed bat-wings like the Grigori, the death-spirits all appeared to be happy, jovial, and to like their jobs. It was not what Gabriella had expected a death-spirit to be like although, when you thought about it, neither was Uncle Azrael.

"Why you two hanging around in this line?" a second death-spirit asked who looked a bit like a bat-winged black teddy bear. "Your kind usually go straight up to the head of the line."

"It's … um … been a while," Uriel said. "I don't get down here as much as I should."

"Typical…" the second death-spirit snorted. The others twittered all around them. The person whose hand he was holding, a middle-aged woman wearing a pantsuit, balked and tried to pull away.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Cheshire said to his brothers' charge. If it _was _his brother. "At least not until you pass through the gate. If he loses his grip on you beforehand, you'll fall into the void."

"Yeah," a third death-spirit said who vaguely resembled a pterodactyl. "That's death for the dead."

"He's right," Uriel said gently to the woman, reaching out to take her hand. "The city is not the most pleasant place to dwell, but you will continue to exist and may even reunite with family who've gone before you. The void … it simply destroys your soul. Even the Father dares not go there."

Gabriella was impressed by this side of Uriel she had never seen. Up until a few weeks ago, she had always thought of him as a pompous ass. Cold. Proper. A too-strict pain in her ass. Had he always been this way and she'd been too full of her mother's contempt for him to notice? Or had something caused him to change?

She clamped her mouth shut before she opened her mouth and stuck both wings into it. She'd already made an ass out of herself and been spitting out feathers _once _today. She'd be _damned _if she did it a second time. She retreated behind her usual sullen expression, feigning disinterest when, in reality, she was intently watching everything that went on around her. _Especially _carefully observing how Uriel acted around others.

"Come," Uriel said, tugging her hand and pulling her out of the line. "He's right. We'll be in this line for hours if we wait. I see one of my brothers manning the gate. He'll let us pass."

"Bye-bye!" Cheshire called as they left, giving them a big wave and a Cheshire-cat like grin after his fictitious namesake. "It's nice to meet you, Herald of the Savior! We're here if you need us when you finally open the gates."

"Bye!" the other death-spirits called, waving like a bunch of friendly little school children.

Gabriella awkwardly waved goodbye, not sure how to act at the death-spirits exuberance. Beside them, the souls of the damned trudged with an almost robotic lack of expression towards the gate. Fearful. But orderly. Had it been her _mother, _the Prophet would have been spitting fire.

"I never really took the time to speak to any of them before," Uriel said as they cut around the line and approached the angel guarding the gate. "The Father told us it was forbidden, so it never occurred to me they were … pleasant?"

Gabriella glanced down at the large, strong hand that still held hers, tugging her forward towards a small doorway just wide enough for one person cut into the larger gate. He seemed … enthusiastic. This was _most _unlike the Uriel she had grown up hating.

"Munkar," Uriel greeted the angel who escorted the inmates into Sheol. "We have permission to travel to the seventeenth level from Michael."

"He sent word," the pale grey-winged angel named Munkar said with a flat tone. "This is _her?" _The gatekeeper stared at her with an apprising stare as though she were a bologna sandwich of questionable quality to consume.

"This is the Herald," Uriel said evenly. "She just successfully opened the gates to the garden. The saints are descending as we speak."

Uriel's facial expression remained neutral, but his eyes turned steel grey as he unconsciously clenched Gabriella's hand. She decided she didn't care for the gatekeepers tone. The death-spirits had been much more friendly.

"Hmph," Munkar grunted, his tone almost dismissive as he pointed upwards to the two gigantic steel doors which stretched up to the roiling black clouds. "Try opening these beasts."

"You know it isn't time," Uriel said, his words clipped and even as he spoke. "When it is time, then she will open it."

"Umph," Munkar said, glancing at his clipboard and then staring at the line which was beginning to back up behind them. "I've signaled ahead for them to expect you. You'll be able to fly through the next sixteen gates."

"Thank you, brother," Uriel said. Without another word, he tugged Gabriella through the gate, into the throng of recently deceased souls which was milling about in confusion now that their death-spirit escorts had left them at the gate.

"Isn't there anyone to guide them?" Gabriella asked, pointing to the frightened people whose peculiar lack of emotion vanished the moment the death spirits let go of their hands. She decided the death-spirits must have some sort of calming quality about them to guide the souls of the recently deceased without panic.

"It … uh … never occurred to me to ask," Uriel said, his look troubled. "I mean … I've escorted souls here. In the past. Not many. But I never thought to ask what happens to them once they're through the gates. The heavenly host used to _punish _them by making them relive their greatest sins, but now they're gone, too."

Sheol appeared to be popping at the seams. No matter where she looked, even when she looked down into the alleys, people were jammed in like sardines. So many! They had to number in the billions.

The garden had only contained a few hundred thousand souls. Even accounting for the fact that Yesua was encouraging his flock to be fruitful and multiply so those saints who chose the path of rebirth instead of descent had an avenue available to them, it appeared a disproportionate number of souls ended up in Sheol.

Screams erupted through the streets. All around them, souls of the deceased dove for cover. Why would they dive for cover if they were already dead?

"Grigori!" the dead screamed.


	214. Chapter 213

Chapter 213

_Screams erupted through the streets. All around them, souls of the deceased dove for cover. Why would they dive for cover if they were already dead?_

"_Grigori!" the dead screamed._

Gabriella looked up just in time to see a reddish-brown streak fly lazily over the city. Confusion muddled her thinking.

"But that's … Thamuz?" Gabriella said. "What's he doing here? He's in charge of piecing together the Grigori children from the heavenly host."

"Come," Uriel said, flaring his reddish-brown wings. "Let's fly." He let go of her hand and leaped into the air, circling the crowd to give her a chance to catch up before aiming at the heart of the city where Thamuz had just flown. The place where billowing green clouds of putrescence seeped out of the center like the pyroclastic flow streaming out of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

Gabriella followed Uriel's lead as she would any squadron leader, slowing to greet the lion-like guardians as they passed through each of sixteen more gates. Gabriella was just a 'grunt.' In this little endeavor, Uriel was _definitely _in charge. They landed in near-perfect formation at the edge of a gigantic pit which sank as far as the eye could see into the soils of the hell-dimension known as Sheol. There was no sign of Thamuz.

"The Keep," Uriel said, his voice a near-whisper. "The innermost circle of Sheol." His eyes waxed an almost hazel-brown color, a color Gabriella had noticed they turned whenever Uriel appeared to be troubled.

"What's that sound?" Gabriella asked. "It sounds like singing."

Although she could not understand the words, the voice was familiar. Or, more accurately, the power which streamed _through _the voice. She glanced at Uriel, afraid to vocalize the horrifying thought which dawned in her mind like a nightmare.

'_Your father would be so proud of you,' her mother had said this morning as she shoved her out the door to her morning physical training exercises with her unit. 'Never doubt that you are everything we both dreamed of in a daughter.'_

_Tears had been in her mother's eyes as she had kissed her goodbye and held her just long enough that it had made Gabriella uncomfortable._

'_Mommmm…' Gabriella had rumbled. 'You're only going to Uncle Az's for a few days. It's not like it's the end of the world or anything.'_

Her mother was here. Down there. In the pit. Thamuz must have helped her. Or Uncle Azrael. Or both. Today was the beginning of the Rapture. Every creature in heaven was too busy dealing with the change of power to pay attention to what one lonely mortal was doing in Sheol. Her mother was trying to bust her father out of the Keep!

Uriel leaned over the edge of the pit, and then turned to her, a cornucopia of emotions crossing his face.

"Your mother," Uriel whispered. "She's here." He poised to leap off the cliff face, his wings trembling, to stop her.

"Please," Gabriella said, taking his hand, panic rising in her chest. "Uriel … don't tell."

"You don't understand," Uriel said, his voice almost a cry of anguish as he tugged at her hand. "There's no way out! Once she goes in there, she'll be trapped!"

"The Grigori escaped with the Fallen!" Gabriella cried, tugging at his hand. "Please … Uriel! If you love her, you'll let her go to him! It's the only thing she's ever wanted!"

"There's no way out!" Uriel cried. "It's a trap! For her! The Father strengthened the inner doors after your mother broke the gate the last time so it would no longer resonate to her voice! Once she goes in there with him, she will be trapped in his nightmare forever. The Father makes him kill her over and over again! She will be forced to endure the moment that he killed her again and again and again until she grows to hate him! The Father _knew _some day she would come for him!"

The rustle of wings exploded in the air overhead. Dozens of lion-like Powers streaked towards the center of the city and began descending down into the pit.

The pit began to shudder as an earthquake hit the city. A terrible sound like glass shattering erupted from the pit. Gabriella stood, not sure what to do. Stop her mother and earn her eternal hatred? Or let her try? Which was worse?

Light coalesced at the edge of the pit and solidified into the shape first of a golden serpent, and then gradually shifted to become the form of a golden-skinned man with gold, serpentine eyes.

"Simbi?" Gabriella asked. Although she had never met the Mother's loa personally, she had heard the serpent who had tempted Eve described enough times that she would know him anywhere. Shaped by her father from the soil of the garden when he had still been a small boy.

"Begone! Evil creature!" Uriel shouted, pulling his sword.

"Sssister," Simbi said with a slight hiss to his voice, ignoring Uriel and speaking directly to her. "It is not enough. You mussst help her."

"Help her what?" Gabriella asked. "She will be trapped there!"

"She hasss a plan," Simbi said. "But her voice isss only mortal. If she abandons her mortal voice to channel the power of the void directly, all of Sheol will be destroyed."

"Who cares?" Gabriella snapped as a series of terrible, high-pitched trills wafted out of the pit. The ground shuddered beneath her feet. "This is a terrible place."

"All these sssouls will be cassst into the void," Simbi said. "Yesua shall never have a chance to judge them. You must use your horn!"

Uriel stepped back, lowering his sword but not sheathing it.

"That is why we came," Uriel said, the sword trembling in his hand as though he were making a terrible choice. "Michael thought she had no chance of it working, but he said she might try."

"It will work now," Simbi said. "The Mother gives her word. You must picture what you wish to happen in your heart and soul and then channel that emotion through the horn. It will bolster the Prophet's power just enough to shatter the front door."

Gabriella listened as the sharp, light trills ended and her mother's high-pitched voice grew shrill with rage. The song. For nearly two weeks now her mother had been walking around the bower humming a strange song. A song about revenge. All of a sudden, Gabriella understood the purpose of the song.

Gods of vengeance! Hear a mother's oath!

She mirrored her mother's anger at the capricious series of wagers which had taken her father from her on the very day she had been born. Lifting the horn to her lips, Gabriella blew the same hideous note of hateful vengeance that her mother sang. A note that sounded more like a cow lowing than a note one might hear from a musical instrument.

The shaking grew stronger, causing several buildings around them to collapse, and then suddenly stopped. Down in the pit, she heard roars of frustration as the leonine Powers missed their quarry and bellowed impotently at the doors of the Keep they dared not entered.

Her mother was inside!

She'd done it!

Her mother was finally going to rejoin her father!

Gabriella's heart sank into the pit of her stomach as her feelings of victory turned to despair.

Her mother was trapped…

Forever…

In the Keep.

"Uriel?" Gabriella cried out, tears coming into her eyes as she realized what she had done. "What have I done?"

"It isss what ssshe wanted, sssister," Simbi hissed, his golden serpentine eyes filled with compassion. "She isss with our father now. He no longer hasss to sssuffer alone."

Gabriella shakily stepped back from the face of the cliff and sat down on some rubble. She had just helped her mother walk straight into a trap. What had she done?

"Simbi's right," Uriel said, pulling her into his arms and burying his face in her neck. "She showed me. Just before she forgave me. She showed me what she and your father had. She was miserable without him."

Uriel was crying. Cold, aloof Uriel was crying.

So was she.

They held each other a long time, sobbing like two small children in each others arms, until finally there was no more water left in their bodies with which to shed tears. Simbi gave them both a sympathetic look and excused himself, leaving them to grieve.

"She always said she would rather spend all eternity _with _my father in the Keep," Gabriella finally whispered, _she _being the one to do the comforting. "Then spent a single moment in heaven without him. I guess she really meant it."

"Yes," Uriel whispered, his eyes red from crying. "She did."

Uriel had loved her mother. He had loved her enough that, in the end, he had let her go. If they were ever to have _anything _together, anything at all, even if it was just friendship, Gabriella knew she needed to respect his need to grieve her mother's loss and move on in his own timeframe.

Even if he _did _smell so good…

"Come," Gabriella said, taking his hand and tugging him back towards the exit they had come in by, her leading _him _this time. "We came what we were sent here to do today. Now it's time to free all these other souls."

"Yesua isn't ready for them yet," Uriel said.

"Fuck Yesua," Gabriella said, the soft tone of her voice not matching the blasphemy of the words. "He promised these people the Herald would blow this horn and open the gates of Sheol for them on Judgment Day. Now he's going to live up to his promise. Like it or not. Humanity is _finished_ with deities who don't live up to their promises."

Before Uriel could even answer, Gabriella lifted the horn to her lips and blew the note of defiance which had just taken up residence in her heart. Defiance. The emotion her mother had wielded so well. It was up to _her _now to manifest the Mother's voice on Earth.

With a shudder, the ground shook. Before them, all seventeen sets of gates clicked and swung open.


	215. Chapter 214

Chapter 214

Down. The corridor curved down. The deeper it got, the hotter it got. Deeper into the hell dimension that housed Sheol than Audrey would have thought possible. It seemed she had walked for miles before she became aware of the burbling sound beneath the surface. Magma. _This _was the Hell spoken about in Earth legend. Not the city above.

"Mother," Audrey whispered, her voice echoing off the stone walls, which had become courser and rougher the deeper she went. "If this is the right direction, I could sure use a little encouragement."

Her only reassurance was the murky outline of the compass rose pointing straight ahead in the dim, red light that seeped between cracks in the stones. A sound not unlike trickling water filtered through the corridor from somewhere far ahead. As she drew closer, reddish-yellow light danced off the walls. Some sort of opening. She stepped out of the dark hallway into the bright cavern, expecting to see a river.

A river it was, but not of water. Beneath a natural stone bridge ran a river of lava. The heat was so intense it felt like she was going to pass out. Audrey drew her khimar around her mouth and nose to filter out the worst of the scent. Brimstone. The scent of a volcano. She was somewhere in the heart of the biggest volcano she had ever seen.

"Mother?" Audrey asked, gasping for breath in the stifling heat and wondering if she was going to be cooked alive. "Do you _really _want me to cross that bridge?"

The compass rose pointed straight ahead. Over the bridge.

"Great," Audrey muttered to herself. "I get to cross the bridge of Khazad-dum. All I need is a Balrog to crawl out of the lava flow so I can become a white wizard."

The bridge was exceedingly narrow. Not much wider than a tree trunk, only flat on the surface. The stones on the top were worn smooth with countless millennia of passage of feet. Either that or they had been deliberately smoothed. Audrey tried not to look down at the roiling flow of lava as she gingerly picked her way across.

An earthquake caused the walls of the cavern to shudder. Rocks fell, one narrowly missing her as she hurried across the bridge. No sooner had her foot hit the ledge on the other side than the bridge collapsed behind her.

"Shit," Audrey murmured, staring with dismay across the bridge. "I guess I'm not going back that way. Am I, Mother?"

The compass rose pointed down a dark corridor. Audrey followed, further into the bowels of the hell dimension, until at last she came to another door.

This one, surprisingly, was not locked. After instinctively touching the door to see if it was hot, decades-old school-aged fire safety training automatically kicking in given the surroundings, she turned the handle and walked inside…

The Paradise Diner?

"Mom?" Audrey asked, walking out from behind the kitchen area door she had just walked into the dining room. Directly in front of her, her mother stood frozen in time, backing up towards the door with the infant Yesua in her hands. Bob rushed towards her mother, his mouth frozen in the plea to relinquish the child. Jeep stood to one side, rifle cocked, an expression of terror forever frozen on his face as he aimed towards the light streaming towards the front door of the diner. Charlie's scream of horror at seeing her newborn child about to be handed over to the monster they all knew was coming. The monster who would kill a child because the Father had demanded it.

Behind her, Michael was already swinging up the rifle, about to put two bullets in her mothers' brain in order to stop her from handing over the only hope her species had for survival. The only person missing from the scene was Audrey, herself, as though someone had taken scissors and simply cut her right out of the scene. An inconvenient truth.

"Michael?" Audrey asked, walking up to the frozen facsimile of the archangel. Wingless. Fallen from grace. His expression intense, stern, determined. Defiant. Ready to pay whatever price the Father demanded for his disobedience. She touched the image and, although there was a corporealness to the image, it was not real. It didn't feel … alive.

The images flickered. Came alive. The bellow of a horn, making the entire diner shudder as it blew its terrible note heralding the apocalypse, blasted through the air. Gabriel. Gabriel was coming to kill them.

"_I heard them say they just want the baby," Sandra Anderson said, black mascara and tears making her eyes look like raccoons. She backed towards the door with Yesua in her arms. "I will give them the baby. Then they'll let us go."_

"_Give him back to me!" Charlie shouted, stepping towards her._

"_Why?" Sandra Anderson said. "You didn't want him in the first place!"_

The horn grew louder. Audrey knew her mother had begged her to go with her and she had refused, but nowhere in this facsimile of that horrible night was she present. Gabriel had said the Father would try to make him forget her. This was how. The Father was making Gabriel relive the apocalypse however many times it took _without _her until he had brainwashed into believing she had never existed.

An unearthly white light shone through the cracks in the door. The sound of footsteps, heavy with the added weight of steel-laced feathers. Gabriel was coming.

Michael finished swinging the rifle up, his face devoid of expression, and put a bullet into her mother's brain just as Gabriel came bursting through the front door.

"No!" Audrey screamed, horrified to be forced to relive her mother's death all over again. Her mother's face had a perplexed expression on her face as the small hole in her forehead erupted with blood. Yesua went flying into the air. Her mother fell to the ground. Bob leaped into the air like a major league catcher diving for a ground ball ahead of a batter making a play for home plate, catching Yesua just before he hit the floor.

The farce of a nightmarish vision went on, but all Audrey could do was stare at her husband's face as he strode in, mace drawn. Her blood ran cold with terror. This was not the Gabriel she had grown to love. This was the monster who had mindlessly obeyed the orders of the Father to kill his own son. His face had no expression. No expression at all. Around his throat, the control collar robbed him of his ability to think, to feel, to do anything except obey the Father's madness.

Gabriel flared his wings, twisting the handle of his mace. This was not _her _Gabriel. _Her_ Gabriel was not here.

"_No Jeep," Bob shouted. "Not now."_

Bob handed Yesua to Jeep and grabbed the rifle out of his hands, firing at Gabriel to stop him. Gabriel effortlessly deflected the bullets with his wings, that same terrible lack of emotion upon his face. Without a word, Gabriel sliced through Bob's abdomen with his deadly, razor-sharp feathers and emotionlessly kicked him over the countertop as though he were garbage. Audrey flinched. She had spent the past almost eighteen years pushing just how robotic her husband had acted that night. Watching him now, she could almost feel the old hatred of him boiling to the surface.

"_The child!" Michael shouted, stepping between where Jeep held the baby and Gabriel. "Get the child out of here."_

"_What about you?" Jeep asked._

"_Don't be afraid," Michael said, that expression of compassion in his eyes as he grabbed Jeep by the shoulder to reassure him. "Find the Prophets. Learn to read the instructions."_

"_Prophets?" Charlie asked. "What prophets? What instructions?"_

Michael stood between the retreating couple with the child and Gabriel, preventing him from going after them. Audrey knew she had gone with them at this moment in time, but her image was not amongst the images which played out in the repeat the Father had created to torment him. She had not been here to see this part of what had happened, nor had she cared to search the memories Gabriel had left her with of this night. It had seemed … a violation. Neither of them wished to remember just how low Gabriel had sunk. But if the Father wished to punish Gabriel, then why make him relive _this _moment? Gabriel had been acting as ordered?

"_I knew they'd send you, Gabriel," Michael said, the vision continuing. "You were always so eager to please him."_

"Unlike you," Gabriel said, speaking at last as though trapped in a script. "The rebellious son."

Audrey wondered if he was even real. Was this _her _Gabriel? Or just another false image? Was _she _the one being punished. She searched the image before her, searching for any hint that he was real. Gabriel strode towards Michael, the emotionless expression shifting somewhat to register some emotion other than contempt. He looked … troubled.

"Your wings," Gabriel said, staring at Michael's wingless back. "They would have helped you now."

"_To not feel that burden is a dream," Michael said._

'He's not real,' Audrey reminded herself. "Michael is not real."

Gabriel had told her he had killed him. She knew what was coming even though she had refused to search his memory of this night and did not want to know. Tears streamed down her face as she realized the horror of the punishment her husband had been enduring all these years. The rumors had been correct. Gabriel was being punished by being forced to relive killing the two people he loved most in this world over and over and over again.

"You think you can defy Him and not pay the price?" Gabriel asked.

"_The child lives," Michael answered, his eyes lighting up with hope. "It doesn't matter what happens to me."_

"Yours is a fools' sacrifice, Michael," Gabriel answered flatly. "You can help them run, but they won't escape. Neither will you, brother."

"Gabriel!" Audrey called, suddenly realizing what it was the Father was forcing him to do. "Gabriel! Look at me! Don't do this!"

"_I'm not running anymore," Michael said._

Gabriel circled his false brother like a prize fighter sizing up an opponent. His own brother!

"Gabriel!" Audrey shouted, tears streaming down her face. "Don't do this! It's not real!"

The two brothers rushed at each other, coming together like two rams trying to knock each other off a cliff. Michael was a formidable warrior, but without his wings or the light of holy fire artificially enhancing his strength, he was no match for her larger stronger husband. Suddenly, Michael acted unexpectedly and gained the upper hand, pinning Gabriel's arm behind his back and pinning him over a table to try to reason with him.

"_That's enough!" Michael pleaded with his brother, tears coming into his eyes. "There's another way." The Father had sent Gabriel to force them to kill one another, but Michael refused. Michael refused to kill his own brother. _

Gabriel quivered with emotion beneath his brother's touch. Just for a moment, Audrey thought Michael had gotten through to him. She could see him. Underneath the coldness, at last she could see emotion.

All of a sudden Gabriel's eyes went blank as though the emotion had just been wiped from his mind by the wave of a magic wand. His expression turned cold once more. The monster.

Audrey realized the control collar was compelling him to kill. To obey. Dampening the emotions which threatened to break through, even now, and cause Gabriel to rebel.

"There is no other way," Gabriel said, twisting the handle of his mace to make the center spike pop out and shoving it right through his own shoulder to impale his brother through the heart.

"Michael!" Audrey screamed in horror, tears streaming down her eyes. In her mind, she knew this moment was not real. It was a recreation. A holographic model of some sort like the hollow-deck of a Star Trek starship. But the emotions flowed at being forced to watch nonetheless.

And Gabriel had been forced to relive this moment over and over again for the past fifteen years?

"You wanted to live like one of them," Gabriel said, his face showing with a grief even the control collar couldn't erase. "Now you die like one of them." Tears streamed down Gabriel's brutal, handsome face as he watched his brother die and turn to stardust, dissipating just as _he _had later been dissipated.

"Gabriel?" Audrey wailed in horror, unable to watch any further as Bob lit the lighter which had blown up the diner. Gabriel burst through the roof, escaping just before the gas exploded and blew the diner and heavenly host congregated outside to smithereens. Although the fire burst all around her, she was not burned.

"Ohmygod, Gabriel," Audrey sobbed, sitting in a fetal position as the scene reset itself, everyone back in the same position they had been in when she had first arrived, waiting for Gabriel to return so he could be forced to relive the cycle another time.

"Gabriel…"


	216. Chapter 215

Chapter 215

It was a long time before the image flickered and started again. Again, Audrey was forced to watch.

"Gabriel … wait!" she called, stepping in front of him as he burst through the door.

He flung her out of the way as though she didn't exist.

Audrey shrieked in pain as she hit the counter and fell to the floor. She stared, horrified, as Gabriel continued right through the vision as though she didn't exist, right through the moment he killed his own brother. The other characters in this farce might not be real, but Gabriel _was. _

She had been warned. If you died while interred in Sheol, there was no place left for your soul to go except into the void. If he killed her, unlike the other characters in this farce, she would _stay _dead.

She watched, helpless to intervene, as they were both forced to relive the vision once more.

The diner exploded. Again Gabriel disappeared. Audrey curled up in a ball, waiting for his return. He was gone a long time. What was he doing when he was gone?

The image flickered. The characters sprang to life once more. Audrey relived the cycle again, unable to break through to him.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Again and again and again she watched, helpless to make him see her as he killed his brother and the only true friend Gabriel had ever had until he had met _her._

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered as he burst through the door for the 30th or 31st time, she had lost track, so many times had she been forced to relive the nightmare. Numb. She'd only been at this a day or two, not the fifteen years Gabriel had been forced to endure, but already she was numb. No wonder he couldn't recognize her!

The last few times, for a moment there she'd thought she'd nearly gotten through to him, a momentary pause of confusion lighting up his face as he would blink or glance over to the spot where she had once stood when she had still existed as a part of this memory in real life, but then the moment would be gone.

It was as she started to doze off between repeat cycles that the words of Thamuz's rabbit-fragment son came back to her.

'_He makes him relive her death,' Brudei had said while he was still in possession of the Afghani warlord_.

"_My _death," Audrey said, suddenly jolted awake. "He said he makes him relive _my _death. Not just Michael's."

She was missing a significant piece of the puzzle here. The time between cycles … it wasn't a period of rest. Gabriel flew out of here … after the Savior. After … _her._

'_Why do you always do that?' Audrey had asked Gabriel one night as he had deeply inhaled her scent and licked the pulse point at the base of her neck as his hands had lovingly traced every inch of her body as though he were memorizing it with his hands._

'_The Father will try to make me forget you,' Gabriel had said. 'But I won't let him. He can tamper with my memories of you, but he can never remove the feel of my mate from my soul.'_

"Oh," Audrey said aloud, staring at the compass rose on her hand. The direction of the compass had perplexed her. All this time, it had pointed towards the front door. Away from where Gabriel was forced to relive this moment of his past. Out the front door of the diner. This scene was a trap. To prevent her from following him to the _real _one.

"Jesus … I'm so fucking stupid!"

'_Taste, scent, touch,' Thamuz had explained to her as he had gone through his peculiar little ritual to make sure he had stored everything he wanted to remember in the muscles of his body. 'Those senses are older and much more primitive than the ability to think and see. Gabriel likely won't remember the sight of you right away. But he'll remember your scent.'_

The room flickered. The characters in the vision sprang to life once more. Audrey knew what it was she needed to do. This time, when Gabriel burst through the front door and Michael stepped in front of him, giving them a chance to escape, Audrey followed them into the car, to speed away from the diner moments before it exploded. The images of Jeep and Charlie breathed a sigh of relief, not seeing her as she wasn't part of their vision, but Audrey knew the sense of relief was false. He was still coming for them.

She didn't have to wait long for the moment she had waited for.

"_Okay," Jeep said. "We need to figure out our weapon situation. Hopefully Michael didn't take everything out of the car."_

"_Look around," Charlie ordered._

She wasn't part of the vision, but she reached down and pulled out the flare gun, playing her part as though she were really there.

"I've got a flare gun," Audrey said, saying the words she had said that night, even though she knew they could not hear her. She moved to the left-hand side of the car, waiting…

With a thud, Gabriel landed on the roof of the car and tore off just enough that he could squeeze inside. Audrey shot him in the face with the flare gun, just as she had done that night, because the temporary blindness caused by the flare had been the only reason he had overlooked her. Crawling through the shredded rear windshield, he crawled right past her, unseeing, as he grabbed at the infant he had been sent to kill. Jeep sped up the car, trying to shake him off.

The moment she had been waiting for. The moment when Gabriel was too preoccupied with his mission to pay attention to a skinny teenager in a too-short skirt crawling onto his back, jamming herself between his back and his wings, the only time she had ever gotten close enough to the then-obedient archangel for him to physically feel her body.

"I've got you, my love," Audrey whispered into his ear as she inched closer to his head, feeling his muscles bunch beneath her as he mindlessly continued after his quarry, egged on by whatever delusions the Father was feeding through the terrible control collar. She reached out to caress his cheek. "Remember me."

With her other hand, Audrey caressed the inside of Gabriel's wings, touching the ticklish little spot that often made him giggle. An intimate touch only a mate would know. The speedometer sped up to 120 mph. Jeep glanced at Charlie. Charlie tugged at her seatbelt and hugged Yesua to her chest. She nodded.

"I love you more than my own existence," Audrey whispered just as Jeep slammed on the brakes and all transformed to weightlessness.

Gabriel paused, recognizing for the very first time that there was somebody clinging to his back. He inhaled her scent.

They went catapulting out the windshield together.

He turned, encircling her in the steel cage of her wings.

"Prophet," Gabriel whispered, recognizing her for the first time. His arms went around her, just as they had done that night, instinctively trying to protect his mate from the pavement rushing at them at 120 miles per hour.

Audrey screamed as they hit the ground.


	217. Chapter 216

Chapter 216

Colorless and empty. The landscape of Sheol was as colorless and empty as his heart. But for the tug of Gabriella's hand leading him back through the cobblestone streets towards the gates of Sheol, Uriel would have simply stood frozen in place, unable to move. He felt like … one of the inmates.

"Come," Gabriella said gently, tugging him along, an urgency in her step. "We have one more door to open today."

It sounded as though she were speaking through a fog. A fog of his own grief. He was supposed to protect her. The Prophet. He was supposed to protect her. He had let her go into the Keep, knowing it was a trap. He had let Gabriella blow her horn. Audrey was trapped there. Forever.

He had let her go...

A sob caught in his throat and stuck in his craw. How did humans deal with it, this profound feeling of loss? It felt as though someone had just sucked the life out of his heart. Colorless. And empty. As colorless and empty as his own soul.

"Open?" Uriel asked at last, her words finally registering on his brain.

All around them, people danced joyously in the streets. Their joy offended him. How could anyone be joyous at a time like this?

"We have one more door to open today," Gabriella repeated. "You promised. Remember?"

"I was supposed to protect her," Uriel said, his wings drooping so low his razor-sharp feathers scraped on the ground. "I was supposed to protect her and I failed."

Gabriella stopped and turned to face him, reaching out to grab both sides of his face with her hands. She was almost the same height as him, his remaining charge. Her unearthly blue eyes, so like her fathers only still red-rimmed from crying, met his.

"You gave her what she needed," Gabriella said gently. "It was what she wanted with every ounce of her heart and soul."

"Gone," Uriel sobbed. "She's gone! And it's my fault!"

"Michael _relieved_ you of the duty to protect her," Gabriella said. You're supposed to protect _me_. Remember? You didn't fail."

"I knew it was a trap," Uriel whispered, "and I let her go."

"Yes," Gabriella said, caressing his cheek as though he were a small boy. "You let her go. We both did. It was what she wanted." Tears welled at the edge of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She gasped for breath and turned away, staring down at her shoes so he would not see her cry.

A memory flit through his mind. He wasn't sure if it was a _true _memory of the Mother caressing his cheek in a similar way, or one of Gabriel's memories that the Prophet had shared with him of his own childhood. The Mother used to touch him like this when he was upset.

"Come," Gabriella said once more, leading him towards the next gate. "We have to get out of this city so we can teleport back into the garden."

Uriel followed her like a lost little boy. Wasn't it supposed to be _him _who guided _her_? It was her own mother she had just lost. How was she even coping?

Another earthquake hit the ground beneath them, much more prolonged than the others. Buildings began to shake apart. Terrified inhabitants ran out into the street, screaming in terror. Uriel vaguely recognized the part of the city they travelled through now was one of the outermost rings. They were on foot, he being too disoriented to fly. How had they gotten so far without him noticing?

An ear-splitting call trumpeted through the air. The first call was joined by hundreds more as flashes of blinding white light appeared airborne over the city, teleporting directly _in_ to the city. It added to the existing terror of the inhabitants.

"The Grigori!" the inhabitants screamed in terror, stampeding towards the front gates. "The Grigori have returned!"

"That's impossible," Uriel mumbled, his thoughts muddled with his grief. "The Prophet's own Sharia edict prohibits their return."

The Grigori circled above them, getting their bearings as they fell into tight formation, trumpeting their return the entire way. Despite the terror of the inhabitants of Sheol, the Grigori vocalizations did not sound ominous to Uriels' ears, grown accustomed this past fifteen years to the presence of the Grigori sires as the Prophet had counseled them on their anger.

"They are reunited at last," Gabriella said, squeezing his hand. "My mother has finally gotten her wish. She has returned to her mate. Now the Grigori may return to _their _mates as well."

"Your mother busted down the front door," Uriel said, adrenaline finally kicking in and forcing him to fight his way past the fog which enveloped his brain. "The Father only put a trap in place to prevent your _mother _from escaping using her voice. Not the Grigori. They will destroy the Earth!"

"It was never her intent to keep them apart forever," Gabriella said. "She sympathized with their pain. She only wanted to keep them apart long enough to restore their sanity."

"The females are insane," Uriel said, his wings flaring anxiously as he spoke. "You saw … well … _-I-_ saw what happened the day your father died. Asmodeus tried to stop his mate from killing him, but the female souls were too enraged. They forced them to kill him."

"I wouldn't know," Gabriella said, retreating behind an unreadable expression that reminded Uriel eerily of her father. "I wasn't there. Yet. All I know is that my mother taught me not to hate them even though they killed my father. Asmodeus isn't too bad once you get to know him, and Thamuz is my friend."

Guilt stabbed Uriel in the heart. Gabriel had died because _he _had prevented the one person who had ever come close to reasoning with the dragon-people from standing at her husband's side. He had looked into Audrey's soul as Gabriel had shoved his mate into his arms for safekeeping and Uriel had known, Gabriella in her womb or not, Audrey had intended to fight to the death.

If she had…

Uriel looked into his charges unearthly blue eyes. Pale, pale blue. Just like her father's. She looked like her father. And yet … Gabriella was _not _her father. Had he not pulled the Prophet away from her mate and prevented her from dying at his side as she had intended, Gabriella would not be here with him today, ushering in Yesua's New Kingdom.

Gabriella had kissed him earlier. Why?

"It looks like the prohibition against teleporting inside Sheol is _also _no longer in effect," Gabriella said, pointing up to where the Grigori had lined up in a neat v-shaped formation, like a flock of geese migrating south for the winter, and headed in towards the center of the city where the Keep was situation, trumpeting their arrival as they went. "Can we go now? You promised?"

Gabriella had kissed him. As she had, something had shifted. Just for an instant, Uriel had been given a taste of the forbidden fruit the Prophet had promised he might someday have for himself.

Gabriella had feelings for him…

Even more surprising, he'd been surprised to discover that he had feelings for her, as well. Something he had never felt before. Not the level of connection the Prophet felt for her mate, for whatever connection he had developed with the young woman he was responsible for protecting, it was tenuous and brand new. But it _did _exist.

When had he developed the ability to feel human emotion?

"Uriel?" Gabriella asked, a tenderness in her face that he had never seen there before. She understood he was grieving. Even though _she _grieved even more than he did at the loss of her mother, for some reason she was pushing her own grief aside and tending to _his _shattered emotions.

She had a lifetime of experience with such things. She had been _born _grieving a father who had died protecting her. Uriel … did not. Until he had been assigned to Earth, he hadn't even been aware that angels _could _experience emotions the same way that humans did.

He tugged at the thick collar around his neck that signified obedience to the heavenly Father. These days it only occasionally dampened his emotions. More and more, it did not. The collar could take his grief from him. It could take his ability to grieve the Prophet's loss. But he didn't _want _it to take away his pain. It was _right _that he grieve for her. She was unique. Special. Heaven, Earth, and even Sheol had all just suffered a terrible loss.

But Uriel would not let his personal feelings get in the way of his mission. Protect the Herald. He needed to Protect the Herald the _same _way her own father would have protected his own daughter. With his life.

The pity party was over…

"Let's go," Uriel said, forcing himself to push down his grief and start doing his job. Gabriella was _his _responsibility now. She was a young woman whose mother had just been imprisoned forever in a prison no mortal could escape. Gabriella was the one who needed to grieve, not him. Forcing her to tend to him simply because she had more _experience _in dealing with loss was inappropriate.

Squeezing her hand, Uriel teleported the both of them 'between' the dimensions back into the garden. Straight into the walled section no angel except for Gabriel had been permitted to enter for as long as angels had memories.

The Father's workshop.


	218. Chapter 217

Chapter 217

"That's … it?" Gabriella asked, her disappointment clearly showing in her face at the small, rustic building, little more than a shed, where the Father had invented most of his most elaborate creations.

The building was familiar to Uriel. Without the control collar dampening his emotions, butterfly wings of memory kept tickling his subconscious. One of those butterflies sprang free in his mind.

'_Father!' Uriel had shouted. 'Look what I made!' He threw open the door and bounded into the Father's workshop carrying the little firefly he had just created._

'_Uriel,' the Father had sighed, giving him a cross expression. 'Can't you see that I'm busy?' Scattered across the workbench was a male and female three-horned, plant-eating dinosaur._

'_But it lights up the sky when it's happy!' Uriel said, shoving the firefly up into the Father's face. 'Just like one of your stars! The Mother helped me breathe life into it.'_

_The Father's stern expression wavered as the firefly lit up. _

'_These little stars please me,' the Father said, his eyes softening as he reached down to tussle Uriel's hair. 'We shall set them free on the blue planet when I finish the triceratops I am working on.'_

"Uriel?" Gabriella asked.

Uriel realized he still held her hand. In fact, ever since she had kissed him earlier today, he didn't think he had let her go except when he had drawn a sword on Simbi to defend her. He considered, briefly, dropping it because hand-holding was no longer necessary. Enjoying the touch of a mortal woman was forbidden…

Gabriella was not quite mortal. She was half angel. Would that make a difference as to whether or not it was a sin? He _liked _the feeling of connection to another sentient creature.

Forbidden fruit…

He wished to taste it. Only a tiny bite. It was only an innocuous gesture of friendship. What harm could come of it?

"This is the Father's workshop," Uriel said. "Michael has little hope this will work, but he has no objection if we try. Nobody has seen or heard from him in over fifteen years, but he eats the food my brother Raphael leaves outside the door for him each day."

"The Father eats?" Gabriella asked. "I thought you said you didn't need to eat?"

Uriel paused at this simple observation of an incongruency he had never given any thought before. Yes, the Father _did _eat. But it wasn't normal food.

"Ambrosia is a heavenly substance," Uriel said. "It's more … spirit … than a food you would consume. It makes you feel very … happy. The saints were given an endless supply of it until it became in short supply fifteen years ago."

"In other words," Gabriella snorted in derision. "Drugs. He fed you all happy pills so you wouldn't complain."

"Drugs?" Uriel said, feeling the contempt he had always felt for _humans _who abused drugs. "We _never_ use drugs!"

Gabriella gave him a patronizing expression that so closely mirrored the same expression her mother had often used when speaking to him that it made the anger boil up in his veins.

"Angels _never_ usedrugs!" Uriel exclaimed, dropping her hand. He angrily twitched his wings and unconsciously flared his deadly steel-laced feathers so they rustled like a knife being drawn across a whetstone. He glared at her, trying to communicate his contempt for anyone who attempted to artificially alter their mental state.

Gabriella glanced down at the deadly reddish weapons he wore as part of his very being, and then down at her own soft, glossy black feathers that felt like a caress every time they inadvertently brushed against his flesh. Once he had started dwelling amongst humans, Uriel had quickly learned how careful he had to be to not to slice their tender mortal flesh to shreds with an inadvertent twitch of his wings. Azrael's feathers, although deadly to touch because of the power he wielded, were also soft. As were all the wings of the Fallen and their offspring.

"My mom said it took my dad months to clear the effects of whatever junk the Father pumps into your veins to make you strong," Gabriella said haughtily. "The sudden withdrawal nearly killed him. His symptoms were the _same _as the Fallen said they suffered when he threw their tailfeathers into the Keep. She thinks he now feeds it to you directly through those collars he uses to string you along like puppets. Why do you think your skin is always so hot?"

The Word of Gods' wings had reverted to the softer feathers now worn by his daughter after he had been cast down from heaven. An angels' natural state. Uriel had seen photographs the Prophet kept of her husband during their early courtship, before Gabriel they had encountered Jose' and his wondrous streaming communications net. His brother had lost nearly one-third of his body weight before building his strength back up using the mortal means of strength training.

It was too much to think about right now.

"Let's just get this over with," Uriel said, scowling at Gabriella. "You're wasting my time. Nobody's been able to get the Father to answer that door since the day your father died."

Gabriella stepped up to the simple wooden door comprised of three rough-hewn boards nailed together. The workshop had always been simple, Uriel recalled, but it had become downright delapitated. It showed the same deterioration that now plagued everything else in heaven.

"Grandfather?" Gabriella called, rapping softly on the door. "Can you come out please? It's me. Gabriella. Your grandaughter."

Nothing.

"Grandfather?" Gabriella said. "I've come a long way to see you today. I blew the horn. Just like you planned. We're kind of wondering what happens next?"

Not a peep.

"I told you so," Uriel said, crossing his arms.

"Grandfather," Gabriella called. "It's me. Gabriella. Please come to the door. I'd like to meet you."

Uriel was surprised to hear a muffled thud from inside the door, paired by muttering. Reassurance that the Father was, at least, still alive.

"Grandfather?" Gabriella called.

There was a sound of fumbling at the door, paired with more muttering. With a screech of hinges long gone rusty with neglect and lack of use, the wooden door opened just a few inches.

"Gabriel?" the Father asked, his voice thin and weak. "Is it really you?"

"It's Gabriella, grandfather," Gabriella said. "Your granddaughter. I'd really like to speak with you."

"Gabriel!" the Father exclaimed, thowing open the door. The door precariously lurched to one side, one of the hinges being broken. In the dim light of the room, a shrunken, emaciated creature barely recognizable as the Father stood hunched over, his hands trembling as he extended his hands towards Gabriella's face. "You've come home!"

"I'm Gabriella, grandfather," Gabriella said gently, reaching up to touch the Fathers' hand which rested on her cheek. "Gabriel was my father."

Everything about the Father spoke of weariness. His back was hunched over as though carrying an enormous weight. The unearthly blue light which had always streamed from his eyes like a beacon had faded to a dull grey. As he touched Gabriella's face, his hands trembled.

"I knew you would come home," the Father said. "He said you'd abandoned me forever. But I always knew you'd come home."

"Who, Father," Uriel asked, fighting back tears at the sorry state of the heavenly Father he had loved and obeyed for fourteen billion years. "Who told you that?" The Father looked so … diminished.

"Why … I did, of course," the Father said, appearing confused. "_–I- _said he wouldn't come home. But he did. I was right. I said he'd come home and he did. Come in. Come in, Gabriel. I've been waiting for you."

Uriel followed Gabriella as she trailed the Father into his workshop. The workshop nobody had been in for nearly eighteen years. The Father had always demanded Uriel meet him in the throne room. Never here. Never allowing Uriel the same familiarity he had allowed Gabriel. Only Gabriel had ever earned the privilege of being a permanent, silent fixture at the Father's back.

Garbage littered the floor. The scent of decay assailed his nostrils. Every available surface in the workshop was filled with tiny clay figurines, shaped from the soil of the garden, of the same peculiar creatures repeated over and over and over again. Thousands of them. _Hundreds _of thousands of them.

Had the Father gone insane?

"Have a seat, Gabriel," the Father said, gesturing for Gabriella to take a seat on a brand new stool next to the old, dilapidated one which was the only item in the room that appeared to be in good repair. "You're getting too big to always be lurking underneath the bench. I decided it was time to start teaching you how to shape matter."

As he spoke, the Father looked right into Gabriella's eyes, but it was not _her _he was speaking to right now. He thought she was Gabriel. _Her_ father. Although the paternal resemblance was strong, it wasn't _that _strong. Even with her imposing height and the awkward, tomboyish clothing Gabriella favored, she was most clearly a female. A very _beautiful _female, the thought crossed Uriel's mind.

Uriel inhaled her scent, the pheromones she had begun emitting recently indicating she had reached that point in her physical maturity when a female was ready to find a mate. The point Yesua had ordered _all _under his dominion, both human and Fallen, to pair up and start repopulating his kingdom. Gabriella had become a very _desireable _female, both human and Nephilim buzzing around her like bees despite her obliviousness to their attraction. Her scent was so intoxicating in the close confines of the Father's workshop that it did things to him.

Such thoughts were sinful! And in front of the Father, no less! What was wrong with him? She was his niece, for Yesua's sake! His brother's only child. Such desires were considered deviant, even amongst the humans!

"He said you refused to come home," the Father prattled on, looking right through Gabriella and seeing her father, not her. "But I told him he was wrong. I knew you'd never leave my side."

"Who, grandfather?" Gabriella asked. "Who told you my father abandoned you?"

"Why … I did," the Father said, his grey eyes showing confusion. His hands shook as he touched Gabriella's face. "He said he left me for that harlot, but I told him Gabriel wouldn't _do _that to me. Gabriel is a good boy. Aren't you, Gabriel?"

Anger flared in Gabriella's eyes at the reference to her mother as a harlot, but thankfully she had the wherewithal to remain silent. Her mother had spent the past fifteen years rehabilitating soul-fragments of the Grigori offspring and counseling the Grigori sires how to manage their anger. Gabriella had absorbed a thing or two about how to handle an immortal creature who was obviously insane.

"Father?" Uriel asked. "Are you … okay?"

"Better than okay, Gabriel!" the Father said, tugging Gabriella excitedly over to his work bench. "Look! I finally figured it out. She'll come back to me this time, for sure!"

The creatures. Humanoid, but not human. Winged, but not angelic. The long suppressed memory fired in Uriel's brain.

'_Father … what's happening?" Uriel had asked, trembling in fear as the Father transformed a ray of sunlight into a crystal sword that shone like the sun and shoved it into his hand._

'_Your sisters have gone and really done it this time!' the Father shouted, moving on to shape the next weapon. 'They consorted with demons and birthed all manner of monsters upon the blue planet. You must defend heaven!'_

_From the direction of the gates of heaven, enraged calls for the Father's head on a platter trumpeted through the garden. Heaven itself shook at the demons rage. The Father trembled with fear._

'_Please don't let them take me, Uriel,' the Father whispered so only –he- heard it. 'I don't know what came over me. I fear I just made a terrible mistake that even –I- can't fix.'_

_The unearthly pale blue eyes which had smiled at the sight of an insect that acted like a tiny little star turned black._

'_You shall defend my kingdom to the death,' the Father said in a voice that was cold and terrible. 'Or you shall join them.'_

_The Father shoved Uriel and his terrified brothers towards the front gate. Towards the hoard of demonic creatures which marched, trumpeting their rage and clacking their swords upon their shields, chanting Yahweh's name. Towards…_

The little clay figurine Uriel held in his hand right now…

Uriel dropped it, horror gripping him like a kick to the stomach as he recognized the physical form which he held. It shattered upon the floor.

"Father?" Uriel sobbed. He stood, wings flared, trembling with the combined emotions of grief and horror as he remembered, on his own, what the Father had done to fracture heaven. He stumbled backwards, gasping for breath, needing to get out of that terrible place. Away from the workshop. Away from _him._ No wonder Gabriel had refused to come back.

"Oh, Uriel," the Father said gently, bending to pick up the pieces with a frail, thin hand that trembled as he picked it up. "Clumsy boy. Look what you've done. Now I'll need to shape a new one."

Muttering as though he were no longer even there, the Father took the clay fragments, sat down upon the dilapidated old stool, and began to carefully piece the tiny statuette of a Grigori-angel child back together.

"Come, Gabriel," the Father said, absent-mindedly patting the brand new stool which had been placed carefully next to his, sufficient space cleared out on the workbench for _two _people to work side-by-side, "it's about time you learned to do this. If we wait for your Mother to teach you, you'll still be shaping insects when the blue planets' sun finally turns into a red giant."

Gabriella gave Uriel a puzzled look, but sat down, humoring the Father and going along for the ride as the Fathers' deft fingers nimbly reshaped the future shell to house the spirit of a Grigori child. Uriel stayed. He stayed because there was no way he was leaving her there alone with the insane Father who had killed his own daughters.

"You have to picture not just the outer shell as you shape the clay, Gabriel," the Father explained as he worked, "but also what processes will occur inside the body to propel the physical motion once your Mother entices a life spark to inhabit the casing and begin growing into a unique consciousness."

"So how do you know what processes you need inside to make it all work?" Gabriella asked, glancing at Uriel and silently mouthing the words 'wait' so he didn't indulge the overwhelming impulse to run screaming from the workshop and cut off his own wings as Michael had once done to replace the pain of suddenly having that memory returned to him.

Pain. He needed to focus upon the pain. It was the only thing he was certain was _real _right now.

That … and Gabriella's intoxicating scent.

"I've never quite mastered that skill myself, dear boy," the Father said, intent upon repairing the sculpture Uriel had just shattered. "Your Mother might be terrible at giving things a physical form, but something about the way she shapes the life spark before breathing it into the shell makes the creatures want to define their _own _shapes. They come complete with minds of their own. Just like her."

Uriel backed into a wall of shelves, filled floor to ceiling with the tiny figurines, and could back up no further. He would stay while Gabriella attempted to bond with the grandfather who had never wanted her to exist. Emotion undertook him, but he knew indulging the urge to pluck out his own feathers and scream would destroy what Gabriella was trying to do. The Father had never wanted the grandchild who now sat at his side, but it was glaringly apparent that Gabriella was exactly what he _needed_.

'_You must learn to give the Father what he needs, brother,' Gabriel had said as he had shoved the Prophet, heavy with his unborn child, into Uriel's arms for safekeeping moments before he had gone willingly to his own death. 'Not just what he asks for.'_

Uriel slid down onto the floor to sit up in a fetal position, knees pulled tight into his chest, to wait. One of the figurines toppled off the top shelf. He caught it just before it hit the floor and shattered. He stared at the delicate, winged creature which stared back at him, a painstaking clay effigy of a creature he'd neither seen, nor remembered, for nearly 75 million years.

"Amitea," Uriel whispered.


	219. Chapter 218

Chapter 218

Gabriel blew the horn that signaled Judgment Day. The Father had given him a mission. Kill anyone who dared defy him. Michael. Yesua. He had orders to kill them and any who sheltered them.

He did not think about his mission. He did not feel anything about his mission. An archangels job was not to think or feel. As the second, and now first ranking general of the Father's armies, he only had one job. Carry out the Father's orders. Without question.

Gabriel kicked down the door to the seedy human diner. Someone had thrown Yesua into the air as he entered. A human male caught Yesua before he hit the ground and stared up at him, fear in his eyes. Gabriel swung the mace to kill both of them.

The male protectively cradled the baby and rolled just before Gabriel's mace made contact. Mild annoyance at his poor aim registered in Gabriel's body and was suppressed. Angels weren't supposed to feel. Emotion was a weakness.

Michael shot at him. Gabriel used his steel-laced wings to shield himself from the bullets. Michael told the mother of Yesua's current human form and her weak protector to go. Gabriel would stop them after. First he had to deal with Michael. Michael attempted to reason with him, to appeal to his emotions. Emotion was a weakness.

What was that blur? The movement he thought he had detected the last few times he had been forced to relive this ridiculous farce of a bad, B-grade horror movie.

Farce?

The blur headed out the door this time after the mother and child he had been sent to kill. He'd been certain a blur had jumped in front of him one of the times he'd relived this hellish punishment in order to buy time for … something. He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember why he was being punished, but for some reason the punishment had changed.

Punishment?

Pain. Focus on the pain. There was something he was not supposed to forget, but he could only remember if he focused on his own pain. Gabriel fought to clear his mind. Fought to see. The play-actors weren't real, but the blur was gone. His nostrils flared, trying to pierce the illusion using primitive senses which could sense through the lie his eyes were forced to witness again and again. The diner reeked of blood, fear, burnt automobiles and the rotting flesh of the possessed.

But there was another lingering scent…

"Enough, brother," Michael said, touching Gabriel's face. "There's another way."

Gabriel winced in pain as he stabbed himself through the shoulder to stab Michael in the heart. The pain distracted him from his questions. Michael. Why had he just killed Michael? Michael was his brother. He wept as he was forced to watch Michael dissipate. The human male blew up the diner.

Mission. Complete the mission. Emotion was a weakness. Gabriel tore the roof off the fleeing police car. Inside, Yesua and his human mother screamed as the weak male protector attempted to drive away. Complete the mission. Gabriel crawled inside the car.

A flare gun hit him in the face, momentarily blinding him. Had this happened the last time? He couldn't see. Mission. Complete the mission. The Father screamed obscenities at him inside his brain through the hive mind, his voice victorious as he urged Gabriel forward to kill. Kill. Kill the Savior. Complete the mission and come home.

He was so overwhelmed by the overpowering consciousness that dominated the hive mind that he hadn't noticed the fourth person in the car, crawling between his back and left wing as the car sped up to 120 miles per hour.

Complete the mission!

A small hand caressed his cheek as he registered the sensation of another body stretched alongside his. A body that felt … familiar.

"I've got you, my love," she whispered in his ear. "Remember me."

"Kill her!" the Father screamed through the hive mind, his larger, stronger consciousness overwhelming Gabriel's senses.

Deadly steel outer feathers flared, as sharp as razor blades, but the inner feathers lining his wings were still soft. Slender fingers gently caressed the underside of his wings and hit the sensitive spot just beneath his left wing knee joint. The touch of a lover.

"I love you more than my own existence," she whispered into his ear, the slight buzz of her vocal cords forming _real _words, words from a human throat, words that he could _feel _as her soft lips touched his outer ear and spoke the very words he had spoken to _her _as he had pledged his undying love.

Gabriel paused, inhaling her scent. The body that was pressed against his now was _real_!

"Little Prophet?" Gabriel asked, remembering _why _he clung to his pain and endured such terrible punishment. Her touch and scent leapfrogged over the Father's memory games and unlocked the memories the Father's memory games were keeping from him.

His mate. His mate had come for him!

The human male slammed on the brakes of the car. They were in freefall for a millionth of a second before motion propelled the both of them forward, straight out the windshield of the police car at 120 miles per hour. He turned, his arms circling around her and pulling her in close as he encircled her protectively in the steel cage of his wings.

He heard his wife scream as they hit the pavement together.

This time … he held onto her. He did not let her go even as he felt the bones supporting the steel feathers that protected her shatter and the asphalt tear the steel feathers from his wings.

A horrific howling like a thousand baying wolves screeched through his brain and was silenced as his head shattered against the pavement and knocked the control collar from his neck. Gabriel blacked out from the pain.

Silence.

The first sensation he became aware of was the ragged breathing of someone he still held in his arms. He fought his way towards consciousness, fighting to clear the fog in his brain that screamed at him, no matter what happened, to not let go of her.

Pain. Focus on the pain. So long as he felt the pain, the Father could not wipe her from his soul.

Alive. Unlike the first time this had happened where she had already been dead and her soul gone before he had regained consciousness, she was still alive. She clung to her mortal shell with every ounce of her formidable will. But her body was broken. She shuddered in agony, her dark blue eyes turning almost black with pain, as he attempted to pick her up off the ground. Her mouth opened and shut to speak, but no sound came out of her shattered lungs except for a whimper of pain.

"Audrey!" Gabriel cried out, watching her blood spill out upon the pavement. Real. It was real. She was a bit older than he remembered and wearing the garb of a widow, but he could _feel _her. He could _smell _her blood and knew that, this time, the vision was real.

His hands trembled as he felt along her shattered shell. Her injuries were too profound to heal. If you died while interred in the Keep, there was no place to go except straight into the void. He had gotten her back, only to lose her again!

"I'm so sorry," Gabriel cried, frantically feeling along her body to assess if there was anything, anything at all he could do to salvage her mortal shell.

She panted, trying to catch enough of a breath to speak. A tiny, weak smile curved up her lips as he caressed her cheek, trying to comfort him even though _she _was the one who lay dying. Defiant to the very end.

"Don't go," Gabriel wept. "Please don't leave me here alone. You are my only reason to exist." He could hear her heartbeat grow weaker with each passing second.

"Kiss me," she whispered, her voice almost choking on her own blood as the exertion of those two, small words caused her body to seize up in agonizing pain. Her eyes glazed over with pain, but her lips curved up in a victorious smile.

"My love," Gabriel sobbed, bending to kiss her goodbye and registering the taste of her blood upon his lips. He would catch her dying breath in his lungs! He would hold onto her spirit for all eternity as the Grigori males had done to protect the souls of their angelic wives! He would not allow the Father to keep them apart any longer, even if the only place they could exist together was in the Keep.

He felt her heart quiver its last beat and stop, the silence deafening to his ears. Her eyes slid shut. Still, her spirit clung to her body, defiant to the very end. As her final breath exhaled from her shattered lungs, Audrey channeled the power of the void to give him the kiss of death.

The Mother kept her promise. She let them pass unhindered into the void.


	220. Chapter 219

Chapter 219

"How long have you been working on these, Grandfather?" Gabriella asked, picking up a perfect, miniature figurine of what appeared to be a muscular human male with the leathery wings, spiked tail and small horns of a Grigori, but otherwise like any normal human or angelic male. Beautiful. Like _all _creations the Father had ever shaped with his own hand, the tiny statue was beautiful.

The Father appeared to be confused for a moment, his eyes momentarily shining blue as he looked at her and recognized she was not who he kept saying she was, and then disappeared behind the tired grey eyes.

"Since you left me here alone with _him_, Gabriel," the Father whispered. "I cannot control the voices when you are gone. He tells me to do things that make your Mother angry. But when I hide in here, I can take off his golden collar. It makes it harder for him to make me do things I don't want to do when I don't have so many voices talking to me at once."

Gabriella glanced over to where Uriel sat on the floor, tears silently streaming down his cheeks as he clutched a tiny figurine of an angelic female to his chest. His sister. In a single day, Uriel had lost her mother, remembered he'd had a Mother of his own, remembered he'd once had sisters, and now discovered the Father was bonkers. Uriel didn't look to be doing so well. The urge to go over and comfort him was overwhelming, but if the Father suddenly realized she was not who his frail, demented mind seemed to _think _she was and threw her out, she might never get another chance. Her mother was gone. It was up to _her _now to finish her father's dying wish.

Helping the Father collect his marbles and dust the bats out of his belfry wasn't so much altruism as self-preservation. Her mother hadn't trusted Yesua any more than she trusted the Father. That distrust, the wisdom to always have a 'plan B' as far as promises from deities was concerned, had rubbed off on her. With Earth in transition from Yahweh to Yesua, a bunch of freed dual-souled Grigori-angels, former inmates from Sheol now roaming the Earth, and ancient hard feelings still existing between Lucifer, who _should _have originally inherited the Earth, and Yesua, the young upstart who'd usurped him, having the Father as an ace up her sleeve might be prudent.

Even if she _did _want to punch him in the face…

"Then we shall stay in here for now, Grandfather," Gabriella said, noting the discarded golden torc which sat tossed carelessly on one side of the workbench next to the little figurines. "Do you need help making any more of these? I'd like to help you finish them."

"I'm nearly finished," the Father said, his hands trembling as he reached into a pot of clay with a wet cloth over it and pinched out enough to start another figurine. "The males are easy to shape, but the females always give me trouble. It takes a lot longer to shape a form the Mother will approve. She'll be very happy you've returned to help."

"When was the last time you spoke to the Mother?" Gabriella asked, uncertain whether this was just another of the Father's delusions, or had the Mother actually made contact?

"It was … it was …" the Father stammered. He placed his head into his hands and began to weep, his scrawny shoulders hunched over the workbench as his tears fell upon the figurine he had just asked her to help him repair. "She left. She left because I broke them and I don't know how to fix them."

"Grandfather," Gabriella said, placing her hand upon his back. "It's okay. I'll stay here as long as you need me to stay and help you finish these."

"I'm so sorry, Gabriel," the Father said, beginning to ramble as his eyes turned a darker shade of grey. "It was meant to be a great honor. You were my favorite. I knew it would appease her if I let you pass into her realm. But I never dreamed that harlot would steal you away from the both of us. She wouldn't let you go."

Gabriella suppressed the urge to snap his neck, a lifetime of training dealing with obstreperous heavenly host who knew just where to push your buttons and get you to react in a stupid manner now kicking in.

"Grandfather," Gabriella said, hiding behind an unreadable expression as she spoke in clipped words. "That harlot was my mother. My father _can't _come back to you. You imprisoned him in the Keep, remember? He can't come back to help you finish because you won't let him. They would _both _help you if you'd only ask them nicely."

"She said terrible things to me," the Father muttered, his voice audibly different from the voice he had spoken with earlier as he shaped the clay in his hands into a hideous, angry creature. His eyes darkened to near-black. "Your Mother said I must hear her if she was ever to come back, but Ifound a loophole in our wager. We only agreed that _–I- _would never throw her into the Keep. Not that she wouldn't go there herself. I won! The little harlot fell into my trap and now you've come home!"

Uriel's hand intercepted hers milliseconds before they closed around the Father's scrawny neck. It was the tears streaming down Uriel's face that stopped her.

"Please, Gabriella," Uriel said softly, pulling her hands away from the deity she had been about to throttle and placing them on his chest. "He is not well."

Anger flared in Gabriella's eyes as she gasped for breath to calm her temper. She had always been an even-tempered child, not prone to tantrums or fits of willfulness the way human or Nephilim children were. Her normal reaction to anger was to withdraw and sulk. But that did not mean she was a drone. Her mother was trapped in the Keep or dead. Sometimes, even the daughter of the even-tempered archangel Gabriel lost her cool.

"There are two of them in there," Uriel said, his voice hushed and low so the Father would not hear. "His eyes change color when one or the other is in complete control. Otherwise, they're grey. Grey appears to be a neutral color. I'd noticed it before, but I never _thought _about it."

The Father had already reverted back to being the docile, kindly deity once more, muttering absent-mindedly about what physical attributes he wished to imbue the future mortal shell for one of the Grigori offspring. The hideous glob of mud was crushed by his nimble fingers and reshaped into a beautiful figurine for a little Grigori-angel girl no more than three years old. Looking around her now, Gabriella noticed just how many of the statues lining every square inch of shelf space in the Father's workshop were forms created for small children. Most of the murdered Grigori offspring wiped out by the asteroid had been incredibly young.

"You're right," Gabriella said, freeing one hand from his grip and using it to pick up the nearest figurine of a child. "They deserve a chance to live the life that was stolen from them. My parents would have wanted it that way."

Uriel's eyes turned emerald green, his nostrils flaring as his head leaned in to inhale her scent. Gabriella could feel his heart beating beneath her hands through the thin shirt he had worn today instead of his normal heavenly armor. So warm. His skin was so warm, the holy fire in his heart warming her fingers. His chest rose and fell like any mortals even though breathing was not necessary here in the garden. Time stood still as she stared into his beautiful, emerald-green eyes, rimmed with the tears.

"Gabriella," Uriel whispered, his deadly steel feathers rustling as he instinctively flared his wings at her touch. The soft feathers on the undersides of his wings trembled, as did the hand which still held one of her hands captive, pressed against his chest. One wing moved carefully forward, mindful of the razor-sharp outer feathers, to touch hers with the downy leading edge of his wings.

For a moment, she thought he might kiss her…

"Just a few thousand more to go," the Father said absent-mindedly into the air as his fingers worked the clay and not really listening for the answer. "And then the young woman the Mother selected to gather the life-sparks will help us put them back together. You've done good, Gabriel. You've done a good job of protecting your mother's Prophet. She will lead them here. And then _you _can help me fix my mistake so the Mother will return. I _want _her to return. I miss her terribly."

Gabriella looked down at the humiliating symbol of obedience Uriel wore which controlled his behavior and stole his emotions unless he made a heroic effort to override it, and then the golden torc the Father had thrown casually upon the workbench. An idea took root in her mind.

"Grandfather," Gabriella said, touching the muttering deity who was finishing up another figurine. "Could I please borrow your golden torc? Just for a moment? I promise I'll return it as soon as I am done."

"_He _gets very loud when I wear it," the Father said, his grey eyes wide with fear. "He likes to hear the voices, but he doesn't like it when they clamor for attention. He says they should act like tentacles of our mind. He makes me tell them to be obedient so they don't disrupt his ability to concentrate, but they don't always do as they are told. It's very hard to make a universe this big keep running without him."

"Oh," Uriel said, an expression of horror on his face as he tugged at the control collar locked around his neck. "You mean … the voices … are _us?"_

"I think it only disturbs him when _you _wear the collar, Grandfather," Gabriella said, reaching out and giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "But I'll do my best not to disturb him. I just want to have a friend look at this. There might be something he can do to help you use the collar without constantly being overwhelmed by the voices."

The grey eyes turned blue for a moment.

"Who are you?" the Father asked, his expression perplexed. "I don't remember creating you."

"I'm Gabriella," she repeated, giving his shoulder another squeeze. "Your granddaughter. Gabriel's daughter."

"Gabriel's … daughter?" the Father asked, curiosity lighting up in his eyes as though seeing her for the first time. "Fascinating."

The Father reached out and touched her face. Her broad, high forehead, straight nose, sensitive lips and small cleft slightly off-center on her chin. A feminine version of the very features the Father had shaped for his final created son with his own hand. He gave her a pleased smile that reminded her of Yesua.

"It was my father's dying wish that we help you," Gabriella said, recognizing an older, much frailer version of the powerful consciousness of the Savior in the brilliant blue eyes. "You asked me to help you finish shaping mortal shells for your other grandchildren, remember?"

"Dying … wish?" the Father asked, his eyes beginning to fade to grey as the moment of lucidity receded. "But Gabriel's been _here_. With me."

"No, Grandfather," Gabriella said. "He died fifteen years ago. You interred him in the Keep. Remember?"

"You always were such a good boy, Gabriel," the Father said, his eyes fading to the dull grey in-between state where neither the Father's nor the void creatures' consciousness dominated. "Look. I made you your own stool to sit on. You're getting too big to always be hiding under my workbench. It's about time I taught you how to shape matter."

"Oh … Father," Uriel sighed, still cradling the little statue of his sister in one hand. "All this time we've looked to _you _to guide _us, _when really it should have been _us _asking what we could do to take some of this burden off of _you._ Michael was right. We weren't giving you what you needed."

Gabriella picked up the golden torc and handed it to Uriel.

"Please bring this to Jose' and explain to him what we suspect it does," Gabriella said. "Including the fact it may be the void creature portion of his mind that is able to use it. Not the part like Yesua's. And then … I think we'd better bring Michael into the loop. I have a feeling Yesua isn't going to want to touch this with a fifty foot pole. He's already got his hands full handling the souls we just released from Sheol."

The Father started to keen, moaning softly as he wrapped his arms around his torso and rocked back and forth on his stool.

"He's gone," the Father cried, his eyes turning black as the void-creature gained dominance. "She tricked me! I made him kill her, but he followed her straight into the void! The Mother won't let me pass. She said I must stay here until I fix everything I have broken." Black tears streamed down his pale, white cheeks from his black, iris-less eyes.

Gabriella looked to Uriel, grief and anger warring with logic as the horror of what he said combined with wonder that it was the black-eyed _void _creature which appeared to be grieving her father's loss, not the blue-eyed heavenly father.

"And while you're at it," Gabriella said, turning back to poor Uriel, who looked like he wanted to pluck out his own feathers and run screaming through Sheol naked covered with fire ants. "Could you please flit back to our bower and get me a few changes of clothes? And some _real _food? Tell Uncle Belaziel it looks like I'm going to have my hands full for quite a while."

Uriel hesitated. "It was your mothers wish that I protect you."

"Go," Gabriella reassured him, shooing him out the dilapidated front door. "I'm half human. He can't dissipate me like he can the others and I outweigh him by a good hundred pounds. Unless he gives me a cup of hemlock to drink, I'll be fine."

She turned back to the black-eyed, sobbing Father.

"Come, Grandfather," Gabriella said gently, turning him back towards the workbench. "Let's see what we can do to help you get this done so you can make the Mother happy. Okay? We'll get things all fixed up in no time."

"You always were a good boy, Gabriel," the Father said, forgetting his grief of only moments ago as the grey-eyed 'neutral' version of the Father made its appearance. "Here. I made you your own stool. You're getting too big to always be lurking under the table…"


	221. Chapter 220

Chapter 220

"I've got you, brother," a feminine voice said to him. "You've got to let go of her so we can disentangle her consciousness from yours."

Hold on. He had to hold onto her. If he let go of her, he would lose her forever. He wrapped his soul tighter around hers, trying to hold onto her.

"We won't harm her," a male voice said. "You have our word. But if we don't get you two unstuck and out of here fast, you're going to attract unwanted attention."

"The Mother can only keep Texcatlipocl distracted for so long," the feminine voice said, clearly anxious. "You have to trust us or you're going to end up a glittering piece of soul-jewelry."

"Gabriel," the male voice said. "We were once friends. Remember us. I know you haven't adjusted to see just yet, but search deep into your past and remember our scent."

He felt strong arms lift him as though he were a child and carry him. Carry her. Carry his mate who had just died in his arms. He didn't dare exhale, afraid he would lose her.

"His will is formidable," the female voice said. "We're going to have to take drastic measures to get him to release her. He's smothering her."

"This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you," the male voice said.

FWOMP!

"Prophet!" Gabriel screamed into the darkness as he felt his wife's soul be catapulted out of his. His scream resonated not in his ears, but in his own mind.

"It's okay, little brother," the female voice said. "We've got her. She's unharmed. But we've got to get you two out of here before Texcatlipocl comes back. He'd like nothing better than to get _that _juicy of a bargaining chip to win concessions from the Mother."

"Gabriel?" a soft voice murmured. Actually … not a voice, per se. It originated from inside his head.

Audrey? Gabriel struggled and realized he couldn't feel his arms. Or legs. Or wings. Or … anything. All he could feel was panic at being separated from his mate.

"The Mother said it was touch that finally made him remember her," the male voice said. "Maybe if we put them side-by-side so their consciousnesses can touch, it will help them adjust."

"That sounds like it would work, my love," the female voice said. "But they'll end up one solid clump if I let you carry the both of them together. We'll go side-by-side so at least part of them can brush against one another.

An ominous thrumming sound approached from some distance away.

"He's back," the female voice said. "We're out of time, little brother. Let's get you out of here."

Carried. He was being carried. As he was, he sensed a touch that was familiar brush up against him from time to time. The touch felt … odd. As though it happened in his mind. Not his body. But it was her. He could feel his little Prophet and he knew she was nearby.

He slid back into the blackness. Content. They were together. Everything else was … cake.


	222. Chapter 221

Chapter 221

"Papa Legba, Papa Legba, open up the door," Mambo de Vivre chanted, leaning heavily on her cane as she bent to draw the veve using charcoal dust upon the white marble floor of the Toronto crypt where the stones saturated with the blood of the archangel Gabriel lay at rest.

The lid was slightly askew, a single softball-sized chunk of brown-stained concrete placed carefully into the center of an entire circle of veve's along with a single, glossy black feather, a gossamer-thin white silk dress that had once been a parachute, and a single lock of long, brunette hair. A bottle of the best pre-apocalyptic spiced rum that could be procured lay at the center, along with Cuban cigars and a gigantic box of assorted candies. Mambo lit one of the cigars and waited.

A rift appeared just across the veve from where Mambo stood and transformed itself into a large, wooden door with steel hinges. An illusion, Mambo knew, for her benefit.

"The door is not necessary, old friend," Mambo said, her cheeks sagging with advanced age. "I do not fear your natural form."

The door vanished as a black, tentacled storm cloud propelled itself through the rift and solidified into what appeared to be a tall Haitian man wearing a red shirt, black pants, and a purple hat. He spied the offerings Mambo had brought for him and his face lit up in a bright smile.

"The Mother told me you would ask me for help," Papa Legba said, the loa who helped the Mother guard the gateway between the physical realms and the void. "I see you do not wish to leave anything to chance."

"We both know the offering is a pretense," Mambo said, her wrinkled jowels lifting as her eyes crinkled into a smile. "You have developed a taste for mortal sins and demanding an offering is a useful pretense to receive _them_ as gifts instead of more wholesome ones such as incense."

"What have you brought me to work with?" Legba said. "We can help their consciousnesses gather enough matter to exist in this realm, but I do not think either one of them will be happy if everything they touch dies."

"Blood," Mambo said. "A feather. A wedding dress that still has her DNA on it. And a lock of hair."

"The dress might be problematic if they … commingled … as commonly happens on a wedding night," Legba said, giving Mambo a leering grin. He reached over and goosed the aging voodoo queen in the ass.

Mambo burst out laughing. "You are the dirtiest old man I ever met!"

"And you love me for it," Legba said, reaching out with one hand, his index finger carefully extended to touch the center of her forehead. The Mother's brother gave a satisfied sigh as their minds merged in blissful union and she read the question he had wished to ask her for a very long time.

"Yes," she said, a beautiful smile lighting up her face that momentarily made her years vanish. "I was afraid you'd never ask. When can I finally join you?"

"Soon," Legba said, sliding his hand down to caress her cheek, a risky venture for _any _void creature, especially when physically touching a spiritual creature so close to releasing her mortal shell as the Mambo. "Just grant me this boon, my love. It grieves me to see my sister so unhappy."

"I will wait," Mambo said. "But not for long. This form grows weary and I wish to leave it behind. Yesua himself will not keep me here a day longer than I wish."

"My parents cannot wait to meet you in person," Legba said. "They will host a huge feast to celebrate our betrothal once you join me."

"Has the Prophet made any progress with him?" Mambo asked, getting down to the problem at hand.

"Some," Legba said. "He is a broken man. My sister should have considered the consequences of enticing one immortal while she was betrothed to another. She shattered the both of them and left the rest of us to deal with the fallout."

"If she hadn't," Mambo said, "you wouldn't have _me_."

"No," Legba said softly. "I wouldn't. Thank the gods for my sisters' defiance. It has made life … interesting."

They paused, not daring to touch further lest Legba jolt Mambo out of the shell she fervently wished to leave behind. Legba quietly gathered up the personal effects and the gifts, his nostrils flared as he drank in her scent.

"The rest is up to _them,_" Legba said as he turned back to the door. "Few creatures, either mortal or immortal, have ever returned from the void."

"How long?" Mambo asked.

"Our sense of time is different than yours," Legba said. "I don't know how long in your timeline it will take.

"You have never encountered one whose will is as strong as hers," Mambo said, giving him a self-assured grin. "Nor one who loved another so much as he loves her. They will find a way."

"Love _always _finds a way," Legba said, touching her forehead one more time, sharing his consciousness as a void creature only did with their mate before transforming back into the tentacled thundercloud so he could pass between the dimensions into the void. "Until I see you again, my love."

The rift closed. Mambo sighed, leaning heavily upon her cane. The Reverend, the Rabbi, and the mosque's Imam came from behind the door to help erase all traces of her little ceremony and guide her aching body up the stairs. Yesua would not approve of the Mambo's efforts.

But it wasn't up to Yesua. The twelve disciples had decided as soon as they had met the Savior and seen he possessed many of the same shortcomings as the Father that they would not repeat the angels mistake and give him only what he asked for. The disciples job was to give him what he _needed._ It was why the Mother had selected them to guide him in the first place.

"Good night," Mambo bid her old friends.

"Good night," the others said.

They faded off quietly in different directions, their Fallen friends discreetly teleporting them home so Yesua was none the wiser.


	223. Chapter 222

_Note:__ Thanks to all who keep reading. We're approaching the end and I'm having a bit of trouble working out the grand finale (actually … the grand finale is already written … it's the plot twist in between that's giving me trouble). In the meantime, to those of you who keep writing 'you killed them both and then left us hanging!' Here's a tiny tasty little tidbit of reassurance._

_(No … I'm not going to tell you who the two voices were … yet … you'll just have to keep reading…)_

_Thanks to all who keep reading and reviewing, or simply quietly reading and pushing up those numbers. Your support means a lot!_

X

Chapter 222

He felt warm, his spirit comfortably intertwined with hers. Safe. Tendrils of love caressed his consciousness, whispering sweet words for him to focus inward so he could recover. Just as she had done when she had claimed him as her own and forbidden him to die at the base of the cliff. Just as she had done when she had called him back from the dead after a bullet had ruptured his lung. Just as she had done when she had called him forth from the eternal damnation of the Keep.

Sometimes, obedience was a _good _thing. Gabriel obeyed.

She squirmed in his grasp. Without fully waking up, he tugged her against his form and caressed her until she settled down, like a child cuddling a favorite teddy bear. Unconsciously he kept checking to make sure she was really there. Kept reaching out to reassure himself she wasn't a dream.

Safe. His little Prophet was safe. When he awoke, his little Prophet would be in his arms.

Content, he drifted back to sleep.


	224. Chapter 223

Chapter 223

Time. He was aware of time passing, safe in her arms, but it had no meaning in this place.

"I have to go do something, my sweet angel," Audrey whispered, caressing his form. "A little favor the Mother asked of me. But I'll be back in a little while. The others will tend to you while I'm gone."

Thousands of tiny tendrils of consciousness brushed his, the way one might feel when a cat brushed against your legs and then settled comfortably into your lap, purring. It felt … reassuring.

"Focus on your sense of smell and taste," Audrey said. "They're the first to recover. You'll sense a slightly briny smell, like the sea when the tide changes. Whenever you smell that, inhale and taste that scent as much as possible. It's primordial matter. The sooner you can gather enough to build a veneer around your consciousness, the sooner we can help you rebuild your physical form."

Rebuild … what?

He couldn't see. Gabriel struggled, trying to get his arms, his legs, his wings, anything. Anything at all to move and prove he still existed. He moved, but not in any way that felt familiar.

"Careful there, old friend," the familiar male voice said. "You just clonked your wife upside the … uh…"

"Top," the familiar female voice said. "You're pure consciousness right now. A brilliant point of light against the darkness. We need you to be still or the light will attract unwanted attention."

"The sooner you gather enough neutrinos to build a shell to hide your light," the male voice said, "the sooner we can stop worrying about our old adversary eating you for a midnight snack."

A threat? He needed to protect his little Prophet. He needed to…

"Stop wasting your energy struggling and start gathering primordial matter," Audrey said, gentle tendrils caressing him once more. "Your consciousness was damaged by the Father's punishment. Abaddon will protect us while you're vulnerable."

Abaddon? The familiar voice. The voice of the Grigori dragon who committed suicide in the basement of the Pentagon along with …

"Eloa," Gabriel managed to whisper.

"You remember me this time, little brother?" Eloa said. Hands reached out to caress where his … brow … might be. Hands? They definitely felt like mortal hands. Her voice sounded pleased. "Don't worry. The Mother has a special project for your little Prophet. She's got work for _you_ to do, too. So hurry up and recover!"

Alive. His youngest sister was alive. And sane, by the sound of it. Just as he had also managed to survive the void. Intact. Sort of. Well … maybe not quite _intact._

"I'll be back soon," Audrey said, tendrils caressing his consciousness and soothing him back to sleep.

He struggled to go with her as he felt her consciousness move away, but a tendril of her remained with him. Still connected. A reassuring reminder she was doing fine. Kind of like … the Father's hive mind.

_Exactly _like the Father's hive mind. Only without the prohibition against unauthorized thoughts or emotiveness. Why had the Father recreated the same type of connectedness using the collars as a void creature used naturally?

"If you don't mind," Abaddon interrupted his thoughts from somewhere off to one side. "I've found it attracts more of the stuff if you sing. I've got a little ditty that's perfect for the occasion."

Abaddon's natural singing voice was a beautiful, deep bass, with the ability to trumpet out high notes as though his vocal chords were a French horn. His choice of songs, however, was …

Comical?

"Food glorious food," Abaddon sang. "We're anxious to try it. Three banquets a day. Our favorite diet. Just picture a great big steak. Fried, roasted or stewed…"

The slight scent of brininess increased until it grew so heavy it became almost palpable. Inhale. And taste. His little Prophet had told him to inhale and taste the scent of the ocean. Gabriel obeyed.

As he drifted back to sleep, he noted his level of physical sensation had increased. He almost felt … corporeal.


	225. Chapter 224

Chapter 224

"Gabriel," Audrey whispered, stroking his sleeping form.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty," Abaddon honked. "Your princess is here to awaken you."

Thwack! Eloa hit her husband.

"Hey!"

"Be nice," Eloa hissed.

Audrey shot Abaddon a dirty look.

"He used to play tricks on _me _all the time when he was a cherub," Abaddon complained. "He and Michael were the mischievous dynamic duo."

"I … can't … picture that," Audrey said. "Gabriel has always been so … serious."

"He is serious," Eloa said. "Michael was always the ringleader. Being caught in the middle between their never-ending practical jokes was like living in one of your human comedy movies. What was the one you told me about, dear? The three stooges?"

Audrey smiled. Not only had the dual-souled Grigori who had willed himself to die in the basement of the Pentagon been able to survive here, but Gabriel's sister Eloa had finally soul-healed enough to survive here as well. Not only survive, but recreate her own mortal shell as Azrael had once done.

It had been Thamuz who'd informed her how the Grigori escaped the Keep. They took turns killing one another and passing 'through the eye of the needle,' emerging on the other side with new physical forms recreated from blueprints they carried imprinted in their consciousness. They'd never dared take their wives with them because their souls had shattered. Gabriel, on the other hand, had never been broken.

To save him, she'd had to kill him. Only she'd underestimated how badly the Father's punishment had damaged Gabriel's soul. To ensure his soul didn't shatter as his sisters once had, the Mother had helped Audrey cast Gabriel into a deep sleep until his soul had time to recover. Now … the worst of the damage had been repaired. It was time for Gabriel to wake up.

"Prophet," Gabriel called, struggling to get his bearings.

Audrey visualized sending him calming thoughts through the tendrils of consciousness which had connected them even _before _they had gotten here. Now visible. It felt a bit like … holy union. The sensation of being one heart and soul. Or one of those simple, quiet moments together when they could focus on one another.

"You've got to focus," Audrey said gently. "Everything here has the form you give it. If you want to touch me, first you have to picture having arms."

Gabriel panicked, his tentacles clutching at her in panic as he realized he was a formless void creature!

"Calm down, little brother," Eloa said. "It takes a while. That's all. Before you can walk, you must first form legs upon which to crawl."

"I can't see!" Gabriel said, struggling with panic. "How can I protect my little Prophet if I am blind?

"That's normal," Eloa said reassuringly. "We'll fix that soon. You've finally got enough mass to begin rebuilding your mortal shell."

"Mambo de Vivre sent through some samples of your DNA so you're not doing it completely blind," Audrey said, holding out the black feather she had given Mambo to send through and helping Gabriel wrap one of his tentacles around it. "It's a lot easier to do if you have the blueprint to start with."

"I can see that ladder with the third chain Doctor Pasala told us about," Gabriel said, suddenly calmer. "TNA … not DNA. He said the third chain is the reason angels can do things humans cannot."

"Most of the survivors of the apocalypse have at least a partially completed third strand," Audrey informed Eloa. "We think it's an evolutionary leap timed to occur around the same time Yesua would become old enough to take over our species."

Abaddon growled something inaudible about the Father. Eloa shushed him. Audrey had learned since living here and working with the couple that the vision-thread she'd followed of what would happen if Gabriel _hadn't _sacrificed his life, that the Grigori would someday storm heaven and destroy the entire universe, had been true. Only the fact the Father held their wives and offspring hostage had stopped them from doing it millennia ago.

"Look down the chain," Eloa said, a tendril of her consciousness reaching into his. "See the part of the ladder that's broken 73 rungs up from the bottom? That's the defect the Father leaves in all life forms he creates with his own hands so he can reshape them if he's not pleased with their performance. Picture moving some of your matter … the red kind … into that slot. There. Now the Father can't just dissipate your mortal shell anymore. If he wants to be rid of you, he's going to have to do it the old-fashioned way."

Tears sprang into Audrey's eyes as tentacles of consciousness separated into a body, arms, legs, and Gabriel's strong, handsome features. Right down to the soft, downy feathers on the underside of his wings. She reached out to touch the ticklish spot just below the knee-joint of his left wing which, thank the heavens, the Father had overlooked when he had wiped Gabriel's memory of her. A defect only a lover would have known about.

"Is this … better?" Gabriel asked, his expression guarded as he stared down at his own muscular arms and large, strong hands.

"Finally!" Abaddon laughed. "I was afraid he was just going to float around like a wraith from now on. I can see it now. Every church on Earth will have an effigy of the Archangel Gabriel. Word of God. Floaty, blobby thingy."

"He wouldn't be the first one who had trouble getting their bearings, my love," Eloa said. "We wouldn't want to be the pot calling the kettle black, now, would we? Oh he-who-took-two-thousand-years the first time through on his own?"

"I didn't have _you _with me the first time my brothers killed me so I could escape from the Keep," Abaddon good-naturedly shot right back. "Texcatlipocl got me. Luckily Papa Legba was paying attention and snatched me from his maw before he turned me into pretty shiny soul jewelry."

"Killed you?" Gabriel asked, reaching out to intertwine his fingers through Audrey's hands. "Soul jewelry?"

"The only way to escape the Keep," Audrey explained, caressing each finger which she now understood contained a separate tentacle of his consciousness, "unless someone smashes down the front door, is by dying. Everybody is so afraid of this place they stay put no matter what the Father throws at them. But the Grigori were alive the first time they followed the Mother in after their mates. Somehow, Lucifer unconsciously passed along some sort of inherited immunity to the destructive aspect of the void when he created them."

"We ganged up on Texcatlipocl and ripped the soul-fragments of our wives straight out of his maw," Abaddon said, his voice filled with anger. "The Mother gave them enough mass to stay on the other side and helped us drag them out of here, so we knew escape was possible. But they were so horrifically damaged that we feared they would be lost if we took them with us when we escaped."

"The Father reneged on his promise to restore their children," Audrey snorted in disgust. "He claimed he didn't know how to fix them, so he directed their rage towards tormenting humans!"

"Since Eloa was the most intact," Abaddon explained, "I was the first volunteer to agree to be sacrificed so I could pass through the void to escape. Eloa had just had a baby and was desperate to find her. She agreed to be cast out and exist in the Keep alone while I searched. But we never found them. We were already interred in the Keep when the Mother began recovering the fragments. We had no idea the Father had turned them into the heavenly host."

"How are you sane?" Gabriel asked.

"I was lucky," Eloa said. "Texcatlipocal had only just gotten to me. But Amitea was in really bad shape. She was the first one the Father dissipated, so she was the first one Texcatlipocl caught. He made an example of her."

"That's a long time to hold a grudge," Gabriel said.

"The evil bastard grabs anything that comes through the gateway in the hopes it is something the Mother wants back from him," Eloa said, her voice filled with hatred. "It's the only way he can get her to give him the time of day. He deliberately smashed her children's souls apart to avenge what she did to him when he hurt the Father."

"My new … project," Audrey said, resignation in her voice.

"Project?" Gabriel asked, raising one eyebrow.

"The Mother has asked me to help rehabilitate him," Audrey said. "Like I've been doing with the Grigori sires and their shattered offspring. For some reason, he's fascinated by any non-void soul capable of holding a shape in here."

"These days he's more interested in collecting as many souls as he can," Abaddon said. "Not breaking them. The evil bastard fashions himself as something of a creation deity. He keeps trying to force them to hold shapes, but they're too broken to do much of anything except sparkle on his exterior. That's why we call them soul jewelry."

"That's enough, dear," Eloa said, her voice stern. "Those are fragments of former souls we're talking about. Some of them might even be fragments of our children, although the Mother has done an admirable job of bargaining for every piece that was obviously one of ours. It angers me that she freed them, only to have the Father turn around and simply enslave them again once they reached the other side."

"Why are you going anywhere near him, then?" Gabriel demanded, his expression concerned. "I wish for you to stay as far away from him as possible."

"Texcatlipocl and the Father are flip sides of the same coin," Audrey said. "Each possesses core pieces of the other's soul. As the Father's core personality deteriorated with the Mother's absence, culminating in the events of the apocalypse, that same core personality has been gaining strength here in the void the more time the Mother spends bargaining with him."

"The Mother needs _you _to hurry up and recover," Eloa said. "She thinks you might have the samestabilizing influence on Texcatlipocl as you had upon the Father. Void-creatures need to feel connected to others of their species or they go insane."

"You're part void-creature," Abaddon said. "All of you are. Us, too."

Audrey was silent, carefully observing how Gabriel was handling the stress of suddenly discovering his body was whatever he made of it. She reached out to touch him with her mind, the bright tentacle of consciousness clearly visible against the perpetual darkness of the void, to reassure herself the fault-lines caused by fifteen years of nonstop torture had solidified enough that revealing too much information at once was not a threat to his well being. He appeared to be … fine. Steady and solid. Just like he'd always been.

"Not to sound vain," Gabriel finally asked, attempting to hide behind an unreadable expression. "But … what do I look like right now?"

"Remember Amitea's kraken?" Eloa said.

"Yes," Gabriel said, wincing at the memory. "I always thought the kraken was the most hideous creature I had ever seen until I recovered memories of the Mother's default shape when she crosses back and forth between realms.

"Worse," Abaddon said with a laugh.

"Not anymore," Audrey scolded. "He looks like he did just before the Father took him from me. Don't be a jerk!"

Abaddon laughed. Audrey and Eloa laughed along with him. Gabriel, however, appeared as though he wasn't sure whether or not he found it funny. "

"Of all the creatures to look like," Gabriel said, donning a sullen expression. "A kraken is near the bottom of my list. Right below pond scum and dog tick.

"You're as drop-dead gorgeous as you've always have been," Audrey said, reaching up to touch him. She'd forgotten just how much bigger than the other angels he was. Taller than Belaziel. Only the Grigori were bigger.

"You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen," Gabriel said softly. "Your human form looks as though it's surrounded by a thousand angel wings burning brilliantly against the darkness. Like … a star."

"I haven't quite gotten the hang of keeping my consciousness entirely inside my shell," Audrey said, self-consciously tucking the errant tendrils Gabriel mistook for 'wings' back into her body. Tears sprang to her eyes, even though she knew it was merely a subconscious projection.

"I thought I would never see you again," Gabriel said, caressing her cheek with his thumb. "Don't be sad."

"I'm not crying because I'm sad," Audrey sniffed, automatically wiping away the tear even though technically it did not exist. "I'm happy. I hadn't realized how badly the Father was punishing you until I saw what he was making you do over and over again. I've been terrified ever since we got here that one wrong move would cause your soul to shatter like happened to your sisters."

She began to sob like a little girl, finally allowing the stress of the past fifteen years, culminating in a breathtakingly ballsy escape and worrying about the possibility Gabriel might break from soul-damage she hadn't had either the opportunity or skill to assess back in the Keep, to escape. Gabriel pulled her into his arms and wrapped his wings around them both, tuning out the world, murmuring wordless comforts. It was _his _turn to be strong now.

"Hey … don't be sad," Abaddon said, giving them a toothy grin and twitching his tail mischievously. "This place is cool. You can use this stuff to form any shape you like. Look, Mother! No hands!"

Audrey peeped her head out from between Gabriel's black-brown wings just in time to see Abaddon transform himself into a gigantic serpent without arms or hands.

"The eyes have it," Eloa said laughing, twitching her red-winged blackbird colored plumage and causing her wings to sprout two, large peacock-like feathery eyes.

"Eye think," Abaddon responded by turning into a gigantic eyeball comprised of millions of tinier eyes. "Therefore, eye am."

"The hand is quicker than the eye!" Eloa said, turning herself into a many-handed creature and reaching out to poke her husband playfully in one of his 'eyes.'

"You'll poke your eye out!" Abaddon said, transforming back into a version of himself ridiculously wrapped from snout-to-tail in an enormous, puffy red snowsuit and holding a pellet gun. He mocked firing the gun, holding his eye, and falling onto his back going 'my eye, my eye!' The snowsuit dissipated, revealing his normal reptilian skin which had turned red with laughter.

Audrey giggled, her tears forgotten. It was impossible to remain gloomy with the Laurel and Hardy comedy duo of the void anywhere in close proximity. Abaddon must have engineered his last escape at some point during the past half-century to be aware of a cultural movie reference from the 1970's.

"Where's the Mother?" Gabriel asked, the slightest hint of a smile causing one side of his mouth to uptick. "I remember when _she _used to shapeshift like this to amuse us. It would please me to thank her."

"She guards the gateway," Eloa said. "Always. She devotes her life to ensuring as few life-sparks as possible fall back into the void. Although she's not sure what to do with them now. Yesua didn't have a backup plan."

"Gabriella has opened the gates of Sheol and freed the inhabitants," Audrey informed him. "I heard the trumpet shake the soils of Sheol just before our souls passed into the void. The Grigori freed their mates and teleported them the hell out of there only moments before the volcano beneath it blew it to pieces."

"Gabriella?" Gabriel asked. "I thought you wanted to name her Mary?"

"I named her after the one person in the world I admired above all others," Audrey said, reaching out to touch the form he had just shaped for himself. She ran her thumb over his lip, smiling as he recovered enough control to run his own thumb over the one she had just used. A symbolic kiss.

"I think we'd better leave these two alone for a while," Abaddon said, giving his mate a knowing grin. "You know … you can try all _sorts _of interesting positions you never knew you could contort into in here. It helps make up for the lack of physical sensation."

"Abaddon!" Eloa cried out in mock indignation, cuffing him off the side of the snout as she flit her red-winged blackbird wings in disgust. "You are a pig!"

"Oink, oink," Abaddon snorted, transforming his dinosaur-like snout into a gigantic pigs nose as he grabbed his wife around the waist. "Hey … I could go for some roast pork right about now. As soon as Gabriel completes the Mother's mission, we can blow this joint and go join our brothers for a pig roast. Did I ever tell you about this island I visited in the Pacific where the locals …"

The two walked off, bickering good-naturedly like siblings dividing a bag of colorful candies between themselves and leaving Audrey alone with her now semi-corporeal husband at last.

"Can we…?" he asked, hesitating as he practiced moving his 'body' the way he _would _have moved it had his original one been intact.

"Only one way to find out," Audrey said, reaching up to touch every part of his not-quite-corporeal form to reassure herself he was really there.

Gabriel's nostrils flared, inhaling her scent. At least _that _sense seemed to work just fine. Probably the reason the Mother had imbued her cherubs with a keen sense of smell. It was useful where she had come from.

"Kiss me," Audrey said, her eyes glittering with emotion as she was captured by the intensity of naked emotion she could see in Gabriel's unearthly blue eyes.

Gabriel's mouth descended upon hers, compensating for the lack of physical sensation by focusing on the taste of her lips and connection between their consciousnesses. Her heart speed up, ecstatic jolts of energy shooting to her extremities and between each other like live wires arcing as they touched. Gabriel hissed with pleasure as Audrey reached through the clothing he had imagined on his form to caress his manhood.

"You don't have to stop to take off clothing in here," Audrey said suggestively between kisses. "Just imagine they're gone, and they go away."

"Mmm…hmm..." Gabriel growled like a wild animal, nuzzling her beneath her ear and tasting down her neck to the place where her pulse emitted pheromones which allowed him to interpret her state of physical being. He bit down gently upon her neck as he slid his hand down her back. Audrey willed away her clothing. Now that he was awake and back in once piece, she was anxious as he was to re-consummate their union.

"You're losing your words," Audrey giggled. "Since there are no walls in here, at least we don't have to worry about you trashing the joint with your wings."

"Mmmmm…" Gabriel rumbled in his throat, pressing her back upon the nothingness as he slid one knee between her legs and rubbed his manhood against her mound of Venus.

"In a hurry, are we?" Audrey mock-pouted, squirming beneath his weight. "What … no foreplay?"

She gasped as Gabriel entered her in one stroke and only slowed just long enough to make sure he didn't hurt her as he buried himself up to the hilt, foreplay obviously the _last _thing upon his mind at the moment. Good-natured jibes were lost as she felt him swell inside of her, desperate to take her and brand her as _his _all over again. There was nothing tender or sweet in the way he took her now, but hunger. A desperate hunger borne of fifteen years apart and the overwhelming instinct which burned in his mind to solidify his connection to his mate.

"Please," Audrey pleaded, her hips rising up to meet his as she tried to catch up to him. "Together."

She was losing her form. As his wings beat and carried them aloft, no gravity existing in this place except the ever-present pressure of primordial matter, tentacles of pure consciousness erupted from her physical form and reached out to intertwine with his. Form was a hindrance to achieving the union he now sought. Holy union. The momentary merging of two souls into one. Audrey threw back her head as she arched the back that was no longer fully corporeal and let the last boundaries fall between them.

Their thoughts merged as a single mind.

Their bodies merged as a single soul.

The hearts each had created from memory merged as a single heart, beating with a single, thunderous beat.

Audrey cried out in triumph, the ecstasy of knowing her mates' mind and that, despite all that had happened, he was still her beautiful angel.

They were one creature now.

They saw the void for what it really was, and it was beautiful. The placenta which nurtured countless universes. At this moment in time, they could have selected any one of those universes to dwell in, or to become the seed of a whole new universe.

"We made it," Audrey whispered, nuzzling Gabriel's throat.

"We have to go back," Gabriel said, regret tingeing the consciousness which was still merged with hers. "My brothers. Our daughter. We can't just leave them all behind."

"No," Audrey said, basking in the light of what appeared to be a song which permeated the place they dwelt in right now. "We can't. Do they even know this place exists?"

"The Mother used to tell us stories her people had of a place like this," Gabriel said, each feather coming alive as a point of consciousness as he caressed her form. "A paradise located in the center of the void that many have tried to reach, but none have ever returned from. It is said only a pair united in perfect love can ever reach this place."

"Now that we know it's here," Audrey said. "Someday we can return. When the others are ready to come with us."

Gabriel inhaled her scent, licking the pulse point at the base of her throat.

"You taste so different," Gabriel murmured. "And yet you taste exactly the same. Only … the last time you were in my arms our daughters scent was merged with yours. What has become of her?"

"We shall have to go back and find out," Audrey said.

Although what their physical bodies did in this realm was a result of what their consciousness shaped, old patterns died hard. Gabriel stayed with her until he had shrunk down enough to no longer to remain inside of her, that being the old, comfortable signal that it was time to resume their existence as two separate consciousnesses until the next time they chose to merge. They lay together, caressing one another and smiling as first one, and then the other, tried to tuck errant strands of consciousness that hung out all over the place like untucked shirttails back into their semi-corporeal forms, their level of dishevelment bespeaking what activity the two lovers had just been up to.

"God, I love you," Gabriel murmured, kissing her so firmly she thought for a moment they might lose form and merge once again. "What did I ever do to deserve such bliss?"

"And I love _you _more than my own existence," Audrey whispered, giving _him _the vow he had always given to her, the vow it had taken his death for her to finally understand.

Gabriel began to sing, his rich, baritone voice singing with all the undertones and chords his voice had been unable to produce while cast down upon the Earth. He sang for her now in the voice that made even heaven weep for joy.

"Let her kiss me with the kisses of her mouth," Gabriel sang. "For thy love is better than wine…" Song of Songs. The song he now only sang for her. They basked together in the light of their mutual love for a very long time, time being a fluid thing in the void which had no need for such limitations.


	226. Chapter 225

Chapter 225

"Mother!" Sandra'el called, pounding on the door of the workshop. "Papa's here with Uncle Thamuz. He thinks we have enough to reconstitute the last one."

"_-I- _wanted to be the one to knock!" Howard'el pouted, pounding as well. "Mama said that _–I- _could be the one to sit in Grandfather's lap while he fixes our new playmate!"

"It's _my _turn!" Sandra'el shot right back.

"No … mine!" Howard'el said, starting to wail.

"Mine!" Sandra'el screeched, jumping up and down and reaching to pull her brothers hair. As she did, a low 'thrum' could be heard resonating from the hinges of the door of her grandfathers workshop.

"Sandie! Howie!" Sandra Anderson scolded, their human great-grandmother. "Simmer down! You know you're not supposed to disturb your mother while she's working!"

From inside the workshop, Gabriella sighed, a small smile lighting up her face. "I will go remind them about the proper decorum for barging into the workshop of the heavenly father, Grandfather. And try not to smile when I scold them."

"It's okay," the Father said, his eyes a brilliant electric blue color as he focused on finishing up a new life form he was working on to help Yesua colonize Mars. "As long as they don't break anything. One at a time is all I can handle, Little Archangel."

Gabriella heaved her enormous girth, heavy with her third child, up off the stool and waddled towards the door, closing it softly behind her as she herded her offspring out of earshot of the workshop. The twins leaped around her, excitedly telling her about the visitors making their way to the garden. Then … all of a sudden she was chopped liver … forgotten … the moment her husband came into sight.

"Papa!" the twins shouted, leaping into Uriel's arms as soon as he strode up the pathway. Sandra'el tweaked the golden torc he wore around his neck while Howard'el amused himself by fishing in his father's pockets for mortal sweets.

"Careful, little one," Uriel said with a laugh, twitching his deadly, razor-sharp wings out of the cherub slice-and-dice zone. As an archangel in charge of defending heaven against any and all threats and the inhabitants of Sheol incorporated back into the general population of Earth, Uriel had been forced to retain his steel-laced feathers.

The dog collars, however, were gone. Replaced by golden torcs engineered by Jose' to communicate telepathically. They could be shut off at will to have some privacy. It was a necessary compromise. The Father needed the void-consciousness he coexisted with to maintain the vast universe he had created, while the void-consciousness desperately needed to feel connected to the offspring it had helped the Mother and the Father create or it quickly deteriorated into violent madness.

They had finally figured out the seed of void-consciousness which had hitched a ride into this universe when the Mother had pieced the Father back together wasn't inherently evil. Merely very young for a void-creature. Too young to understand it couldn't simply tantrum and break its 'toys.' Dealing with the 'black-eyed Father' was like dealing with a third, soon to be fourth, child!

"How's the Father doing today, Little Archangel?" Uriel asked, pulling Gabriella in for a kiss. "Is he stable enough to do this?"

"Blue eyes all day today," Gabriella said, nipping her mates lower lip as she inhaled his scent. She caressed the downy underside of his wings with the leading edge of one of her own soft, glossy black-brown wings. "But I'm sure we can get the other one to make an appearance. He's been pretty content since we hooked the twins up to those mini-torcs."

Only the black-eyed void-consciousness knew how to entice the soul-fragments of the heavenly host to dissolve their separate boundaries and fuse back into one soul before the blue-eyed version of the Father could use the new mortal shell he had built a template for around that consciousness. So long as they had remained in denial about the fact the Father was at war within himself, the problem had been unsolvable. Now that Gabriella had gotten the two sides to make peace with one another and work together, the solution was ridiculously simple.

"How's our little Audri'el today?" Uriel asked, affectionately rubbing her swollen abdomen and bending down to speak directly to the offspring nearing completion in her belly.

The Father had finally gotten sick of watching them buzzing around each other like bees, attracted to the nectar but too afraid to sip, and informed them purebred angel flesh did not carry the genetic defects which had caused him to prohibit secondary interfamilial relations. The void creature, on the other hand, had been afraid marriage would tempt the two of them to abandon it. Abandonment issues had turned out to be the source of much of its misbehavior, lack of connection to other consciousnesses a death-sentence in the void where it had come from. They had finally managed to convince it they weren't going anywhere. The Father had blessed their union himself.

_Both _selves…

"I don't want to name her that," Gabriella said, her open, happy expression quickly retreating behind an unreadable one. "I keep thinking my mom's coming back any minute and bringing my father with her. Naming our children after her would make her death seem … final."

"I understand," Uriel said, giving her a tender kiss. "We'll think of some other name, then."

"Where's Thamuz?" Gabriella asked, firmly changing the subject.

"I'm coming … I'm coming …" Thamuz called, huffing up the hill carrying two-dozen tiny crates of insects and small animals. "I hope this does it. Today is a joyous day."

"It's too bad Eloa and her mate aren't here to see this," Uriel said. "They cast themselves together into the void for uncreation rather than go back into the Keep. Just as the Prophet and Gabriel did."

"It will be up to _us _to stand in as her parents," Thamuz said. "Iofiel has agreed to adopt her and raise her as one of our own."

Out of all the figurines in the Father's workshop, this one had always haunted Gabriella the most. A tiny baby. Obviously a newborn. As they'd scoured the Earth, searching for the heavenly host and rehabilitating them as best they could, Gabriella had found purpose in helping the Father repair the damage he had wrought. The work was deeply gratifying, but the tiny statue, hours old by the look of her, had always remained as a haunting reminder of just how unjust the Father's anger had been.

Especially given Gabriella's current condition…

"Come," Gabriella said, waddling back towards the shed, so large with child at the moment it was difficult to get airborne. "I'll go get him. Grandma Sandra? Could you please bring Sandra'el over to the palace to get some chocolate ice cream?"

"Got it," Sandra Anderson said, still regal and beautiful despite her brush with death, ascension, descension, and then ascension again. And also smart enough to realize she was being asked to distract one cherub so the second one could help the Father, who could still only cope with one rambunctious cherub at a time. "Howard? We're going for ice cream. Want to come?"

"Sure!" Gabriella's maternal human grandfather called from where he was carefully tending some new species of plant the Father had recently created. "Maybe your Uncle Michael will eat some with us, Sandra'el. Would you like that?"

"Yah!" Sandra'el shouted, skipping happily over to her great-grandfather.

On her way, she picked a spiky orange flower unlike any that had ever been seen on Earth. The vegetation growing in the garden these days was alien and strange. Test-ecosystems for a habitable new planet the Father was currently building so Yesua would have someplace to send Earth's burgeoning population. Especially the less savory characters Gabriella had sprung from Sheol. The 'new Sheol' was a colony on the moon where the hardest cases were sent to eek out an existence building planetary bases. They were still considered 'damned,' but they got to live their lives as 'real' human beings and any offspring they produced were considered 'saved.' Their cases were reviewed annually and those eligible for parole released back into the general population. No more holding grudges through the fourth generation!

Yesua could now genetically manipulate existing species and create entirely new non-sentient ones, but he had not yet progressed to the point in his development where he could create an entire universe. Young gods, it appeared, were not born omnipotent. They grew into those abilities over time. For now, Yesua was forced to work with the Father. It was Gabriella's role as peacemaker to make sure the three of them, Yesua, the Father, and the Father's other personality, got along.

"Ioffie!" Thamuz trumpeted into the air, his dragon-like roar eliciting giggles of delight from the twins. "Get your tailfeathers down here or you're going to miss your new neice!"

White light flashed as a beautiful, white-winged full-blooded angel teleported directly into the garden and nestled into her husband's side. Blonde wavy hair. Alabaster skin. Tall, slender figure. Ioffiel, also nicknamed the 'beauty of God,' strongly resembled a female version of Lucifer. Gabriella noted the way Thamuz's face always lit up whenever Ioffiel made her entrance.

"Eloa would be so happy we found the last of her children," Ioffiel said. "I miss her."

"As would Abaddon," Thamuz said, his coloring turning a mournful bluish-purple as his leathery wings drooped. "We will do our best to stand in their place. As Belaziel did for Gabriella. We have big shoes to fill."

"I couldn't have asked for a better father-figure," Gabriella said. "I'm sure you'll do fine. Now everybody sit still while I bring the Father out. The void-fragment's consciousness is vast, but it's easily agitated by unexpected emotion. I will counsel it as to which emotions to expect so it doesn't panic."

Gabriella waddled back into the workshop to prepare the Father emotionally for a trip outside. The void creature had latched onto the cherubs the way it had Gabriella and, before her, her father. For some reason, they all possessed some quality it needed to survive. The rest of them … he had gradually grown to tolerate as long as they didn't do anything unexpected. Taken as a whole, the Father was still an arrogant jackass, but he was the only arrogant jackass around who knew anything about how to keep a universe as vast as this one running. Gabriella had gradually learned to make her peace with both sides of him.

"Father," Gabriella said, picking up the tiny statue, standing alone on a shelf by itself, a constant reminder that the Father's restitution was not yet finished. "We're ready. We need _both _of you to work together on this."

The Father looked up from his work and sighed. As she watched, Gabriella recognized the subtle physical changes that indicated his core personality was ceding control to the soul-fragments of the void creature which had, over billions of years, grown into a completely separate soul residing within the same physical shell. It could not exist here without the Father, nor could it return home. Like it or not, the Father was his own devil.

"Gabriel?" the Father asked, his eyes turning a dark, charcoal grey. "You're going to stay this time? Aren't you? It frightens me when you run off like that."

"I'm still here, Father," Gabriella patiently reminded him. "And I'm Gabriella, remember? Gabriel's daughter? My father died a long time ago."

"Oh …" the Father said, his eyes transforming completely black. "Gabriel was a good boy. So quiet. He knew how to sit still so I could feel connected to him. I don't understand why he went away. Will you go away, too?"

"No," Gabriella said, suppressing the unhelpful emotion of anger as she led him towards the door. "Not unless you _send _me away. I understand you need me. Now … be calm. I've asked everyone to sit perfectly still so they don't disturb you."

"The others move too much," the black-eyed Father said. "Too many emotions. Their emotions frighten me. When I feel too many emotions, I can't think. It makes the Mother angry when I act without thinking."

"Acting without thinking is very bad," Gabriella said. "Now the sunlight is going to be bright, so don't get alarmed when it hurts your eyes."

"If I'm a good boy today," the black-eyed Father asked, "will you let me play with the twins?"

"Howard'el is staying to watch you work," Gabriella said gently. "If you do a good job, I'll let you play with him in the garden for a couple of hours."

"Oh … good," the black-eyed Father said, his expression changing to appear much younger. "I like it when we play hide and seek. I never realized how much fun it was to play games in the garden."

Gabriella led him out the door, patient as a saint with her childish charge. She never, ever made the mistake of assuming, just because she had helped the blue-eyed version of the Father get his 'shadow self' under control, that the immature void creature she dealt with now was innocuous. The Father could only dissipate matter which he had brought into being through an act of will. He couldn't dissipate creations who had birthed on their own. Howard'el would be perfectly safe under the watchful eye of Howard Senior, his great-grandfather.

Her husband, on the other hand…

Gabriella kept the full-blooded angels, Fallen and Unfallen alike, as far away from the Father as she could when he acted testy. Nephilim and humans attended to his needs now, not full-blooded angels. The torcs had been modified so the Father couldn't use them to track their exact whereabouts in case he ever felt like dissipating them in a fit of anger. The inner Garden had been transformed into a sort of … insane asylum.

Uriel and Ioffiel were taking a risk coming here today. It was why Michael had been ordered by Yesua to stay away. As the archangel who did the bulk of running heaven so the Father's fragile dual-consciousness wasn't unduly taxed, he was too valuable to risk.

Michael hated it…

He often lamented he'd have much rather spent a few million years undergoing torture in the now-defunct Keep rather than condemned to play Regent behind a desk. Hopefully ice cream with Sandra'el would be a pleasant diversion. Now if only they could tempt Michael into noticing one of the nice young women Gabriella kept purposefully sticking under his nose in the hopes he would stop living such a monkish existence…

"Hello," the black-eyed Father said to the various small insects and rodents they'd taught to hold a physical form. "Hey … you don't belong with this group. This one's from a different soul!"

"Thank you, Father," Thamuz said, patiently putting a ladybug back into its crate. "We'll keep looking for its other parts. We wouldn't want to mix things up."

"This one doesn't belong, either," the Father said, pointing to an inchworm. "He doesn't belong to either one of these souls."

Gabriella groaned.

"Are we still going to have enough, Grandfather?" Howard-el asked, disappointment apparent in his voice.

The black-eyed Father picked up and examined the other soul fragments.

"There are some pieces still missing," the Father said. "But this soul is very young. I think she will grow to compensate for the missing pieces."

Gabriel glanced at the delicate statuette in her hand and let out a breath that she didn't realize she was holding. They would probably be finding soul-fragments and merging them into existing creatures for years to come, but one by one Gabriella had first helped the Father shape, and then reconstitute those he had wronged. It was the Father's most heartfelt yearning. If he fixed what he had done wrong, perhaps the Mother would return to him?

The void-creature, on the other hand, simply wanted to go home. Back into the void whence it had come.

"Gather up now, little friends," the black-eyed Father said. "I want you to hold paws, or tentacles, and focus on the fragment next to you as I tell you what to do…"

Gabriella had watched the same process occur over 350,000 times, but as an Earth-born angel, it still amazed her the form a soul, free of its mortal shell, took once it coalesced into a single, sentient consciousness. Millions of slender threads of pure light wafted as though it were an undersea creature, reaching out to first touch, and then join tentacles to the star-creature next to it. Slowly, after much feeling to get re-acquainted, one by one the soul-fragments accepted the other pieces and merged into a single soul-star. The black-eyed Father picked up the infant soul and held it out to where Gabriella held the tiny new form for it to inhabit.

"Do you think the Mother will stop hating me now?" the black-eyed Father asked, black tears streaming down the pale cheeks of his host. "The Father is very sad I made his mate go away."

"I don't know, Grandfather," Gabriella said gently. "But you'll always have _us._ We'll make it work. I promise."

"You've got a little bit of _me _in you, too, you know," the black-eyed Father said softly, suddenly appearing older than the child-like void creature Gabriella was used to dealing with. "That's why I made your father so big. Our consciousness is bigger than theirs. I wanted at least _one _of Asherah's children to be at least partially mine."

This personality, she knew, was a memory from the soul-fragment carved out of the original void-creature which had spawned the younger void-creature when the Mother had pieced the Father back together. The combatant who had slain the Father for taking his betrothed. The echo of memory responsible for much of the younger void-consciousnesses insecurities about abandonment, much the way Gabriella's mother had carried the memories of her dead father. _This _was the fragment she had once considered the devil, but now realized was nothing more than the echo of an angry, grief-stricken consciousness dumped at the altar.

"Time to go," the Father sighed, black eyes ceding first to neutral grey ones, and then to the brilliant blue of the original, core personality of the heavenly Father, the whispered words of the black-eyed personality forgotten. He glanced down at the infant star-like soul in his hands and stepped towards Gabriella to take the statuette out of her hands. The Father never remembered what he had done while in the other state.

"The Mother was always so much better at this part than me," the blue-eyed Father said, his counterparts' sadness forgotten as he gave her a wry grin that reminded Gabriella of Yesua. "But here we go. Go forth and multiply, little dragonette." The Father reached out to touch the little statuette and unceremoniously plopped the infant soul into it.

The Grigori-angel child yawned and stretched, her tiny leathery wings twitching as she opened the golden eyes on her otherwise human face and stretched her tiny, human infant fists. Her slender, forked tail wrapped trustingly around the Father's wrist as her little human toes flexed.

"Here," the Father said, handing the newborn to Ioffiel. "I have no idea what to do with them once I create them. That was always the Mother's department."

Ioffiel burst into tears. Thamuz stepped up to put his arm around her shoulders and wrapped her in his wings as his mate both welcomed the child of her deceased sister back into this world, and also mourned her loss.

"So many mistakes," the Father said softly, his blue eyes waxing to grey as the neutral default personality took over. He turned to Gabriella. "Come, Gabriel. We have work to do. Your Mother will be upset if she sees I've been neglecting your education."

"Yes, Grandfather," Gabriella said, herding him back into his workshop. The Father was done socializing for the day. "Let's get back to work on that new ecosystem you've been working on and then you should get some rest. But I'm Gabriella, remember? Gabriel's daughter? I've come to stay with you so you can teach me?"

"Oh … yes," the grey-eyed Father sighed. "Such a good girl. So much like your father. What ever happened to him?"

Gabriella glanced over to where her husband stood, consoling Howard'el that the Father would not be up to a game of hide-and-seek this afternoon after all. Only the younger black-eyed version of the Father liked to play games, the games appearing to help the second soul in whatever emotional development it was that void creatures needed to make.

"I'll put the Father to bed no later than sundown," Gabriella silently mouthed the words, looking with regret towards the cherubs she never seemed to have enough time to play with and the husband she yearned to spend time with, but they never seemed to have enough time. They had tried delegating some of the caretaking of the Father to other humans or Nephilim, but for some reason only Gabriella had what the black-eyed version of the Father needed so that _both _personalities could keep things together.

Uriel stepped up to take her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and twirling the golden ring upon her third finger in what had become their secret 'kiss' when in the presence of the Father. Gabriella glanced up at her auburn-haired mate, the setting sun making it appear as though his hair and wings were on fire, and reached up to trace the spot where a scar had once marred his face. His nostrils flared, inhaling her scent, as he bent in to kiss her quick before the Father turned around to catch them in the act.

"Come, Gabriel," the grey-eyed Father mumbled, shuffling through the door, back hunched, like a tired old man. "I made you your own chair. You're getting too big to always be hiding under the table."

"Later," Gabriella murmured, suggestively nipping his neck but otherwise keeping things chaste for the sake of the young pair of eyes tugging impatiently at his fathers' hand to go join his sister for ice cream.

"Yes … later," Uriel whispered with a slight growl, affectionately rubbing her swollen abdomen. "I'll make sure the cherubs are put to bed at a decent hour."

"It's about time I taught you how to shape matter on your own, Gabriel," the grey-eyed Father continued rambling. "If we wait for your Mother to do it, you'll still be shaping beetles when the blue planet's sun finally turns into a red giant."

"Yes, Grandfather," Gabriella said, reluctantly leaving her beautiful mate and gently closing the door behind her as she patiently reiterated the 'script.' "I'd like that. But I'm Gabriella, remember? Gabriel's daughter…"


	227. Chapter 226

Chapter 226

"Papa, Papa!" Sandra'el shouted, flying up the pathway of the garden in a red-winged blur. "See what I made!"

Uriel smiled and opened his arms, bracing himself for impact. As expected, his exuberant offspring flew into his arms at mach speed, almost knocking him backwards. He fluttered his wings, mindful of the danger his razor-sharp primary feathers posed to unwary cherubs, to regain his balance.

"What do you have there, little cherub?" Uriel asked, waiting for whatever his curious daughter had gripped in her muddy little hand to be shoved into his face like she always did when excited. Sandra'el's carrot red curls framed her dirt-smudged face like the rays of the sun.

"It's my very own firebird!" Sandra'el said, holding the brilliantly scarlet-plumaged bird aloft, where it promptly burst into flames.

"Whoah!" Uriel said, yanking her out of harms' way. "Where did you get that? You know Yesua gets upset when you get into his experimental creations!"

"Yesua didn't create him, Papa," Sandra'el said, pulling the firebird back down and hugging him to her chest. "-I- did."

Uriel paused. This creation was unknown to him. Although the Father could shape matter into any form he wanted and even animate simpler forms, such as plants, without the Mother, he was unable to create entirely _new _life forms from scratch, such as this firebird.

"Yesua is the only one who knows how to both shape matter and breathe a life spark into it," Uriel said. "He will be very upset you set one of his creations loose. This animal appears dangerous."

"Yesua didn't create this form!" Sandra'el shouted, squirming to get free as she wound up into one of her infamous temper tantrums that caused the golden torc Uriel wore around his neck to resonate with her anger. "-I- did! The nice lady helped me breathe the life spark into it!"

Uriel glanced over to where Non Gae was teaching her two daughters an intricate kisaeng dance using beautifully painted fans as props. Gunns' daughters, as well, although Non Gae had refused to marry him. They appeared to be three exotic, colorful birds, dressed in red and gold plumage like the firebird. But they were also only human. Genetically advanced humans, all possessing more of whatever essence the Mother had selected the disciples for and possessing many of the same abilities to heal as Mary Magdaline, but still only human. Neither Non Gae nor her daughters were capable of breathing a life spark into a creation. Not even the Father possessed that gift.

"It's a sin to tell a lie," Uriel said softly, giving his daughter his most disappointed 'I'm disappointed in you' look. "You should always tell the truth. I can't help you put this creation back where it belongs if you're not truthful."

"I –did- create it!" Sandra'el wailed, her little voice growing louder and shriller as the steel in Uriel's feathers began to hum. "The lady helped me. And it's _mine! _Arghhhhhh!" Sandra'el began pummeling her father with her free hand, causing the firebird to startle and erupt into flames a second time, sparks spraying upon the both of them that, thankfully, did not burn. At least the creation was not dangerous as it had first appeared.

Uriel stood, unsure of what to do. Although he had spent enough time amongst humans to understand the powerful emotions even a miniscule amount of human blood gave to those who carried it, he had also learned that most _mortal _fathers didn't have any more of a clue about how to handle the tantrum of a four-year-old than _he _did. Especially not those of his adorable, willful daughter, who had inherited _none _of her mother's even-tempered disposition and _all _of her Prophet grandmothers' ability to make her voice heard.

"You should listen to your daughter," a beautiful, musical voice said, the very air of the garden shimmering as though it were alive as she spoke. "She is a very talented young sculptor. Just like her father."

Uriel glanced down the garden path in the direction the voice had come from, every nerve fiber in his body coming alive at the sound of a voice he hadn't heard for seventy-five million of years.

"Mother?" Uriel asked, his voice a whisper.

"As I recall," the Mother said, coming into view at last as she glided gracefully up the path, butterflies fluttering around her in greeting as she walked. "She's not the _only _cherub with a penchant for shaping creations that light up. I believe you called your first creation a … firefly?"

"See!" Sandra'el pouted, squirming from his shocked grip and crossing her arms in front of her chest in a gesture of displeasure which was a carbon copy of one Gabriella appeared to have passed along to _both _of their offspring. "I _told _you the lady helped me create him!"

"Mother?" Uriel asked again, his voice louder this time.

Ever since Gabriella had come to Eden, the garden had slowly come back to life, nurtured back to health by the troops she had rallied to tend to it as _she _tended to the Father himself. It was as beautiful as any fertile dream garden in an Earth home and garden magazine, but for as long as Uriel had memories, it had _still _had always been little more than a garden. Now, however, as the Mother approached, it was as though the garden was coming alive, a sentient creature in its own right remembering what it had once been before her departure.

The Mother had assumed the shape Uriel remembered best. The black Madonna. The most breathtakingly beautiful four-winged angel that had ever existed. Tall. Slender. Her flesh and eyes as ebony as night, almost blue in their blackness, the color of rich velvet. Long, black hair trailed down her back almost to her ankles. Wherever her feet touched the ground, four-leaf clovers sprung up where she had stepped and flowers burst into bloom on either side of her. The soil of the garden, which had become depleted and brown, making it difficult for the Father to teach Gabriella how to shape matter from it, turned rich and black beneath her feet.

"I'm surprised you remember me, my son," the Mother said, her double set of soft, feathery black wings nestling against her back as she reached out to caress his cheek. "My little fire sprite. I see you have passed along your fiery temper to your daughter."

"I'm … I try to be even-tempered, Mother," Uriel stammered, at a loss for words as she touched the center of his forehead and memories burst into his mind of _him _taking a very similar temper-tantrum at around the same age as Sandra'el was now. "You've … you've returned…"

"Your Father has healed the rift which cleaved our two worlds apart as much as he can by himself," the Mother said softly, reaching now to gently tussle Sandra'el's curls. "How I've missed him. It's time I help shape the universe our cherubs need now for their _own _families to grow."

"Mother," Uriel sobbed, reaching out to pull the Mother into his arms, remembering on his own now what it had felt like to have a mother. Unable to choke any further words, he wept like a little boy even though he now dwarfed the Mother's petite form.

"Howard'el! Howard'el!" Sandra'el shouted joyously, running towards the last place she had seen her brother, shouting for him to come see what she had created. The fiery young cherub proudly held her flaming red firebird aloft before her like she were bearing an Olympic torch towards the opening ceremonies of the games.

"I come not alone," the Mother said, touching his cheek and searching his eyes as though she were looking straight into his soul.

Uriel involuntarily shuddered, feeling naked and vulnerable before the Mother's scrutiny. The _same _sensation he had felt whenever he had been in the presence of the Prophet.

"Son …" the Mother said, her brow etched with concern. "I can see in your heart that the love you bear for your wife has reservations. This is not good. The Prophet was never yours to love. You must let go of your first love completely or you will never fully be able to return the _true_ love your wife bears for you."

"I _let _her go," Uriel whispered. "And she died because of it. I shall never forgive myself for failing her."

"You gave her what she needed," the Mother said, her eyes carrying understanding, not condemnation as she lay bare the secret Uriel had kept hidden in his heart these past ten years. That although he loved Gabriella, there was a part of him that still loved the Prophet. "Perhaps if you see the nobility of your sacrifice, it will enable you to move on."

As she spoke, the vegetation of the garden grew lush and green, every flower bursting into bloom. The sickly-looking Martian terraformed plants the Father had little luck getting to produce oxygen suddenly became lush and purple, the air in the garden becoming almost intoxicating with the air they produced.

"Now _this _is how I remember the garden," a rich, baritone voice spoke that could only belong to one angel.

"Gabriel!" Uriel said, halting the impulse to run up and hug his brother, memory of how horribly he had treated him the last time he had seen him causing him to turn red with shame.

How was Gabriel going to take it when he found out he'd married his daughter?

"I wouldn't know," a second voice spoke from beside him, sending jolts of anticipation through Uriel's body. "I've never been here before."

"Prophet," Uriel whispered, frozen where he stood as he recognized the voice and scent, but not the physical form of the winged creature walking at his brother's side.

"Hello, Uriel," Audrey said, stepping out from where she walked nestled into his brothers side to stand in front of him.

"You've … got … wings?" Uriel said, staring at the two pairs of wings that resembled those preferred by the Mother.

Gabriel reached out to caress one of the wings and smiled at some private joke that Uriel wasn't privy to. Smiling? Gabriel was … smiling?

"Oh … those," Audrey said, giving her husband a conspiratorial glance as her cheeks turned a deep blush. "My consciousness outgrew my former physical form. I needed someplace to tuck the extra ends into so I wasn't walking around with tendrils of consciousness hanging out all over the place."

Beautiful. Her beautiful heart-shaped face, eyes the color of Lake Ontario on a sunny day, and dark brown hair were still the same, but Uriel could tell by the depth of her eyes that she was _not _the same. More… Whatever it was she had been before, Audrey had finished becoming what it was she had been on her way to being and it was … breathtaking. Even more breathtaking than the Mother, if that was at all possible.

And her scent! It was intoxicating. She smelled so … happy. She smelled…

"Pregnant again," Uriel said aloud, his mouth involuntarily uttering the words before his brain had a chance to stop him. He glanced up at Gabriel, noting the 'cat who ate the canary' grin at that comment. He could smell the underlying melding of his brothers DNA in the pheromones the Prophet emitted. Most _definitely _another of Gabriel's children in the works even though the Prophet's figure had just barely begun to swell.

"Yeah … well," Gabriel said, sounding more human than angel as he spoke, amusement flashing in his eyes. "You fall from grace … boy meets girl … you know how it goes."

Uriel looked towards the direction they were heading. Already the Mother had left them behind and was continuing on her way down the path, greeting each familiar plant and animal as she went and fortifying the life force of all she touched. Towards the workshop. Towards the Father. Towards the very,_ very _pregnant Gabriella who was four days past her due date and ready to 'pop' at any moment.

Gabriel towered over him, an imposing reminder of his former duty as the Father's enforcer. He'd _forgotten _just how big his brother really was…

"Um …" Uriel stammered, swallowing the lump which had suddenly swelled in his throat. "I think there's something you need to know before you go … uh … meet your daughter."

"Papa! Papa!" a high, clear voice shouted from the direction Sandra'el had gone in only moments before. "Is it true?"

Uriel was nearly knocked off his feet for the second time in twenty minutes as a black-brown winged blur flew into his arms.

"Sandra'el said the Mother has returned!" Howard'el blurted out. "The Father will be so happy!"

Uriel turned back to Gabriel and the Prophet, a sheepish look upon his face as he turned with his dark-haired son in his arms. A carbon copy of his mother, Gabriella. An _exact _replica of how Gabriel himself had appeared at that same age.

"Oooooh," Audrey said with delight, a brilliant smile lighting up her face as she made the connection in her mind and signaled her approval. "I knew she … but … I'm so glad you two … she had the biggest crush on you."

Gabriel's nostrils flared, inhaling the child's scent. A scent which echoed that of the daughter he had never met. A scent which echoed…

"You have produced offspring with my daughter," Gabriel said, one eyebrow raised upon his unsmiling face as he glanced over to where Non Gae had stopped teaching her daughters the kisaeng dance and come forward to watch them with curiosity. "I thought I detected something familiar about the little redhead, but it did not click until I saw _this _one."

"We … uh … um …" Uriel stammered, glancing at Non Gae, who stared at him with a bemused expression upon her face as she stood between the two daughters who she had deliberately chosen to bear out-of-wedlock. At a loss for an explanation, Uriel held out the hand which bore the mate-ring, showing his brother that at least he'd _married _his daughter before begetting children upon her. "The … uh … Father gave us his blessing."

Gabriel threw back his head and roared in laughter, reaching out to tussle Howard'el's dark hair. Gabriel … laughing? Uriel could only remember a few, sparse incidents in childhood when he had ever seen his too-serious brother laugh.

"I leave my daughter in your hands for safekeeping," Gabriel said, trying to speak with his guffaws, "and I see you have taken my request to protect her as _–I- _would quite literally."

"Mmmmm…." Audrey said, giving her husband a lascivious look as she nestled back into his side and slid her arms around his waist. "And what a magnificent protector you turned out to be, my husband. Would you expect your brother to perform his … duties … any less diligently?"

Normal. Pretend everything is normal. That is what Gabriella did whenever the Father tipped a little too far into his own mad little multiple-personality-disordered universe and started rambling. Uriel pretended everything was perfectly normal.

"His name is Howard'el," Uriel said. "After his maternal grandfather. The Prophet's father. Howard'el … this is Gabriel. Your grandsire."

Howard'el gave his grandsire a serious appraisal, his little face, which tended towards seriousness in the presence of all but his fiery twin sister, automatically retreating behind an unreadable expression which no one had ever taught him, but which the child had inherited from both his mother and paternal grandsire.

"Grandfather talks about you all the time," Howard'el said, always cautious about accepting new people until they'd earned his trust. "It makes him sad that you went away. Sometimes he cries because you left." The last remark was delivered as an accusation.

Uriel winced. Howard'el spent a lot of time with the Father playing board games, watching bugs, and playing hide-and-go seek, something the void-personality appeared to need to help him move past the emotional immaturity caused by billions of years of repression. They had never explained to the cherubs _why _their grandsire had left other than the fact Gabriel had died, omitting sordid details too complex for a four-year-old cherub to be burdened with. In a realm where death merely meant changing form, the concept that his archangel grandsire had _truly _died was difficult for the young cherub to grasp…

"Well I came back," Gabriel said to the boy, the gentle expression on his face indicating he understood the nature of his 'leaving' should not be explained to one so young. "I came back to meet your mother, and I discover I have two grandchildren to love now as well. What a pleasant surprise."

"Um … three," Uriel stammered. "Uh … almost. Gabriella's due to … uh … produce an … uh … third … any day now."

"I love what you've done with the place," a familiar deep, bass voice said, interrupting their conversation. "Psychedelic purple plants straight out of the 1960's that give you an oxygen buzz. My kind of garden!"

"Oh … stop it!" a second, familiar voice said, light and musical. "You're incorrigible!"

Uriel froze as the last of his sisters, believed destroyed as he had believed Gabriel had been destroyed, strode up the path hand-in-hand with her Grigori mate.

"Eloa …" Uriel whispered. "Abaddon. You're … alive?"

"Why should _he _get all the fun?" Abaddon said, pointing at Gabriel. "If we leave the expansion up to an old fuddy-dud like Gabriel, we'll all be regimented into boring suburbs with identical matching three-bedroom ranch style houses and a stip mall on every corner."

"Oh … stop!" Eloa said, thwacking her husband playfully with her wing. "It can't _all _be a gigantic prank. Hello, Uriel. It's been a long time."

Uriel stood stiffly as Eloa reached out and embraced him. The last time he had crossed paths with her mate, he had locked Abaddon back into the Keep after one of his many escape attempts. _Neither_ partner appeared to bear him any ill will, unlike some of the Grigori and their restored angel mates, who still possessed traces of righteous anger.

"Not to be rude or anything," Abaddon said, tugging his mate along with him. "But we've heard the Father just restored our last-born daughter. I never even got the chance to lay eyes upon her before things went to hell in a handbasket."

"She was beautiful," Eloa said, hurrying after him. "With a _forked _tail like a zebra swallowtail butterfly. I can't wait to be reunited with her."

They were gone before Uriel even had a chance to inform them Ioffiel and Thamuz had taken the dragonette under their capable wings.

"Speaking of daughters who've never met their fathers," Gabriel said softly, bending to murmur the words in his wife's ear, "I'm very anxious to meet my Little Archangel."

Uriel noted the protective way his brother stood at the Prophet's back, the same protective nature which had won first Gabriel, and later his daughter a place of trust guarding the Father's fragile consciousness. And also something else. It was obvious his brother worshipped the ground his wife walked upon by the way he subconsciously molded his every move to hers, as though they were two parts of the same soul, moving in unison to a dance where only _they _could hear the music. It was visual proof of the glimpse the Prophet had given him of what true holy union was like. A concept he had come _close _to achieving with his beloved Gabriella, but never quite attained.

The Mother was right. All this time, he had been holding back because of a false hope of something that had never been his to possess. He had his _own _mate who worshipped _him _the same way that Gabriel obviously loved the Prophet, a love that Uriel could now see was fully returned. It was time to let her go.

"Goodbye," Uriel said, searching Audrey's deep, velvet blue eyes and seeing she understood his words had meaning beyond the simple acknowledgement it was time for Audrey to bring her husband to meet his daughter.

"Goodbye," Audrey said, stepping forward on tip-toes to kiss the place on his cheek which had once been marked by the scar she'd given him the day he had stood by and forced her to watch her husband die.

Uriel's nostrils flared, inhaling her scent. It was the same scent he had fallen in love with, made even _more_ intoxicating by her profound happiness now that she was reunited with her mate. But his _perception _of that scent had changed. Whereas before her scent had gripped his subconscious and awoken repressed emotions too powerful and new for him to understand, now he could clearly smell that the emotion she bore for him was love for a brother-in-law and former protector. Not the scent of a woman who loved _him._

He still loved her. He always would. But that love was not the same as the love he bore for his wife.

Gabriel's eyebrow lifted curiously at the unusual exchange between his brother and his wife, but he did not appear to be threatened by what he saw. Audrey only had eyes for her mate, and the scent trail which passed between them now was no different than the scent of close friendship which had formed over fifteen years between Audrey and the angel she had refused to marry, Belaziel. Less. Even less. It had only been Uriel's skewed perception of his own feelings which had always been amiss.

All of a sudden, Uriel had the overwhelming urge to go find his wife and kiss her until wings trembled with anticipation of something Uriel had never before been quite willing to share with her. The last barrier fell away from his heart as he saw his love for the Prophet for what it had always been and let it go. All this time, the connection he wanted more than anything in the world had been _his _and he had been too blind to see it, blinded by the memory of something which had never been real. Every time he made love to his wife, he could feel her spirit reach towards his to complete their bond and he had always held back, fearful that joining with _her _would mar the memory of his love for the Prophet.

He wished now more than anything in the world to go finish the bond he had started, but never quite finished, so that no matter what happened, his wife could never be parted from him. He wished to show Gabriella how much he truly loved her.

Audrey touched the cheek she had just kissed goodbye, and then faded back into her husband's embrace. As the couple moved in the direction the Mother had just went, towards the Father's workshop where Gabriella sat helping the Father work, Uriel looked up and realized there had been another person silently standing behind them the entire time.

"Oh … hello?" Uriel said, staring at the quiet, ebony-skinned void creature who had stood silently, watching all that transpired, this entire time. "You … look … just like…"

His words trailed off as he realized who this must be who he stared at now. Except for the double pair of ebony wings and dark coloration, the sad-eyed creature who stood before him now appeared to be a carbon copy of a younger version of the heavenly Father.

"It's hard letting someone you love so much go," Texcatlipocal said softly, a blend of resignation and sadness marring the beauty of his serious, dark features. "No matter how much you contort yourself into becoming worthy of their love, they will only ever have feelings for their mate."

"Yes," Uriel agreed, realizing the void creature must have picked up on the undercurrents of what had just passed between him and the Prophet and could relate to it. "But the effort is never wasted so long as you don't allow your unrequited emotion to blind you to _new _opportunities which come your way. Sometimes … love makes us reach to become _more _than we were before. Even if you never get that which you first thought you desired."

"It's taking that first step that's so very frightening," Texcatlipocal said, carefully observing the garden which surrounded them. "I never had any idea how much beauty could be created in a world such as this."

"Once you find the right partner," Uriel said, getting a glimmer of why the Mother had brought Texcatlipocal with her. The _same _reason the Prophet had kissed him goodbye. The void-demon was here to 'give the devil his due.' It was time for him to let go of a fourteen billion year old grudge and move on to the next phase of his life.

"The Mother and the Father were the ones who built this place," Uriel added, deciding to help the process along. "But it's really blossomed under the direction of my wife. Never underestimate what can be accomplished with the right mate."

As he spoke, Uriel noticed Texcatlipocal's eyes had wandered over to where Non Gae had resumed teaching her two daughters the beautiful kisaeng dance, their fans delicately fluttering to accentuate their movements like butterfly wings as they danced like the exotic creatures they were. Non Gae … whose heart no man had ever been able to win because the role model she had idealized since birth had been Kim Il-Sung, the Communist dictator who had taught her how to become a courtesan, an assassin, and a spy. Who no man, not even Gunnlaeif, who had _wanted _to marry her and fathered two children with her, had ever been able to convince the 'fallen' disciple she was more than the sum of her tainted past.

"Who is that?" Texcatlipocal asked, obviously intrigued. "Three females? In one place? Only one female consciousness is formed for every five or six male ones in the void."

"_That _is the beautiful Non Gae," Uriel said. "And her two talented daughters. _They_ have mates. But no man has ever been able to convince Non Gae to settle down. Would you like to meet her? I suspect you two might have a lot in common."

Uriel glanced in the direction of the Father's workshop, torn between the assistance he could give this creature, whose jilting had been the root cause of so much trouble in their world, to become less of a threat just as the Prophet had done with the Grigori and Gabriella had done with the Father, and his yearning to go drag his wife into a secluded spot in the garden and make love to her until her heart sang.

Gabriella's mother and the father she had never met had just returned from the grave. She would prefer to finish consummating their marriage into holy union a few hours from now, _after _she had been given time to greet her parents, than right this moment. Uriel decided now would be a good time to attend to his duties as the Light of God and bring a little enlightenment to the creature who had ended up in his hands by default.

"Non Gae!" Uriel called, gesturing for the void demon to come meet the eighth disciple who had lamented to him, only recently, that perhaps it was time for her to join the party and obey the Father's wish to see everybody happily paired off with somebody else. Even old 'sinners' he had formerly rejected such as Non Gae and Lena.

"Non Gae … I have someone I'd like you to meet…"

Texcatlipocal glanced in the direction the Mother had headed, and then to the three exotic women who had paused mid-step, curiously regarding the void creature in their midst. His wings trembled with emotion as he glanced first towards one choice, the comfort of clinging to the memory of a love which had always been unrequited, and then the other. Possibility.

"Annyeonghaseyo," Non Gae greeted him, gliding forward in her graceful, dancelike way of moving and tilting her head slightly like an exotic bird. She lifted up her hand and paused, waiting for Texcatlipocal to take it, and gave him one of her rare, _genuine _smiles which reached her black eyes instead of the customary, patient one she gave most people she met for the first time.

Texcatlipocal stepped forward, hesitantly taking the hand Non Gae proffered, and kissed it like any old-fashioned gentleman would.

"Annyeonghaseyo," Texcatlipocal greeted in perfect Korean. "Geudeul-en haneul-I nag-won ui se gat-eun aleumdaun saeleul boyu malhaejuji anh-assda [they didn't tell me heaven possessed three such beautiful birds of paradise]."

Non Gae's smile broadened as the void demon kissed her hand while her two daughters giggled on either side. Obviously the Prophet had included charm lessons in whatever rehabilitation efforts she had expended on the Mother's behalf during her lengthy stay on the other side of the gateway to the void.

"What is this dance you perform," Texcatlipocal asked, stepping forward, his nostrils flared as he inhaled Non Gae's scent. "Perhaps you and your lovely daughters might be willing to demonstrate this beautiful art form to an old devil? We don't have such beautiful dances in the void."

Uriel inhaled as well, sensing the pheromones of mutual attraction between the two. Texcatlipocal intently watched Non Gae dance, never once glancing in the direction the Mother had just gone. If things were as the old void demon said in the void, many males and few females to take as mates, then lack of opportunity to move on as Uriel had most unworthily been fortuitous enough to stumble upon had probably been much of the source of the intractable fourteen-billion year old problem. Uriel could detect the subtle hand of the Prophet at work, finding a solution where none had previously existed.

Uriel let out a silent prayer to no deity in particular, hoping Non Gae didn't chew up and spit out the void demon's heart…


	228. Chapter 227

Chapter 227

Gabriella sat working alongside the Father in his tiny workshop, busily helping him shape the tiny creations that would support the ecosystem of the Martian colony the Father was helping Yesua terraform. Whenever people thought of the heavenly Father creating the heavens, much praise was heaped upon the galaxies, suns, planets, continents, plants and animals that made up a habitable world.

What they never paid attention to was the _real _work involved. Bacteria that produced necessary chemicals. Insects and planktons that broke down waste products and supported the base of the food chain. Viruses which introduced genetic mutations and helped along evolution at a predictable rate. Fungi and yeasts that broke down one substance into another. All critically important, totally unrecognized work the Father had been teaching Gabriella to do for the past ten years.

Gabriella brooded, deep in her dark thoughts. Insecurities. Insecurities which had become markedly worse after the Father had reconstituted the last remaining Grigori-angel child. Her reason for being here, to help the Father repair the damage he had done, was finished. Gabriella was now an archangel without a cause.

Her father's dying wish had been for her mother to help the Father heal the fracture within his own soul. Gabriella had found the letter amongst her mother's things, along with a small bag of her father's feathers, after she had died. There had been so much love in her father's letter to her mother. Why couldn't Uriel love her like that?

Because Uriel's first love had been, and always _would _be, her mother. That's why! Just as Michael refused to move on even though Mary Magdaline only had eyes for Yesua, Uriel had only married her five years after her mother's death because the Father had ordered it after it dawned on him his granddaughter was hopelessly in love.

Gabriella was jealous of her own dead mother!

The tiny leg of the Martian beetle she had been trying to perfect all afternoon suddenly snapped off in her hand. It was the last straw in a very long line of last straws. The normally stoic, even-tempered Gabriella burst into tears.

"Gabriella?" the Father asked, his brilliant blue eyes registering concern. "Whatever is wrong, child?"

"Nothing," Gabriella said, shrinking down upon her chair the way she had when she had been a teenager and partially wrapping herself in her own wings as she tried to regain control of her emotions. She would have shrunk down further, but her abdomen, swollen with her third child, was in the way.

"Is it time?" the Father asked, looking at her belly. "Should I call Uriel?"

That made her feel even worse. Gabriella wept even harder, unable and unwilling to disclose her private shame to the grandfather who had possessed the power to grant her the outward appearance of her hearts' desire, but not the heart of the man she loved.

"That's okay, child," the Father said gently, misunderstanding the cause of her angst and standing up to clear his workbench before teleporting away. "I'll be back with him in a moment." Compassion shone out of his clear, blue eyes. It was at moments like this that Gabriella was reminded Yesua had inherited some of the better aspects of his personality from _both _parents. Not just the Mother.

"No, Grandfather," Gabriella hiccoughed. "Please … don't. It's not … that."

The Father paused, unsure of what to do, and then shifted personalities.

"You feel the emptiness again?" the black-eyed fragment said. The fragment of the older void creature that had just revealed there was a bit of _it _running through her bloodline.

"Yes," Gabriella sobbed.

"I wish I could reassure you child," the void fragment said. "I am afraid it is as you fear. But who am I to say? I am the _last _person you should go to for advice on these things. My own record of success is abysmal."

The void-fragment did something it rarely tolerated. It compelled the body of its host to reach out and touch Gabriella upon the forehead to share the tiny fragment it still possessed of its once-great mind. A mind that thought not-so-very differently from the way Gabriella thought. It wastrying to be sympathetic as best it knew how.

"Someday I shall see to it your fragment is reintegrated back into your source soul," Gabriella said. "Just as we are doing with the Grigori-angel children. Perhaps your source soul has finally found happiness?"

The Father paused, a confused expression coming across his face as the void-fragment ceded control of his body back to the blue-consciousness of the Father. Personality changes were an acknowledged fact of life. If he did anything amiss, he trusted Gabriella would inform him. The Father never remembered the little … conversations … Gabriella occasionally had with his adversary and was only minimally aware a third soul-fragment shared space with the other two that inhabited his body. She knew she could speak freely to the soul-fragment and the information would go no further.

"Oh … um … wasn't I going to retrieve Uriel for you?" the Father asked.

"No, Father," Gabriella said wearily. "It's not time yet. But if you don't mind, I'm very tired this afternoon. Would you be alright if I went home a little early and got some rest?"

"Yes … of course … go right ahead, child," the Father said. "Me, myself and I should be alright in here for the rest of the night. Perhaps I'll even turn in a little early myself."

"Goodnight, Father," Gabriella said, giving a weak smile at the Father's lame attempt at a joke. She heaved her girth up off the chair, swaying slightly to get her balance, and waddled out the door.

"Goodnight, Little Archangel," the Father said, shutting the door behind her.

He sat back down on his bench, muttering quietly to himself as he picked up the beetle Gabriella had just broken and patiently began piecing back together the legs it would need to propel itself across the light gravity of the Martian surface. Preoccupied. As her husband always was preoccupied whenever they were together.

Gabriella gave and gave and gave. It was ironic that it was the soul-fragment of the devil who had tried to kill her in the womb that was the only creature who understood the loneliness she felt. Struggling to get airborne, she teleported between the dimensions to the place she liked to go whenever she wished to brood. To the indentation at the base of the cliff where her father had lain broken for over a month.

Stars blinked down at her through the inky sky. No matter where in heaven Gabriella went, it struck her that there was no place on heaven or Earth where you could see the stars clearer and think about how insignificant you were than right here, in this spot where her father had been cast down. Pulling out her fathers' letter to her mother, Gabriella re-read the only thing she possessed written in her father's hand_._

'…_I look forward to the birth of our little girl (yes … it –is- a girl … the daughter I always dreamed of … but I didn't want to spoil it as I know you wanted a son. I hope once you hold her you will love her anyways)…'_

"Daddy," Gabriella said to the stars. "I don't know if you can hear me. But if you can … I could really use your advice. Mom was always so sad you were gone that I was little more than an afterthought. Uncle Belaziel did the best he could, but he was grieving the loss of _his _mate as well."

Tears streamed down her face as she clutched the letter to her chest.

"Everybody says I have to be something great because I'm your daughter and how noble your sacrifice was. But all I ever wanted was somebody to love _me _as much as they all say you loved Mom. _Everybody _loves Mom. Even when she reams them out."

She squirmed with discomfort as another Braxton-Hicks contraction momentarily gripped her abdomen. She'd been having them nonstop for two weeks, making it impossible to sleep. Probably the reason she felt so moody and vulnerable right now. She was _sick _of being pregnant. It was time for her little girl to make her appearance so perhaps her husband would desire to make love to her instead of treating her like a fragile brood mare.

"I love him more than my own existence, Daddy," Gabriella said, tears streaming from her eyes. "But even though I know he feels _something_ for me, it just doesn't feel like what everybody says you felt for my Mom. It doesn't _look _like what the old videos Jose' took of you and Mom together look like, how attentive you were to her every need. Because _he's _in love with Mom, too, Daddy! Not me! And I don't know if I can take the emptiness anymore. Putting my heart out there on my sleeve, only to have him not even notice there's more that I wish to give him."

Gabriella pulled one of the glossy black feathers out of the little bag, a feather that could have come from her own wings, and brushed it across her cheek.

"Mom says that in the beginning, she wouldn't even give you the time of day," Gabriella whispered. "That you followed her around like a lovesick puppy for almost two years before she finally noticed. I kept hoping it would be like that. That one day he'd wake up and realize we had something special. But it never happened. Ten years and three children later, and it still hasn't happened. I don't think it's _ever _going to happen. The only reason he married me was because the Father made him do it."

The cold, empty stars blinked back at her, the only answer she ever got from the father she had never met, but frequently came here to hold conversations with anyways. It was cold. The eve of Yesua's birth back here on Earth, although such dates had little meaning in the garden. She wondered, if she ever met her _real _father, if he would be as wonderful as the dream father she had made up in her head as a child to console herself that everybody had big expectations and no time to spend with her, or if _he_ would overlook her too.

Uriel wouldn't even notice she was missing. These days, he took as many missions as he could on the new planets and spent as little time as possible in the garden. Her mother's parents lived with them in the enormous palace which had once housed the cherubs and cared for her offspring. She curled up in the indentation she had always imagined was the spot her father had landed and cried herself to sleep, wishing that somebody would come along and will _her _back to life…


	229. Chapter 228

Chapter 228

Gabriel nestled into his favorite position at his little Prophets' back, standing back from the doorway to the Father's workshop, waiting for the Mother to knock.

"I hope he treats her right this time," Audrey said, a slight scowl upon her face. "If it were up to _me, _she'd make him take her out on a few million dates before she _really _went back to him. Just to make sure he's really changed."

"It's not our place to judge their relationship," Gabriel reminded her, glad it wasn't _him _who was on her bad side at the moment. Nobody held a grudge the way that Audrey did, until all of a sudden she just … didn't … anymore. It was a side of her personality he had long ago given up trying to understand and just accepted. It had once been _him _on the receiving end of both her hatred, and then her inexplicable 180 degree change in attitude to first forgive, and then love him.

The Mother gave them both a worried look, allowing her rare insecurity to show through the façade of the patient, all-knowing Madonna she chose to project to the rest of the world, and then knocked upon the door.

"Is that you, Gabriella?" a voice called from inside the workshop. The Father. Gabriel would know his Father's voice anywhere. "Do you need me to fetch Uriel after all?"

The Mother knocked again.

"I'm coming," the Father muttered. "I'm coming." The sound of a bolt being drawn back upon a wooden door preceded the slight squeak of hinges that, no matter how well they were oiled, would squeak simply because the Father preferred the illusion of working in a ramshackle little shed in the middle of the garden.

"Asherah," the Father whispered, standing frozen in the doorway, speechless as he caught his first glimpse of the Mother in over 75 million years. Not the phenomenal length of time that passage would have been in Earth-years, but still a very long time even by heavenly standards.

"Hello, Yahweh," the Mother said self-consciously. "It's been a long time."

Silence stretched between them, neither deity sure of what to say. Both feared uttering a wrong word that would cause the fragile offering of the olive branch to turn into another war in heaven.

"Too long," the Father said softly, opening the door further. "You. Came. Back."

"I always said I would come back when you corrected the mistake you made with our children," the Mother said nervously. "You have done all that you can by yourself. It is unrealistic of me to expect more."

Gabriel glanced down at his little Prophet, watching as she practically mouthed the words like a teleprompter coaching the Mother what to say. The Mother had wanted to come back for a very long time, but had been unsure about how to break the ice. Audrey had finally convinced her that the Father's gesture of reconstituting the last dragonette was a make-it-or-break-it moment. Either she would return, or the Father would give up all hope and move on. Possibly with one of the rapidly evolving descendents of his own creations as Yesua and the cherubs were all doing.

The self-confidence the Mother projected to the others was a ruse. For seventy-five million years, she had been miserable without him. Right now, she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was offering it to the Father to accept, or smash to pieces, at this moment. Gabriel held his breath, fearful of both parents reaction given their prolonged history of hostilities.

"I had hoped…" the Father stammered. "But … no matter what I did … I just … I didn't … know … how to … _fix … _things."

They stood there. Unsure of the next move. It was the Father who made the next gesture.

"C-c-come inside," the Father said, glancing up and seeing Gabriel for the first time. For a moment, it appeared as though the Father's eyes turned black, something Gabriel had noticed many times when he had stood at the Father's back, but never given any thought.

"Gabriel?" the Father asked. "Is it really you? How come I can't hear your consciousness anymore?"

"Gabriel no longer wears the collar, Yahweh," the Mother said, herding him inside the door. "Making your sons wear collars like they were dogs! I like the new design to keep in touch with them much better. Very tasteful."

The Mother gave them an apologetic look, and then firmly shut the door in their faces. Whatever transpired next between the two, it was best something that best occurred away from the eyes and ears of others.

"Okay," Audrey said. "That went … well. I guess."

"As well as I'd hoped it would go," Gabriel said, pulling her in for a hug and stroking the double set of wings she had been forced to shape for herself after their little trip to Shambhala. The place where their latest in-the-works son had been conceived. One set hadn't been sufficient to tuck away all the stray strands of new consciousness which had suddenly erupted during their lovemaking that day. Audrey had been unwilling to increase the size of her petite frame or, heaven forbid, reshape herself as being heavier than she was now, so wings had been a sensible solution to the problem. She was still learning how to actually _fly _with them.

"Stop that," Audrey giggled as he stroked the highly sensitive 'feathers' which were really strands of raw awareness. "Or I'll pin your tailfeathers to the ground and have my way with you right here in front of your Father's workshop."

"Mmmmm…" Gabriel growled, inhaling her scent as he nuzzled down one side of her neck with his nose. He spoke directly into her ear, lowering his voice in a way he knew drove her nuts with desire. "I love it when you make threats."

Audrey's wings flapped involuntarily as she squealed with pleasure at his ministrations. He picked her up and flew off to a secluded little spot in the garden where he had once accidentally walked in on one of his sisters 'playing' with her Grigori 'playmate.'

"Is it even … permissible … to do this … here?" Audrey asked between kisses, tearing at the buttons of his shirt which, unfortunately, actually needed to be physically unbuttoned here instead of simply willed away. The delay only heightened their mutual arousal.

Gabriel growled something noncommittal, cupping one perfect breast in one hand while simultaneously grasping a shapely buttock with the other. Words never seemed to work properly when he made love to his little Prophet. Just as well. Words only got in the way.

He gasped with pleasure as his little Prophet reached around with one pair of her dual wings to caress the sensitive leading edge of his wings and the ticklish spot beneath the left knee-joint, causing every feather in his wings to tremble, while she used her second pair to reach around and caress his lower back and bare buttocks, the downy feathers tickling the sensitive skin. The four-winged design, it turned out, had little to do with aerodynamics and everything to do with pleasure.

"Little Gabriel seems especially … perky … today," Audrey teased, reaching down to free his manhood from his undergarments and slipping them down the pathway his pants had gone only moments before. "It's exciting making love under the nose of your parents … isn't it, my love?"

"Mpf…" Gabriel grunted as she gave the head of his manhood a gentle squeeze, his wings developing a mind of their own as his consciousness focused on the only thing that mattered to him right now. Connecting to his mate in the most complete, soul-merging way possible. He nipped at her throat, picking her up and laying her down upon a bower of soft, spongy moss nestled between the roots of an enormous tree.

"Make love to me, Gabriel," Audrey murmured huskily in his ear. "I want to remember what it's like to merge in this realm."

Gabriel obliged, slipping into her waiting warmth in an exquisitely slow, smooth motion, and then freezing, relishing the feel of her feminine mysteries welcoming him home. He wished for _her _be the one to pick the rhythm she wished to be pleasured at this time. Just a little reminder of who the alpha-male was. Just in case any of his brothers, a certain auburn-haired contender came to mind, ever attempted to lure his little Prophet away.

Gabriel wasn't stupid. He'd seen the expression on his brother's face when the Prophet had stepped out from the shelter of his wings!

"Gabriel!" Audrey cried out, already shuddering at the edge of her first release.

Gabriel forced himself to remain still, forcing _her _to be the one to accept pleasure this time while he willed his manhood to wait. After an indeterminate amount of time residing in the void where all sense of physical sensation _other _than the touching of pure consciousness was greatly dampened, he wished to drink deeply the chalice of physical release. And how much more intense would this _same _sensation be back on Earth?

"Mpfh…" Audrey growled, clutching at his buttocks and forcing him to move as her hips rose up to greedily meet his manhood. Her lips sought his, seeking to breath as one with him, her wings tangling with his as she sought to physically take flight along with him.

Gabriel relished the feel of physical bodies being propelled by physical muscles, tendons and bones to complete an act which was purely spiritual. Their wings tangled, each feather exquisitely sensitive as the tendrils of pure consciousness they kept hidden amongst the material trappings of a mortal shell began to work their way free, seeking to intertwine with the other. The question they had both wondered, whether or not their physical shells would hold up in this realm once they returned, was answered.

A brilliant flash of pure, clear light lit up the darkening sky as though it were a second sun, heralding what they were up to for all of heaven to see as they reached climax together, dissolving their separate forms and joining together momentarily as a single soul.

"I think we made a spectacle of ourselves," Audrey spoke directly into his mind, the pure bliss of the moment making his heart swell with joy.

"Let them wonder," Gabriel spoke back. "It will give them an ideal to aspire to."

He could feel the sturdy tendril that connected their dual consciousness to that other place, the place beyond the void, an open invitation should they ever wish to return there. The connection could only be felt when they merged as one soul.

They basked in each others' love for what felt to be a very long time, although Gabriel knew it was probably only moments as the setting sun had barely moved from where it sank beneath the horizon. It was time to finish what else they had come here to do today. They had met both of his grandchildren. Now it was time to go meet his daughter.

"Ahh," Audrey sighed. "I wish moments like this would last forever. When the day comes that we create our _own _universe, instead of a seventh day being set aside for rest, I think we should make it a sin not to set aside at least one day of every week for couples to stay in bed and do nothing but make love all day long."

"I am intrigued by this prospect," Gabriel purred, nuzzling her neck and licking the pulse-point which allowed him to taste his mates' current emotional state. "We shall carve this commandment in stone and make it a sin not to obey it."

An apple fell out of the tree they lay under and clonked Audrey off the head, earning one of her juicy expletives. Gabriel burst out with laughter as he grabbed at the apple, remembering just which tree it was they lay under now and _why _the Father had prohibited the tasting of its fruit, and took a bite.

"How about this time it is the male of the species who tempts the _female_ to take a bite?" Gabriel said, holding the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in front of his mates' lips.

"Is this … really … _THAT_ … tree?" Audrey asked, her eyes growing wide.

"Mmm Hmmm," Gabriel murmured, pressing the decadent fruit against her lips so that the sweet juices where he had just bitten trailed down upon her tongue. "It's really just a regular apple tree. The Father only named it that because he found out this was a favorite spot my sisters liked to come to … sin … as he called it. He _should _have named it the Tree of Carnal Knowledge."

Audrey took a bite, a mischievous smile upon her face as she first chewed, and then swallowed the so-called forbidden fruit that had caused the expulsion of mankind from this place. Somehow … she didn't think the same foolish restrictions existed now.

Gabriel nipped her neck, eliciting a giggle. He could taste the unique pheromones cast off by the mortal shell of their sons emerging consciousness. This child would be different from the first one. Since the child had been conceived in the paradise _beyond _the void, they both wondered what this new child would be like.

But first he had to meet the old one…

Gabriel frowned. Something had been intruding upon his consciousness for quite some time now, but now that he was no longer preoccupied with pleasuring his mate, it had taken on an almost desperate plea for attention. It was a sensation he had noticed even when he had been interred in the Keep with his memories wiped, always attributing it to the sadness of his Little Prophet, but Audrey was content. Another mind reached out to his, a connection that was tenuous, but still there, pleading for his attention.

"Our daughter is not well," Gabriel said. "I can hear her call to me."

"Is she hurt?" Audrey asked, bolting upright. "Uriel said she was close to her due date."

Gabriel frowned. Uriel. It hadn't surprised him that his brother had developed feelings for his wife in his absence. Uriel had been one of the contenders Gabriel had hoped would step up to the plate and provide solace to his wife after he was gone, although the mere thought of that prospect _now _was enough to drive him ballistic. What had surprised him was that Uriel had developed feelings _both _for his wife, and _then _his daughter. Angels were, if nothing, a constant lot. It worried him that his brother's affections were so easily transferred, although Audrey had reassured him there had been no feelings at all between herself and Uriel. Not even friendship until the very end. Any feelings Uriel had developed were entirely unrequited.

"No," Gabriel said. "She's … upset. And far away. Not in heaven any longer. I think she's on Earth."

"Then I think it's time for you to go meet your daughter," Audrey said, slipping on her clothes. "She goes to the place where you fell whenever she's upset. If you follow the thread of her consciousness, I suspect that is where you will find her."

Gabriel paused to kiss his wife farewell for now, his hand slipping down to caress the small bump that was just beginning to swell in her lower abdomen. His son. _This _child would get an opportunity to know his father, but his daughter had been denied that privilege. It was time for Gabriel to act like her father.

"I love you more than my own existence," Audrey said, caressing his wings with hers and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Now go introduce yourself to your daughter. If she is there, it is because she longs for you."

Gabriel stepped back and teleported between the dimensions to the place that, since the day he and the Prophet had hiked out of there on foot, he had sworn he never wished to see again.

How is it that such a horrible place had become his daughter's favorite thinking spot?


	230. Chapter 229

Chapter 229

He found her in the exact place where _he _had once lay broken at the base of the cliff. His heart leaped into his throat. His first impulse upon spying the crumbled ball of sobbing feathers was that somehow she had been robbed of her ability to fly and shattered upon the rocks.

"Oh, Daddy," Gabriella sobbed, not realizing she was no longer alone. "How I wish you were here."

"I –_am- _here," Gabriel said gently to the daughter he had never met, not sure how to handle her obvious distress. "Now. We've just returned to this realm."

"Go away, Uriel!" Gabriella sobbed without even looking up. "Can't you see I've had enough?"

The emotional volatility of the female of the species had always perplexed Gabriel. Despite his title as the Word of God, he was a man of action, not words. The urge to hunt down his brother like the rodent he was for whatever offense he had committed to make his little girl cry and skin him alive surged through Gabriel's veins. He realized he was unconsciously reaching for his mace. The mace he no longer carried.

"Would you like for me to throttle him on your behalf?" Gabriel growled.

*Sniff*

The sobbing stopped.

Brown-black wings parted and a more delicate, female version of his own face peeped out from between the feathers, her unearthly blue eyes red-rimmed and puffy from crying. Gabriel watched the parade of emotions that crossed his daughters' face as first confusion, then disbelief, and then more confusion registered upon her strong, beautiful features.

"D-d-daddy?" Gabriella hiccoughed, rubbing her eyes as though certain she were hallucinating. She struggled awkwardly to sit, the movement difficult due to the enormous bulge around her midsection. Uriel hadn't been kidding. She _was _about to pop at any moment.

"What are you doing here all by yourself?" Gabriel asked, looking up at the cliff where Michael had prevented him from committing the most horrible mistake since Judas betrayed the young god who'd chosen to walk amongst his subjects rather than lord over them from afar.

Gabriella shifted uncomfortably, pretending that meeting her long-dead father was the most normal thing in the world.

"Talking to you," she finally said, retreating behind an exact replica of _his _unreadable expression when he wished to observe the actions of others. Hands wiped hastily at her eyes and nose in a futile attempt to hide the evidence of her tears.

Silence. No 'daddy … I missed you' or 'daddy … where have you been' or 'daddy … you're alive.' Just … silence. And that slightly sullen, unreadable expression. His offspring, it appeared, was as comfortable using words to express herself as _he _was.

A coyote howled off in the distance. Gabriel shuddered. Vague, pain-filled memories of growling and sharp teeth tearing at his flesh bubbled up from his subconscious. Confusion and grief at being abandoned by the Father. The voice of a defiant young woman who _should _have left him to die chasing them away. Claiming him as her own. Holding him here until he was strong enough to survive on his own.

If he was ever to have a relationship with this sullen young woman who he had sired and then never met, it was going to be up to _him _to break the ice. Being the initiator of any new relationship was not a role he felt comfortable with. But silently lending his support … was.

He would try.

"Would it be okay if I sat down?" Gabriel asked, pointing to the spot where the Prophet had sat reading paragraphs out of first responder and survival manuals left in the cruiser to anchor his consciousness to while he drifted between heaven, Earth, and Sheol.

"Whatever," Gabriella said with a flat voice. Only the slight tremor of her wings betrayed her internal state was not as uncaring as she pretended. She stared off into the distance. Towards stars brilliantly clear from lack of light pollution.

Gabriel sat, silently staring at the same stars his offspring stared at. It was cold outside, but she sat with wings tucked stiffly behind her back, refusing to wrap herself against the cold. A shiver betrayed her discomfort. Gabriel flared his wings to cut the wind.

It was not the happy reunion he had always envisioned.

"I swore I would never come back to this place," Gabriel finally said, searching for a topic of conversation that would be more meaningful than inane chatter about the weather, but less volatile than coming right and asking her why she had come to this place to weep.

Gabriella shrugged. Not helping. Whatever had caused the mood she was currently in, his resurrection from the dead was not helping matters.

"It's painful," Gabriel said. "Remembering how … limited … I was when I first ended up here."

Not even a shrug this time. The coyote howled a second time. A lonely, mournful sound baying at the moon. Not sinister as he remembered it. No other coyote answered its call. Alone. As alone as his daughter felt though he was sitting at her side.

"Your mother showed me that I could be so much more," Gabriel said, searching for some way of connecting to his daughter.

She _obviously _wanted to feel connected to him by virtue of the fact she came to the place he had fallen whenever she was troubled. She'd been calling out to him when he'd unexpectedly appeared, but who was too proud to go the last step. To forgive him for not being present her entire life.

Slight shrug. She looked away, in the opposite direction of where he sat.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to be here until now, little angel," Gabriel said softly, fighting to keep emotion from inhibiting his ability to speak. "But whatever troubles you, I'm here now. If you want to talk about it."

"You wouldn't understand," Gabriella said, her tears obvious in her voice even though her face was turned away from him.

Sniffle.

Silence.

Talking with his daughter was about as difficult as talking … with…

Himself.

Oh … boy. Backtrack. What would _he _want _him _to do when _he _was in one of his … moods? Most people thought of him as even-tempered and calm, if a bit sullen. But the truth was he bottled his emotions inside. If he allowed others to see the intense emotions that churned beneath the surface, they would run away.

"No," Gabriel said. "I probably _don't _understand. I wasn't here to see whatever happened to make you so sad. But I can give you a nonjudgmental ear."

Pause. A sniffle. Gabriella turned to look him in the eye.

"Mom's back too?" she asked. The expression in her eyes was not joy, but apprehension. Why would his daughter be apprehensive about the return of her mother? Had there been some sort of … argument … between the two of them before her mother had departed?

Angry. Perhaps she was angry that Audrey had abandoned her to get him? Was she … jealous?

Gabriel stared into her eyes, attempting to read whatever angst was marring his daughters' soul. Although he no longer possessed the hive mind nor the Prophets ability to look straight into a persons' soul, Gabriel had not gotten this far without developing _some _ability to see into the hopes and fears of others.

Jealousy would be a logical reaction. He would start there.

"Yes," Gabriel said. "I left her in heaven while I came to get you. She was very worried when we sensed you were … distressed."

"You didn't come any of the other times I cried!" Gabriella accused, her rising anger apparent in the flash of her eyes and stiff positioning of her wings.

"I wasn't free to come before now," Gabriel said. "But I came as soon as I could."

Gabriella gave him a look that, if he had to sum it up using a single mortal word, would be the word 'bullshit.'

"We had the chance to go someplace … new," Gabriel said, choosing his words carefully and managing to catch himself before he said the real word he meant to say, 'someplace _better.'_ He wished to communicate he had come back for _her_. Not that coming back was a burden. Billions of years of watching others put their wings in their mouth had made Gabriel very picky about his choice of words. He was convinced much evil could be eliminated in the world if people would only hold their tongues and listen.

Only Gabriella didn't appear to wish to talk…

Was _he _this difficult for people to hold a conversation with?

Yes. He was. It was why he'd spent the first fourteen billion years of his life silently sitting beneath the Father's workbench with Michael as his only friend. Gabriel had never made it easy for others to know what was inside his heart.

But the Prophet had changed all that. She had patiently sat at his side, winning his trust the same way that he had always won _others _trust. By being at his side no matter what happened. By luring him out of his shell and urging others to be patient with his silence until she had socialized him enough to form friendships with others. Gabriella was nowhere near the lost cause _he _had been when Audrey had taken pity on his undeserving soul. She was just … upset.

At something.

Him?

No. Not him. The first thing she had said when she had realized she was not alone was to order her _husband _to go away. Not him. Perhaps _that _would be a better avenue to explore.

"I met Sandra'el and Howard'el," Gabriel said. "Beautiful children. I had no idea you had given me grandchildren to love."

Sniff. No answer.

"Uriel said the new baby's already four days overdue?" Gabriel continued. "You should really stay closer to home in your condition."

"I'm sick and tired of everybody caring more about my … condition…" Gabriella snapped, "than about … _me!"_

Jackpot.

"I'm not a … a … _condition!"_ Gabriella shouted. "I'm a real person! With thoughts! And feelings! And hopes! And … and … _dreams, _goddammit! I'm not Uriel's brood mare to begat offspring off of because his _first _choice of mates wouldn't give him the time of day! And I'm not … I'm not … I'm not … _YOU!_"

"Oh," Gabriel said, at a loss for words. Not unusual for him. He was _always _at a loss for words, which is why he hid behind an unreadable expression most of the time. Most people would talk theirway through their _own _problems if he just sat silently and let them rant long enough. They'd even _thank _him for helping them find a solution when all he had done was listen. But now, he sensed, was not the appropriate time for his usual response. Gabriella didn't strike him as the type of female to rant unless she wanted a solution to a problem.

Silence. She turned away from him once more, her thoughts turned inward to whatever problem was marring her marriage. She had given him an opening to solve the problem, and he, dimwitted Gabriel, had been too slow to take advantage of the opening she had given him to help her solve whatever problem had her tied up in knots.

Perhaps he should just leave her alone? When _he _got like this, he preferred to be left alone.

Gabriella squirmed uncomfortably, her hand reaching out to rub the side of her swollen abdomen as she gave a little grunt of pain. She was dangerously past her due date and should not have risked either flying or teleporting between the dimensions to get here. For all he knew, his daughter might be in labor right now. Leaving her was illogical.

He would need to find a way to engage her in conversation and win her trust enough to convince her to go home.

Wait a minute… _First _choice of mates? What was … oh! He was so frigging stupid! Sometimes he wished someone would thwack him upside the head. Of course! Gabriella must have picked up on the same strange undercurrent between the Prophet and Uriel. How long had Uriel been nursing a crush on his wife while being married to his daughter? How long had Gabriella _known _that she wasn't his first choice of mates?

"I'm going to kill him," Gabriel said, the light bulb finally going off in his head.

Gabriella's head snapped around as she realized her father had just connected the dots.

"No! Daddy! Don't!" she cried out. "Please! I'd be … mortified … if he found out I knew he'd married me against his will."

"Wh-what?" Gabriel asked.

"The Father ordered him to marry me five years ago because … well … I was hopelessly in love with him and he wasn't doing anything about it," Gabriella blurted, her earlier reticence gone. "Grandfather got sick of watching me pine away after him. So he … suggested … very _strongly _suggested … both parts of him … even the void creature finally agreed … that Uriel should marry me right away so I wouldn't leave heaven."

"Oh," Gabriel said. So _that's _why the Father had given his blessing after withholding it from every other angel. Uriel had made a point of shoving the mate-ring in his face and informing him the Father had given them his blessing. In other words, ordered him to do it.

The Father had no ability to cow or dissipate Gabriella. From what he had been told, it had been _Gabriella _who had lured the Father back from the deep end and helped him piece heaven back together. If _she _left, heaven would have fallen apart. Uriel would have married his daughter out of a sense of duty. They needed her to stay and tend the Father no matter _what_ the personal cost_._

And Gabriella knew…

"Why did you marry a man who didn't love you?" Gabriel stupidly blurted out, and then regretted his intemperance as he realized he had just firmly shoved both wings into his mouth.

Gabriella started to cry.

"Mom said she wouldn't give you the time of day the first two years you were together," she sobbed, the words she had withheld earlier suddenly becoming unstuck. "I thought … if … maybe if he was _with _me, he would _grow _to love me the way mom loves you. I was so in love with him. Even _before _mom left. She knew I had a crush on him. We were … friends. It's not like he had no feelings for me at all. It's just that … he never acted on them. He was still in love with mom even though she was gone and I was just the person he'd been ordered to keep out of trouble. Five years I waited for him to fall in love with me! But he never made a move. You'd think that after five years without so much as a kiss I'd have taken a hint and moved on to someone else. But then … the Father noticed. He ordered him to marry me. And Uriel complied."

"Ordered?" Gabriel asked.

"Ordered … well … not quite _ordered,_" she said. "More … suggested. _Strongly _suggested. The Father said he was sick of watching the two of us bounce off of one another like bees attracted to a flower, too afraid to take a sip, and it was time we did something about it. He even got both personalities to agree to it. Even the void one."

"Void one?" Gabriel asked.

"Oh … yeah," she said. "The Father has two distinct souls in the same body. His own. And one that hitchhiked a ride into this universe from the void when the Mother pieced him back together. That's why he's been so bonkers. They don't play nicely together unless the Father lets the little guy out to romp once in a while. He's become Howard'el's best friend."

Gabriel blinked, unable to find words to describe his surprise of his own daughter speaking so openly, and in such familiar terms, about the void creature they had all begun to suspect had taken hold of the Father. Here they'd come back with the Father's rehabilitated adversary, expecting to do battle with a hostile creature and do something drastic to rid the Father of the hitchhiker like perform an exorcism and hand it over to Texcatlipocal for destruction, and he was now finding out his daughter had made _friends _with the creature? No _wonder_ the Father had considered her important enough to get over his hang-ups about angels marrying mortal, or half-mortal, women.

"Gabriella…" Gabriel said. "I … uh … they said you pieced things back together but … uh … I must say … I'm at a loss for words. Why would you think your husband wouldn't worship the ground you walk on?"

"Because he's like Uncle Micheal," she said softly, her earlier reticence gone as the guarded expression left her face. "He fell in love with the woman he was sent to protect and he's never stopped loving her. Mom. You asked him to protect her the way _you _would have protected her. So he did. Right down to worshipping the ground she walked on."

"You fear he doesn't love you?" Gabriel asked.

"It's not that," she said. "He loves me well enough, I suppose. He tries to be conscientious and thoughtful. If he wasn't, I wouldn't have fallen in love with him. But he just … I don't know. When we … you know … it's just not … you know what I mean."

Even in the dim moonlight, Gabriel could see the color rise to her cheeks as she hinted at the deeply personal matter of their lack of connectedness when her husband made love to her. Gabriel had no such negative experience.

But his wife _had._ She spoke little of the matter. But when he'd looked into her soul in the nanosecond between when Jeep slammed on the brakes of the police car and Gabriel had chosen to attempt to protect her in the steel cage of his wings, he had seen, not a sinner, but a desperately lonely young woman attempting to connect to another human being and feeling even _more _empty when the act hadn't given her the connection she so desperately sought.

Oh, god! His poor child!

"What can I do to ease your pain?" Gabriel asked, realizing that he had no solutions for his daughters' woes. He would not insult her by insisting it was all in her head. He'd seen the look on Uriel's face when the Prophet had stepped out from the shelter of his wings. Gabriella was self-aware enough to know if what she shared with her husband was simply sex and companionship. Not the connection she sought. Holy union was impossible to mistake.

"There's nothing you _can _do about it, Daddy," she said. "The Father already did what he could to give me what I most desire, but he failed. Not unless you brought back some fairy love potion with you from the void that can make my husband fall in love with _me _instead of my mother?"

"Your mother said she never gave him the time of day," Gabriel said.

"She didn't," Gabriella said. "Not until the day she went back to get _you. _She asked him to watch over me. And then she told him she forgave him. That was it. But it was no secret amongst the Fallen that Uriel was hopelessly in love with her. Michael finally reassigned him to watch _me _because of it. He said he didn't want Uriel repeating his mistake."

Gabriel winced. Mary _had _loved Michael. But only as a friend. Only _ever _as a friend. She had avoided him in heaven. She had avoided him when she had reincarnated back to Earth. And she had gently, but firmly, put him in his place when she had found Yesua. She had never, ever, given Michael an iota of encouragement except to be her friend. But to this day, Michael still carried a flame for her.

Damn angels and their constancy!

But wait. When Uriel had bid Audrey goodbye earlier today, Gabriel had detected no pheromones indicating sexual attraction. If anything, they smelled like … friends. The odor of attraction had inexplicably vanished. Had Uriel somehow learned to mask his scent? Or was Gabriella mistaken in her assumption of the depth of emotion her husband felt for the Prophet?

It was a tiny glimmer of hope. But it was all he could offer to his daughter.

"We saw Uriel in the garden earlier today," Gabriel said. "Both of us. Me and your mom. He was ... um … glad to see her. _Really _glad to see her. But when she … um … kissed him goodbye. It was as though he couldn't wait to get out of there."

"You're a foot taller than him," Gabriella said. "He was probably scared shitless you'd beat the crap out of him for making Mom watch while the Grigori killed you. He was a wicked asshole back then. Mom had a good reason for hating him."

"I think you overestimate the depth of emotion your husband feels for your mother now," Gabriel said. "But … I wouldn't know. All I can do is give you the _same _advice I gave Hagar when she was pregnant with Ishmael. Return to your husband and _ask _him how he feels. It's the most logical way to get the answers you seek."

"He'd … deny it even if it was true," Gabriella said, the stiff formation of her wings softening as they drooped to the ground.

"Then I'll go with you," Gabriel said, putting his arm around her at last. "Words lie. But scent does not. I'll know the minute he opens his mouth whether it's _you _he wants to be with, or someone else. If it's _you _he wants, then everything else can be fixed."

Gabriella nestled into his arms, tears silently streaming down her face as she finally accepted the love her father had wanted to give her for twenty-five years. Gabriel wrapped one wing around the side she sat against, although she was so large he couldn't shield her completely the way he could her mother. Small shudders wracked her body until, at last, her tears were spent.

They sat there a long time simply staring at the stars.

"What made you come back, Daddy?" Gabriella finally asked.

"I came back for _you,_" Gabriel said. "Your mother and I have found a _new _paradise to inhabit. But we didn't want to go until we'd made sure the people we loved could come with us. So we came back here to do what we could to help."

"The universe is too big for the Father to run alone," Gabriella said. "I've been helping him. But it's too much for _me _to handle, either. I think there's a _reason _they birthed a thousand of you. It takes that many to keep things running. I've only been helping him do it the past ten years and already _I'm _ready to develop multiple personalities and run away screaming from this place."

"We'll stay as long as you need us," Gabriel reassured her, kissing her forehead."

A flash of blinding white light burst into the air thirty feet off the ground where they sat.

"Gabriella!" Uriel cried out, his expression filled with anguish. "I've been worried sick about you!"

He spotted his wife was not alone and fluttered warily down to the ground.

"Gabriel," Uriel said stiffly. "If you … uh … don't mind. I need to have a conversation with my wife."

"She's my daughter," Gabriel said.

"She's my wife," Uriel said.

"Children honor thy mother and thy father," Gabriel stated.

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husband," Uriel shot right back. "For the husband is the head of the wife."

"Husbands," Gabriel snarled. "Love your wife! So that you might present yourself to her holy and without blemish! So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loveth his wife loveth himself!"

"Huh?" Uriel asked. "Why are _you _getting involved in this … this … I don't even know why she's here."

"She's _here_ because she knows you're still in love with mywife and she's afraid you're going to abandon her now that Audrey's back!" Gabriel snarled.

"Oh," Uriel said, stepping backwards as though he'd just been struck.

Gabriella burst into tears.

Gabriel clenched his fists, getting ready to spring at the brother who had broken his little girls heart and pummel his face into the same rocks that had smashed _him _to pieces years before.

"It wasn't _enough _that you forced her _mother _to watch me die!" Gabriel hissed. "All you were supposed to do was get her out of there to keep her _safe._ Not torment her. But then you took advantage of a lonely young woman who had just lost her mother to improve your _own _position with the Father. The only reason you married her was because the Father finally _ordered _you to do it!

"Stop," Gabriella whispered, her voice barely audible between her tears. "Please …" She wrapped herself back in her wings, sobbing.

Uriel's reddish-brown wings drooped to the ground, the glimpse of fiery temper he had shown only moments earlier vanishing as he realized their arguing was hurting his wife.

"That's not true," Uriel said, stepping towards Gabriella. "It's true I was hesitant to marry her. But it wasn't because I wasn't in love with her. She's my brothers' daughter. The Father's law explicitly prohibits such a union."

"We're angels," Gabriel snapped. "The Father's law prohibits union with _anyone._ He expects us to wait on him hand and foot and just … rot!"

"She's so … good … with the Father," Uriel said. "You weren't there to see how bad it got after you left. She … helped him pull things back together. He … he was finally able to put himself in her shoes and let us get married."

"That doesn't justify the fact you married _one _woman while still being in love with another!" Gabriel snapped. "Do you think she's stupid? All this time … she's known."

Uriel's wings drooped even further, sparks shooting off the ends where steel-laced feathers dragged across the rocks.

"Audrey was the first person I felt _any _emotion for other than contempt," Uriel said softly. "For fifteen years I guarded her. I tolerated her hatred for how badly I had treated her. Treated you. Treated Gabriella. She blamed me for your death. And she let me know it every single moment of every single day. They _all _did. Amongst the blameworthy, I was the angel they blamed the most."

"As they should," Gabriel said. "I _knew_ you would not disobey the Father's orders. You were too eager to obey. But I had no idea you _hated _me until you made my wife _watch _me die!"

"Those were the Father's orders," Uriel said softly.

"You called my unborn child an abomination!" Gabriel shouted.

"I never said that," Uriel said.

"He never said that," Gabriella seconded.

"He _did!"_ Gabriel said. "I _heard _him."

"He never said that, Daddy," Gabriella said. "Jose' caught it all on his webcam. I overheard Mom say Uriel had said that. So when we started having … problems. After the twins were born. I asked a friend of mine to dig up the video. It was Amitea who said that to mom. Not Uriel."

"You … saw … me die?" Gabriel asked, horrified. "On a … video?"

"You … watched … that video?" Uriel said, just as horrified.

"Yes," Gabriella said, looking down at her hands. "They'd always said Daddy loved mom more than anything in the world. But I always thought it was just … talk. The way people sometimes do after someone has died. They get killed in a car accident. And then their relatives try to make sense of it all by making up some noble story about how their loved one ended up dead."

She looked up to meet Gabriel's gaze.

"But in your case," she continued. "It was really true. I'd been feeling something was missing in my marriage. But I didn't really know what it was until I saw that video and _watched _you knowingly die to protect us."

"I'm sorry," Uriel said, glancing back and forth between his wife and Gabriel. "I've said I'm sorry a million times. And I'll say it a million more. I'll do anything it takes to _prove _to you just how sorry I am for making your mother watch your father die. But as much as I'd like to go back in time and change how I acted in that moment. I can't. All I can do is … try to make it up to everyone as best I can."

Gabriel paused, his anger dissolving. Guilt over doing something insanely stupid was an emotion he knew an awful lot about.

"That still doesn't change the fact that you married my daughter out of some twisted sense of obligation," Gabriel said softly. "Not love. She deserves better."

Gabriella began to cry once again, hastily rubbing her eyes and turning away so they wouldn't see.

"Obligation?" Uriel said, his voice anguished. "You think I married your daughter out of … obligation? Trust me … obligation was the _last _thing on my mind when I married her!"

Uriel took another step towards his wife, ignoring Gabriel as he spoke.

"Gabriella's … perfect," Uriel said. "She's got _you_ for a father. The Prophet for a mother. And then she goes ahead and tops _both _of your acts by figuring out what was wrong with the Father. She single-handedly oversaw the restoration 399 of the 400 female angels and all 350,000 of their offspring. Opened the gates of both heaven and Sheol. And then she got everyone working together, _all _of us, even the Grigori, to get off our tailfeathers and start helping the Father run the universe."

Gabriella turned to look her husband in the eye, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. Gabriel stepped back. Uriel spoke now for _her _benefit. Not his.

"At least … at least the Prophet was … human," Uriel said gently. "She cursed. She made mistakes. She … cried sometimes. Loving her was … safe. She was … gone. Gabriella … God! I was your … teenage crush! I've been waiting the past ten years for you to wake up and dump my sorry tailfeathers for someone more like … you!"

"But I don't _want _anyone but you," Gabriella said softly. "You're the only man I've ever loved."

"I love you," Uriel said softly. "I always have. It just took seeing the Prophet again. Realizing how stupid I'd been holding back part of my heart because I was afraid someday you were going to leave me just like the Mother did."

"You really love me?" Gabriella asked, hic-coughing.

"I love you more than my own existence," Uriel said softly, reaching out to caress her cheek. "Please … just come home so I can prove it to you. If you were ever to leave me … I think I would be even _more _miserable than the Father has been these past 75 million years."

"I can't," Gabriella said.

Uriel's wings dropped the rest of the way to the ground, the screech of steel against rock giving voice to the pain of the rejection Uriel felt making Gabriel's teeth vibrate inside his head. Ouch!

"I understand," Uriel said quietly.

"No," Gabriella said, reaching out to touch _his _cheek now. "You don't. I've been in labor for the past few hours. My water broke. I don't think I can fly home right now without help."

"Oh," Uriel said, panic making his wings shoot straight out to either side, nearly impaling Gabriel upon a few of his razor-sharp primary feathers in the process.

"Oh," Gabriel said. "We'd better … uh … I wasn't _here _for this part before. The only birth I've ever witnessed was guarding the outside of the manger while Yesua was being born. I have no idea what to do."

"I'm too big to carry," Gabriella said to her husband. "You're going to have to go fetch somebody to birth the baby here."

"Um …" Uriel said. "Be right back!"

He flashed out of there before his feet had even left the ground.

Gabriel knelt down beside his daughter. He'd noticed from time to time her eyes had glazed over with pain and she'd been holding her side, but he hadn't known the signs. Stubborn. She was stubborn. Just … like …

"You should have told me it was time to carry you home," Gabriel scolded.

Gabriella snaked her arms around him and gave him a big hug.

"He loves me, Daddy!" she said. "He really does!"

"Yes," Gabriel said, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled her scent. "He does. I could smell it the entire time he was speaking to you. Whatever troubles you've been experiencing, I think you're going to be able to work it out."

"How do you know, Daddy?" she asked.

Gabriel gave her a cryptic smile.

"Have faith."


	231. Chapter 230

Chapter 230

Thamuz gently lifted Gabriella off the ground, teleporting her home to the Garden to give birth there. Uriel was milliseconds behind her, pausing just long enough to shoot Gabriel a grateful look before following.

"Thank you, brother," Uriel said.

"Take good care of my little girl," Gabriel replied.

The moment passed. They had made their peace. It was time to move on.

Uriel disappeared between the dimensions. Following his wife. In that respect, they were the same. Their wives were their reasons for being. Gabriel prepared to follow so he could pace outside the door of the birthing chamber with the others waiting for his new granddaughter to make her appearance. It was fitting the child had chosen the same day as Yesua to be born.

Another consciousness tugged at the edge of his. Someone … familiar.

Gabriel looked up and saw him there, silhouetted against the full moon at the top of the cliff where Gabriel had fallen.

"Michael," Gabriel said.

He leaped into the air, flapping his broad wings to get airborne, riding the currents to the top of the cliff to join the brother who had begun this journey with him so long ago.

"Hello, Gabriel," Michael said, his stoic expression warming at the sight of his brother returned from the grave. "I'd heard you'd returned."

"I have," Gabriel said. "It just … took a while. That's all."

"You've been missed," Michael said, a hint of emotion flashing into the strong, angular features of his face. He reached out to place a hand on Gabriel's shoulder.

Gabriel repressed the shudder of raw emotion of the _last _time Michael had touched him like this. The Father had forced him to relive that horrid memory over and over again for fifteen years. The memory of one of his greatest sins. Not siding with his brother. The only _real_ friend he'd ever had until he'd met the Prophet.

"So I've heard," Gabriel said. "They stuck you in charge?"

"I could … uh … use a little help," Michael said. "Playing God isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"I can only imagine," Gabriel said. "My first priority is my family. But I'll do what I can to relieve your burden. As long as you don't stick me behind a desk. _Anything _but a desk job. I've _already _spent fifteen years in the Keep."

"Well it's … uh … about family," Michael said. "I … uh. I'd like to take a little vacation. Just a few days. To … recuperate."

Gabriel's nostrils flared. He smelled…

"Recuperate?" Gabriel said, bursting out laughing. "You're planning on doing a lot more than recuperating!"

"I heard what Gabriella said," Michael said softly. "It appears I've been sending the wrong message. I … uh …"

"Someone has caught your interest," Gabriel stated. It was not a question. He could smell the pheromones Michael emitted of a man who was in love, but that relationship had not yet been consummated.

"She's … uh … sorta … married," Michael said. "To … uh … someone else."

"Not again," Gabriel sighed. "When are you going to learn? You're worse than Uriel."

"Her … uh … _husband_," Michael said. "Sorta husband. Not really. Well anyways … he uh … just gave me permission … to … uh … go for it."

"Her _husband_ told you to go ahead and pursue a relationship with his _wife_?" Gabriel asked incredulously.

"She's an … uh … a Discalced Carmelite," Michael said, a guilty grin suddenly lighting up his face and giving him a puckish appearance. "I've spent the past twenty years trying to convince her to break her vows. The Father finally … uh … took pity on me and paid her a visit at her convent in Duruelo."

"All this time we've thought you've been living like a monk?" Gabriel said. "And you've been trying to … _tempt _… a nun … to sin?"

"When you put it that way," Michael stammered.

"Congratulations!" Gabriel said, slapping Michael upon the back. "It's about time."

"So … you'll run things for a few weeks while I go … woo … her?" Michael asked. "I intend to ask her to marry me. And then we'd … uh … like a few weeks off. Before I have to get back to the grind of running heaven. Without out _you _here to keep everyone in line, it's all gone to Sheol in a hand basket."

"You can leave as soon as I get my wife settled into a room at the palace and see my new granddaughter," Gabriel said. "But I'm _not _taking over your job. _You _can be the leader. I'm just the enforcer. That's all."

"You were never just the enforcer, brother," Michael said. "It's good to see you again."

Michael backed up, facing Gabriel, until the backs of his feet were at the very lip of the cliff _Gabriel _had once fallen off of at the beginning of this journey.

"What are you doing, Michael?" Gabriel asked.

"Falling," Michael said, stretching his arms out horizontally beside him into the shape of a cross and closing his eyes, wings flared. He took a deep, sighing breath, as though exhaling the weight of heaven from his soul and allowed his wings to settle gently against his back. An expression of utter peace came upon his face.

Michael's silhouette against the moonlight appeared almost as it had the day he had cut off his own wings. With a graceful arch of his back, Michael slowly shifted his weight backwards. At the last moment, he kicked backwards, turning the 'fall' into a back handspring off the cliff. Gabriel held his breath, his heart racing in his throat, as Michael sped head-first towards the ground, his wings pressed tightly against his back so that they would not slow his descent.

"Whoo-hooo!" Michael shouted, his joyous call echoing off the cliffs into the night.

Mere inches before he hit the ground, Michael disappeared in a blinding flash of brilliant white. Disappeared 'between.' Disappeared to wherever it was the woman he loved was, right now, explaining to her Mother Superior that she was leaving their order of 'barefoot nuns' because God, himself, had come down from heaven, split personality and all, and asked her to break her vow of chastity and marry his archangel son.

Gabriel looked up at the sky.

"Thank you, Father," Gabriel whispered. He no longer wore the collar, but somehow he thought the Father was watching.

A small, quiet voice echoed inside his consciousness. Gabriel didn't _need _a collar anymore.

"_Have faith."_

Gabriel leaped off the cliff, his heart light, and teleported home to go meet his new granddaughter.

This time, he didn't fall.

X

THE END

X

X X X X X X

_My thanks to everyone who came with me on this wonderful little journey. Thank you all you wonderful readers and reviewers who submitted reviews, send kind words, added ideas, or just plain pushed the magic little numbers up to show somebody besides –me- enjoyed the ride. Thank you also to those of you who added illustrations to some of the chapters._

_To my most loyal Canadian reader … the Prophet took refuge in your tolerant neck of the woods after her beloved died._

_To my most loyal Spanish reader … I have given you your hearts' desire. Get thee to the convent founded by Saint Theresa and go collect your new bedwarmer._

_To my brave reader who chose in these troubled times to serve our country … may the angels always watch over you and protect you and your 'battle buddies' as you patrol the skies._

_To the rest of you who have submitted kind words or ideas … thank you. If something struck me as 'right,' I tried to incorporate it in. Thank you._

_To Kevin Durand … damn! You need to get more roles where we see the depth of emotion you are capable of showing. I got 230 chapters out of that single, perfect tear! I've been a fan since your Stargate G'Ould days. They need to send you to 'bad guys anonymous' so you can start getting some more balanced movie roles._

_At the request of numerous readers, I've decided to write a standalone, 100% original novel based on the Azrael/Ann pairing. It will be set in my 'other' universe (I already had a 6-novel series based on the Archangel Michael before I ever saw Legion which is why I've avoided fleshing out his character too much in this fic). I've been shopping for a publisher for the series, but decided I'll dabble with self-publishing direct-to-kindle with the standalone. I've got a funny little 'Epilogue' already written to this Audrey/Gabriel fanfic and will post it along with a trail of breadcrumbs once the Azrael story is finished._

_Goodbye! Goodnight! And thank you!_


	232. Epilogue

**Note: At last, the long-promised post-story Epilogue to 'Dogs of the Father' follows. Throughout 'Dogs,' Audrey kept threatening to drag Gabriel to the movies to bone up on the last few thousand years of human culture. So here's a 'WHAT IF' story. What if Yesua made all the angels and his disciples attend a weekly 'movie night?' What movies should they all be forced to watch? I hope readers enjoy what movie I selected, and how each character introduced in 'Dogs' interacts (and a little follow-up on how they fared in post-Rapture Earth).**

**As I promised, I've written the Azra'el/Ann (now Azra'el/Elisabeth because I realized I had too many 'A' names) fiction story in my 'own' universe as promised, but there are so many spoilers for the rest of my 100% original 'universe' (which features my own original version of the archangel Michael) that I can't publish it until I publish the first 6 books in the series. So … Book 1 of the 'Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One' is now available on Amazon on kindle and (by next week) the paperback will be available as well. **

**www [dot] amazon [dot] com/Sword-Gods-Chosen-Saga-ebook/dp/B007UXDTNK/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1334886119&sr=1-8**

**(There are three books with very similar names … my series is the one by Anna Erishkigal).**

**As soon as I get the rest of the series final-edited, formatted, converted to MOBI, and uploaded to Amazon, I'll be making available 'Angel of Death' based on the original Azra'el/Ann pairing that evolved out of –this- fanfiction. But here's a hint of what's to come **

'**Angel of Death' - Carthage. 311 BC. Private Azra'el Thanatos tangles with an evil god and is left both a creature of the void … and without physical form. 2,800 years later, he crosses paths with a child who can survive his touch. A child who grows into a beautiful army trauma nurse who can defeat him. Could she be the new Morning Star?**

**I hope people who enjoyed 'Dogs of the Father' will spread the word about my new book series, 'Sword of the Gods!' Peace! Love! And enjoy this last tidbit of the Archangel Gabriel … at some point I will be rewriting 'Dogs' into my own original universe in some form.**

**Bon Appetit! And thanks for reading! Saichick … aka Anna Erishkigal.**

Epilogue

"I don't see the point of this … exercise," Gabriel scowled. "Even former inhabitants of Sheol are evolving as heavenly creatures. Why make us all watch … movies … about a way of life that is now irrelevant?"

"I promised if we ever healed the fracture in heaven," Audrey said, "that I was going to make you catch up on the last 2,000 years of human popular culture."

Audrey slid her fingertips across the tiny hairs gracing his forearm, the whisper of physical sensation causing goosebumps to arise on sensitive flesh. Touch. For millions of years the cherubs had been starved of all sense of touch. Her touch was a drug … the cure to all irritations. Including his annoyance at the long line of bizarrely dressed moviegoers stretching ahead of them. He knew what she was doing … and it was _working. _But he wasn't going to let _her _know that!

"But … movie night?" Gabriel grumbled. "_Every_ Saturday night? With mandatory attendance of all the angels? Why can't we just stay at the palace and rent a video like the humans do?"

"Because _every _married couple needs to remind themselves the reason they got married is because they _like _one another," Yesua interrupted. "Not because they needed a second taxi-driver to teleport the cherubs around to all their sports activities, lessons and choir practices."

The young god tugged the ever-pregnant Mary Magdaline into his side, giving her belly an affectionate rub. Mary liked creating their offspring the old-fashioned way, while Yesua liked the eighteen month or so breather between each new child to bond before the next one came along.

"And we _do _like one another," Mary stretched up to murmur huskily in his ear. "Don't we?"

"Yes," Yesua said, a twinkle flashing in his brilliant blue eyes that looked so much like the Father's. "We do. Very much."

Gabriel grunted as somebody nudged him from the rear.

"Hey … Gabe…"

Gabriel turned to see Gunnlaeif standing there with his pretty Nephilim wife.

"Popcorn?" Gunn asked.

Gunn thrust an enormous red-and-white striped paper bucket of the salty, greasy concoction into Gabriel's face. The odor of fake 'butter' offended Gabriel's nostrils. He _liked _popcorn now that he'd developed a taste for mortal food, but only if it had _real _butter on it. The stale garbage movie theaters fed the masses during Yesua's forced weekly 'Human Sociology 101' excursions was revolting. Nearly as disgusting as Power Bars.

"No thank you," Gabriel grumbled, giving Gunn his most disapproving 'get that crap out of my face' scowl.

"Ya sure?" Half-chewed chunks of popcorn came tumbling out of Gunn's mouth as he spoke and chewed at the same time. It lodged in his long, Viking-style braided beard. Gunn gave Gabriel a sheepish look and picked out the offending chunk, popping it right back into his mouth. "Snacks for later?"

"Gunn!" Gunnlaeif's pretty Nephilim wife, Pórbjörg, affectionately cuffed her husband off the side of the head and swiped the popcorn out of his beard. Her grey striped wings fluttered in exasperation as she tried to clean her husband up enough to be presentable. "You can lure the biker away from the motorcycle, but you can never take the motorcycle out of the biker."

"Yurf _suppozzed _too spill it," Gunn mumbled as he shoved even _more _into his mouth. "Juft wait umtil you get inside. _You'll _see."

Pórbjörg gave Gabriel and apologetic look and dragged her husband towards a group of bikers dressed more like a music band Audrey had informed him had been called 'Village People' back before Yesua had been born. Audrey distracted him before he could examine the group's strange attire and discern whether they were _really _bikers, or a group of Lena's friends invited to attend tonight's forced sociology lesson.

"_Gayyybriel!_" Lena called, gliding over as she made a stage entrance, arms thrust artfully up into the air in a 'tada' gesture. "And Audrey! So good to see you both made it this week."

Lena's mate, Benny, quietly trailed behind her, dragged along in her wake by the hand Lena never let go of. After losing him to the heavenly host, Lena had vowed to never let him go ever again. He was a quiet, unassuming little man. Small. Thin. With quirky mannerisms that often left one questioning whether he was a male or a female. The stereotypical gay male. Lena had shone with happiness ever since Gabriella had freed Benny from Sheol.

"Lena," Gabriel greeted, giving the Second Disciple a genuine hug. "You … look … ur …"

His words trailed off. Lena was a drag queen. A cross dresser. A man who wore women's clothing. But in all the time he had known her, she had never, ever, not even during the most primitive living conditions during their long trek across the northern hemisphere, appeared anything less than ladylike. Tonight, however, Lena looked like …

Like a man dressed as a woman….

In fact, now that he looked around him, this was the way a great many of the moviegoers lining up for the midnight showing of Yesua's weekly movie were dressed. The Metropolitan Opera House was one of the few theaters capable of seating all 1000 full-blooded angels, their spouses, the first twelve disciples, the second twelve disciples, various guests and saints, and a sizeable contingent of 'ordinary people' Yesua invited from different groups of the human population each week. Tonight's selected group was … weird.

"Gabriel … man … howzit going?" Jose' greeted, giving them a perfect 'pimp pose' as he performed an intricate series of hand-slaps he had taught Gabriel which was the former gang-bangers equivalent of a handshake. Pretty young 'groupies' dressed as French maids hung off either arm, twittering vacuously at his every word. Jose' was the only disciple who'd refused Yesua's mandate to be fruitful and multiply, stating he was too much of 'a man' to have a 'nose ring pierced through his nose.' Instead, Jose' 'rehabilitated' former female inhabitants of Sheol.

Gabriel's hand met Jose's at the point in the strange hand-routine Audrey called a 'high-five,' about as expressive as he was willing to get exchanging gangbanger hand signals. Jose' would give them no peace until he gave the obligatory photo-op with Audrey. He shoved her towards the front, standing at her back so _she'd _dominate the video Jose' perpetually filmed from equipment built right into his suit. Gabriel enjoyed being the center of attention about as much as he'd liked being interred in the Keep. At least while in the Keep, his memory had been wiped out so he wasn't _aware _of being cast down into a fiery hell. Unlike Jose's constant live streaming video…

A black storm cloud rent the air above the theatre and slowly descended towards the red carpet. A gigantic door appeared. Moments later, the door opened. Out strode Simbi in humanoid form, followed by Mambo and her new husband, Papa Legba, followed by Non Gae with her chaos-demon boyfriend Texcatlipocal. The door disappeared as soon as they were through.

"Oh … look!" the papparazzi shouted. They rushed towards the newest arrivals like locusts. Angels and lesser gods showing up to walk amongst mortals was now a common sight on these weekly excursions. Visits from the void were not. Cameras flashed. A particularly bold paparazzi reached out and yanked out one of the hair sticks pinning Non Gae's ebony hair artfully upon her head.

"Give the devil his due!" Texcatlipocal roared, shifting forms to become an enormous, horned, multi-armed fire-breathing demon and spurting a puff of flame. The paparazzi ran in terror, britches smoking as he thwacked out the fire.

Gabriel suppressed a smile. He _tolerated _Jose's perpetual live video podcasting because he was a friend. Papparazzi were an entirely different matter. He often found himself wondering if Gabriella had assigned the unrelegated soul-fragments they'd never been able to reunite with original Grigori-Angel children to members of the press corp. The paparazzi sure _tormented _the heavenly superstars they perpetually shadowed like the heavenly host!

"Nice horns," Yesua said to Texcatlipocl, unconcerned by the show of force. "I wish _–I- _could get away with doing something like that."

"Your publicist would have a fit," Mambo said, now young, beautiful, and free of gimpy knees and aching backs. She had crossed over into the void with Papa Legba the moment Michael had said his wedding vows and spent the past two years learning to recreate her corporeal shell in any shape she liked. Gabriel kind of missed Mambo's wrinkles, but he _did _have to admit Mambo had been, and was once again, a striking woman.

"It's so much easier being … complex," Papa Legba said with a grin, taking a puff of the fine Cuban cigar some supplicant had given him in return for aiding them. The loa puffed a ring of smoke into the face of another aggressive papparazi. The way the other movie attendees were dressed tonight, the Mother's colorfully dressed loa brother fit right in.

"Thou shalt not sssteal from the devil," Simbi hissed, shifting out of humanoid form into a snake, and then back into the garish attire of a loa. "And they call usss evil?"

"_Somebody's _got to put them back in their place," Non Gae said, her black eyes glittering with a genuine smile. "Without evil, everybody takes the good guys for granted. Isn't that right, dear?"

"Ruff," Texcatlipocal growled, nuzzling the exposed nape of her neck showing through the elegant, but otherwise modest Korean hanbok. Non Gae and Texcatlipocal were enjoying 'living in sin' and rubbing the Father's face in it, but rumor had it the couple had been secretly married.

They sure _smelled _like a married couple…

"Jibril!"

Gabriel turned to see Muhammad stride up the red carpet, his colorfully dressed Bedouin wife at his side. "As-salamou al-eikoum [may peace be upon you]."

"Wa aleikum ah salam [and also peace be upon you]," Gabriel and Audrey replied in unison, making the traditional Muslim gesture of a hand to the forehead, the heart, and the lips before greeting. "Muhammad … Noora … we're so glad you came."

"How's the little guy doing?" Muhammad asked. "Is he flying yet?"

"Not yet," Gabriel said with a proud grin. "He's having a bit of trouble with coordination. A late bloomer. Just like his father."

"He's got _six_ pairs of wings," Audrey exclaimed. "It's all I can do to fly with _two_ pairs. I don't know … why … he decided to manifest himself into this universe with so many wings. He's molting baby feathers all over the palace!"

"Six pairs is good," the Rabbi said, stepping from behind where Muhammad blocked his view. "Everyone knows more wings means more holy spirit."

The Rabbi and his wife were both conservatively dressed entirely in black, as was the rest of the crowd, but beyond color, their attire bore no resemblance to tonight's black leather-and-fishnet-clad human moviegoers. White prayer-tassels hung from the Rabbi's shirt tails, while his wife wore her customary long black skirt and tightly wrapped headscarf.

"Rabbi," Gabriel greeted. He felt Audrey stiffen beside him. Gabriel had always felt at ease with the Rabbi, but his one-track attitude about everything _still _set his wife on edge. "It's good to see you. As always. _Right, _honey?"

"Sure," Audrey said. "Of course." Audrey had made her peace with the Rabbi, but they were still oil and water. "Has anybody seen the Reverend?"

"Not yet," the Rabbi said. "But he assured me he was coming. There's no way I'd come to this … this … farce … without him!"

"Don't spill the beans," Audrey scolded. "Ixnay on the etails-day."

"I have never been to this show, either," the Rabbi grumbled. "So there are no details I can spill. I'm only here at Yesua's request."

"Good," Audrey said, giving him a wolfish grin.

"_What _details?" Gabriel asked.

"Nothing," Audrey said, a portrait of innocence. Her scent gave her away. She was up to something. The last time she'd smelled this … mischievous … Audrey had made him participate in one of Lena's over-the-top stage performances as the 'hero.'

"You're not going to make me 'save' you again tonight," Gabriel asked suspiciously. "Are you?"

"Who … me?" Audrey asked, the epitome of innocence. "Absolutely not. I promise there will be absolutely, positively, nobody saved during the movie tonight."

"Someone just said we're all going to Sheol," a familiar voice chipped in. The rustle of razor-sharp feathers alerted the crowd to make room for Michael and his wife Theresa Sanches Cepeda Davila y Ahumada. Talk about a mouthful for a name! The former Carmelite nun had taken a typical long, Spanish name when she had taken her vows of chastity and poverty and chosen not to resume her pre-convent name upon marrying Michael.

"Michael," Gabriel said, glad to see at least _one _person was dressed normally in this freakish crowd. Although, given how quickly they'd both had to rush home from work in order to make tonight's event, neither had _time _to do more than straighten out their customary heavenly attire. "Long time no see."

"Long time my tailfeathers!" Michael said good-naturedly. "It's been like … what … barely an hour since we had to crack the whip on the Thrones?"

"No shop talk!" Theresa-Sanches ordered. "We are here to remember we all _like _each other. Not rehash problems at work!"

Before he'd met Theresa-Sanches, Gabriel had always thought of nuns as sweet, timid creatures hiding away in their convents to avoid the world. The truth had turned out to be far different. Michael had gone to the convent to answer a prayer as an excuse to get away from his desk one day and ended up having _his _prayers answered. The Carmelite nun had proven a wellspring of sensibility about how Michael could accomplish running heaven. Theresa-Sanches helped Michael oversee the day-to-day affairs so the Father was free to do what he liked best … shape new life forms for the Mother to breathe life into. She was warm, funny, caring, and strict as hell.

And Michael absolutely, utterly, completely worshipped the ground she walked upon. Gabriel was glad his stoic brother had finally allowed a little happiness into his _own _life. If there was one thing a Discalced, or 'barefoot' nun knew anything about, it was how important it was to balance service to the greater good with close personal connections to family. The pragmatic Carmelite had quickly stripped heaven of all its unnecessary pomp, circumstance, bells and whistles and helped Michael firmly re-center the running of the universe upon his heavenly and human families. Heaven had become a simple, no-frills, orderly place under her iron … uh … velvet grip.

"Have you seen Four Bears?" Michael asked. "He said Ehyeh might make it tonight?"

"They're over there," Gabriel said, pointing to where the Three Affiliated Tribes former chief and current 'Other-Universe Spiritual Advisor' to Yesua stood negotiating with several of the Father's siblings who'd teleported in from other universes to see tonight's show.

"What's this show about, anyways?" Michael asked. "This is a pretty who's-who-of-heaven turnout for a simple movie."

"I have no idea," Gabriel said. "Audrey won't breathe a word. Something about we just have to experience it to understand."

"What's with all the … black wigs, grey eye shadow and big red lips?" Theresa-Sanches asked. "Are those … men … wearing high heels?"

"Oh … that's just Lena and her friends," Audrey said, grabbing Theresa-Sanches by the arm and turning her to speak to a group of humans who'd just come up to them seeking autographs. "Pay it no mind."

Gabriel looked around once more at the unusual crowd. Yes … what _was _up with tonight's event. He'd been told it was a movie, not a costume ball. He hoped Audrey wasn't dragging him to another one of those parties she'd called a 'rave.' It was one thing to spread ones wings and surf through the air. Another entirely to entrust ones personhood, especially a personhood as large and solidly built as _his_, to 'bodysurf' through the crowd held aloft on the hands of mortals.

"Is this ticket right?" the Rabbi asked. "It says we're in the front row. Isn't that Yesua's customary place?"

"No!" Yesua blurted. "I mean … the Father's coming tonight. The Mother insisted. _He's _sitting front and center. This is your first time seeing it. I _insist _you all get to enjoy the experience up close and personal."

Mary Magdaline snickered.

Gabriel was beginning to have a bad feeling...

Azrael appeared to his left with Ann on his arm. The paparazzi parted like the Red Sea. They all knew who Azrael was. Especially since he'd accidentally zapped one of them at an earlier event and been forced to none-too-gently shove the overzealous photographers soul back into his body. Rumor had it the reporter had given up his work and chosen to become a Franciscan monk.

"It would be nice if that wasn't people's _first _reaction to me," Azrael groused. "Not only do they get out of my way, but then they go out of their way to make themselves invisible so I don't notice them."

"Count your blessings," Ann laughed. "We're the only ones they don't bother. Except maybe for old Tex over there. He's the only one they consider even scarier than _you._"

"Did somebody say Texas?" the Senator asked, dressed in an oversized black tuxedo jacket, orange bow tie, purple vest, wing-tipped shoes and a hat. Cindy was dressed just like him, only with different accessories, frizzy hair, and pink swim goggles. Both looked ghastly pale, or was the Senator also wearing … makeup?

"Tex," Ann said. "As in Texcatlipocal. Chaos demon. Not Texas. As in the Restored Republic of Texas. Independent nation."

"Do _you_ know what tonight's movie is about?" Michael asked.

"Az…" Ann warned, giving him the evil eye.

"I plead the fifth," Azrael said, his ebony features feigning seriousness, but the slight uptick of one corner of his mouth betraying the Angel of Death found something amusing.

"What row are you sitting in, anyways?" Michael asked.

"Seventeen," Ann said. "There's no _way _I'm sitting up front for this one."

Another flash of light, immediately followed by the rustle of light brown feathers flapping in the breeze blew back the crowd as Belaziel and his wife teleported in from Toronto and landed beside them.

"Belaziel!" Audrey exclaimed, giving her former protector a fond kiss on the lips that, in Gabriel's mind, lasted far longer than he would have liked. Pheromones of love, an unmated love, but love nonetheless, filled the air.

Gabriel glowered at his brother although in his heart he knew Belaziel was no threat. Gabriel had asked Belaziel to marry his wife after he was dead. Belaziel had complied by giving Audrey as much of what she needed to exist without her mate, and no more. Less than a husband or lover. More than a friend. They smelled like an old married couple. Gabriel was … jealous.

"And Taram-arum," Audrey added, giving her a peck on both cheeks as well that bore genuine fondness.

"Prophet," Taram-uram said warmly. "My family has asked me to convey their love."

For fifteen years, Audrey had filled Taram-uram's shoes as matriarch of the Toronto clan. The children had embraced Audrey, not because they _wanted _another mother, but because Belaziel had been so heartbroken after their mother's death that they would have accepted _anybody _who gave him a reason for living. Taram-uram had come from a time when such arrangements were both acceptable and pragmatic. Belaziel _loved_ Audrey, but he _worshipped_ the ground his wife walked upon. Belaziel's wife bore only the occasional flash of jealousy towards Audrey for the comparatively brief time she'd spent with him.

Gabriel … on the other hand … felt conflicted. Belaziel had been the father he hadn't been there to be for Gabriella. So much of who his daughter was today was as a result of _his _tutelage. Not Gabriel's. No matter what he had asked of them _before _he had died, the thought his wife had shared his brothers' bed for fifteen years now drove him ballistic.

"Your wife looks very happy, brother," Belaziel said, laying a hand upon his shoulder and giving him a gentle smile. "I am glad. She was so broken-hearted when she was under my protection. It's good to see her smile."

And just like that, Gabriel's jealousy vanished. No matter _what _had happened between the two of them while he'd been dead, the only thing that mattered was Audrey had come for _him._ Nobody else. His brother bid farewell and moved to greet some of the other brothers.

Thunder rumbled. A bolt of lightning split the sky. The paparazzi went wild as the Father and the Mother made a rare personal appearance. Arm-in-arm, the Father and the Mother walked up the red carpet like the superstars they were.

"Your Mother _insisted _we attend this … vulgar … movie tonight," the Father said, his blue-eyed dominant personality in charge at the moment. He tugged his simple white robe closer to his body so it wouldn't inadvertently brush against any of the paparazzi clamoring for an interview

"It's what you _need,"_ the Mother said softly into his ear, blowing gently as she spoke. "Especially your other half. You'll both enjoy it. I promise."

The Father's demeanor shifted.

"He has no clue what's about to happen," the black-eyed version of the Father said, snickering like a naughty little boy. "Howard'el spilled the beans. He made me promise not to tell."

"The others don't know," Audrey said. "Mum's the word."

"Mum's the word," the black-eyed version said, then ceded control back to the dominant personality.

These days, the black-eyed void creature seemed to be content playing jokes upon its host, causing the Father to sleepwalk and wake up in all sorts of hilarious predicaments. Just last night, the Father had awoken in the middle of the night in some hapless human's kitchen making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The sleepy homeowner had stumbled into their kitchen, thinking it had been the cat, and screamed as he'd found the Father wielding a jelly-smeared butter knife, screaming as well as he'd realized he'd sleepwalked straight out of heaven. Gabriella had been counseling the void-creature that some of his practical jokes were going a little too far, but they were wary of telling the young void-fragment not to be funny. A trickster split personality was a lot less destructive than an immature one that broke its living 'toys' whenever it was angry and the Father couldn't juggle everything he did without the expanded awareness the void creature brought to their little dynamic duo. But at least the void creature was finally beginning to grow up.

"Come on," Gabriel said, more wary now than ever as an excited murmur shifted through the crowd like the tide. "The doors have opened. Let's go inside."

"Is this a kissing movie?" the Father asked, pointing to several ten-foot-high black posters with an enormous pair of red lips on them. "I don't know about this. You didn't say anything about a kissing movie. And what's RHPS?"

Gabriel stared up at the enormous posters donning the ornate lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House. Black posters with enormous red lips, with block letters saying RHPS, were everywhere.

"What did you say this movie was, Little Prophet?" Gabriel asked.

"I didn't," Audrey said. She gave him a smoky stare from beneath veiled lashes. The stare that always made Gabriel turn to a strange human concoction called 'jello' inside. Yes. She was _definitely _up to something.

"Gabriel!" the Reverend called, interrupting them before he could coerce her to answer the question. The Reverend pushed his way through the crowd, Lyubitshke on his arm. "Michael! Father! I have something you'll need."

The Reverend handed each of them a brown paper bag with an assortment of items in it. Lyubitshke held a tray loaded with slightly burnt, unbuttered toast. Using a pair of tongs, the Romani woman handed each of them a piece of toast.

"Thanks," Gabriel said, taking a bite. He grimaced as he realized the toast had gone cold and stale.

"Gabriel!" Lyubitshke scolded. "You're not supposed to _eat _it. You're supposed to … uh … use it."

"Use … it?" Gabriel asked. One dark eyebrow lifted in concentration, studying the guilty expression on Lyubitshke's face. Yes … they were all up to no good. Gabriel hadn't existed for fourteen billion years without learning a thing or two about humans behaving badly.

"Trust us," the Reverend said, taking a pose not so very different from the one Lena had assumed earlier. "You'll know the right time."

"Why is there a roll of toilet paper in my bag?" Theresa-Sanches asked. "Scott tissue?"

"Oh!" Michael said excitedly. "Mine's a boxed lunch. There's a hot dog in it!"

"Rice?" the Father asked, fingering the white grains with dismay. "Mine's not cooked yet."

"Just leave it be until the movie starts, Yahweh!" the Mother ordered. Now … let's go find our seats and stop making trouble!"

The Reverend was dressed in a too-large black suit, like a butler might wear, and had combed his hair back so it looked like long, stringy hair. Lyubitshke, on the other hand, had frizzed out her hair and was dressed like a maid wearing a too-short dress and way too much makeup. A very _provocative _maid with fishnet stockings and spiked heels.

Kind of like he could see peeking out of the bottom of his Little Prophet's long trench coat, now that he thought about it.

'_Hmmm…' _Gabriel murmured, tilting his head to get a closer look at his mates' shapely ankles. Audrey had come downstairs already wearing her trench coat. He'd never gotten a look at what she was wearing tonight.

_Many _participants were dressed in peculiar outfits. Including Gabriella, who waved down at them from the fourth balcony where she and Uriel had congregated with a group of friends from Toronto. The tomboyish Gabriella had shown up wearing a modest pink dress that any school librarian would be comfortable wearing and a white cardigan sweater, while Uriel had dressed like a … nerd. Complete with fake coke-bottle glasses that he didn't need to see. Since when did Gabriella dress as a … girl? Unless forced to dress up by the Father, Gabriella preferred to dress in a human style she called 'goth.'

"What are you all _wearing?"_ Gabriel asked, scowling at the Reverends stage getup.

"Have faith," the Reverend said with a smile, shoving them towards the front row. The first three rows were … empty.

"I guess we get preferential seating," Michael said. "Why isn't anybody else sitting up front?"

"Perhaps they're just … overawed … by you all?" Audrey, pointing to the Father, Michael, and Gabriel. "Hurry up and sit down. They're about to start."

The Mother gave them all a benign smile straight out of a Leonardo DaVinci painting. Gabriel wasn't buying it.

"Are you cold, my love?" Gabriel asked, noting that neither Audrey nor the Mother took off their full-length waterproof trench coats before they sat down. He arranged his wings in seats never been designed for angels and jammed his too-wide butt into the seat. Michael's razor-sharp feathers gouged out the wood in the seat next to him and punctured the velvet cushions.

"You can let me snuggle in your wings if you like," Audrey said, her voice sultry.

"I'll keep you nice and warm," Gabriel murmured in her ear, deliberately lowering his voice to give her goosebumps. "I promise." He pulled her close, relishing this time with her. Despite his insistence he didn't _want _to help Michael run heaven, the reality was that all 1000 Cherubs and their mates had to chip in and pull their weight now that the Father was semi-retired. It was a heavy burden the Father had carried all these years. One they were only now beginning to understand … and appreciate. That, more than anything the Father ever could have said, had forced Gabriel to grudgingly forgive the Father for cracking under the strain.

"Oh … good … a flashlight," the Father muttered, rummaging through the bag the Reverend had given him. "In case I have to get up and go to the bathroom. For some reason … I keep getting up in the middle of the night and getting lost."

Audrey shot Gabriel a knowing look. Lost? More like the butt of the void-creatures endless practical jokes.

"Shhh…" the Mother hushed as the lights were flashed on and off a few times. "Here comes the usherette. It's beginning."

A blonde woman dressed in a waitress costume similar to the one Charlie had worn that fateful night at the Paradise Diner carrying a tray of candy walked up to the front of the stage and picked up a microphone. In the background, the movie started.

"Way to go, Mom!" a voice shouted out from the first balcony. Yesua? Was that…

Wait a minute! That _was _Charlie! Why was the mortal mother of the Savior pretending to be usherette for tonight's performance? A plain black screen with red lips singing song about science fiction played on the screen behind her as Charlie sang along.

"I thought this was a movie?" Gabriel asked.

"Shhhhh…" Audrey hissed. "It's a … blend."

Gabriel leaned back as the campy, horribly acted movie about a couple getting married and then getting lost on the way to their honeymoon began to play.

"The acting is really terrible," the Father groused. "Why did you drag me to this show? You promised I'd like it better than Shakespeare."

"Be quiet!" the Mother ordered. "I told you to have faith!"

The Father settled back down. All of a sudden, Gabriel felt something raining down onto his head.

"What the…?"

"It's a wedding!" Audrey said, reaching into her bag and gleefully throwing rice at the movie screen. "You're supposed to throw rice."

"Oh," Gabriel said. He stared down into the bag he had been handed, contemplating whether or not he wished to go along with it. Grains of rice on the floor might pose a slip-and-fall hazard to the other patrons. The terribly acted movie went from bad to worse when everyone in the theatre turned on their flashlights.

"Is it time to go to the bathroom now?" the Father asked. "My prostrate has been acting up lately. Maybe that's why they put toilet paper in my bag?"

"Not yet," the Mother said.

"I kind of like this movie," Michael said, snuggling into his wife. "Nothing like a creepy horror flick for an excuse to get … close!"

"Oh Saint Michael," Theresa-Sanches cried out in a mock falsetto voice. "Protect me from evil!"

"Gladly," Michael said, growling and nuzzling her neck.

"Perhaps you should seek inspiration from your brother," Audrey whispered, her fingers slipping suggestively up Gabriel's thigh in the darkened theatre towards…

"Little Prophet!" Gabriel hissed in panic. "Not … here! The Father is sitting right next to you!"

"All the more fun," Audrey whispered.

Her fingers circled to his crotch. Gabriel testicles hardened in anticipation with each suggestive swirl. If she kept _that _up, he wasn't going to _make _it to the end of this horribly acted movie. He growled and grabbed her mischievous hand, firmly bringing it to his lips and kissing the back of her hand.

"We'll finish that thought later, okay?" Gabriel said.

He'd lost track of what was going on in the movie, some sort of musical piece with a butler and maid dressed like the Reverend had been dressed. All of a sudden, everyone in the theater stood up and started singing. Audrey and the Mother threw off their trench coats, revealing matched sequined gold Rockette outfits and fishnet stockings and pulled out matching gold top hats.

"Huh?"

Everyone stood up. Everyone, that is, except for Gabriel and the Father. Their eyes met across the empty seat where their wives no longer sat, sheer confusion registering on one another's faces at the inexplicable behavior of humans.

"Timewarp?" Gabriel asked, sitting stupidly in his seat as everyone in the theatre tumbled out into the aisles, many of them men wearing women's clothing, and started dancing what appeared to be a choreographed number that most in the audience already knew. "Again?"

Audrey pulled him to his feet

"It's just a hop to the left," Audrey sang, pulling him reluctantly to his feet as she reached into her bag and slapped a sparkling gold top hat upon her head. "And then a step to the right."

The Father's eyes turned black. As the Mother tugged him to his feet, he got a shit-eating grin on his face as he began making the Father's currently corporeal shell begin dancing the Time Warp with the Mother in front of all the major television network cameras fixated on their position. The Father would have an apoplectic fit when he realized what his alter-ego had made him very publicly do.

Gabriel stood silhouetted against the movie screen nobody in the audience was really watching anymore. Was this going to be one of those situations where he'd be memorizing the steps to some dance in a back corner of the garden for the next five weeks? Should he sit back down? Or go along? As he had done for so long since being cast down to live amongst the humans, Gabriel looked to Audrey to guide the way.

Actually … she looked kinda cute dancing in her sparkly gold Rockette's outfit, top hat and fishnet stockings. She looked like … that gal up there on the movie screen sitting on top of a jukebox singing. She looked like … she was having fun. She looked … good enough to eat.

Hmm… Maybe the humans were onto something?

The forbidden fruit… With one corner of his mouth ticking upward as he imagined what his little Prophet would look like wearing nothing but the fishnet stockings once he got her home, Gabriel took a bite of the toast…


	233. Angel of Death

_**As promised, I went and transplanted Azrael (the Angel of Death) and Ann (now renamed Elisabeth because two 'A' names was too cutesy) into their own original novel and their own original universe which will be Book 1 of a new series 'Children of the Fallen.' Here's a sample chapter and I think readers who provided reviews as 'Dogs of the Father' was being written will see despite the new 'universe' the core traits of the shy, slightly nerdy, desperately-needs-a-hug Angel of Death and the grumpy military trauma nurse with the gimpy leg who can defeat him have remained essentially unchanged despite the new backstory. Throughout the book are little ideas some of you might recognize as coming out of Dogs? **_

_Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, _

_But when we have had our swing of pleasure, _

_Our fill of fruit, _

_And our swelter of heat,_

_We say we have had our day _

_Ralph Waldo Emerson_

**Earth - AD February, 2003**

**Baghram AFB, Afghanistan**

The hair stood up on the back of Elisabeth's neck.

"Go!" Kadima gave her a knowing smile. "I'll finish up here."

Elisabeth smiled down at the young man who'd come to the infirmary complaining of stomach pain and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Eighteen. First tour of duty. Arrived in Afghanistan three weeks ago. Baptized by fire clearing Taliban from caves in the Adhi Ghar mountain range during Operation Mongoose. And now … cut down at the knees by an Afghani chicken. Roast chicken, that is…

"There's a reason why they tell you not to eat street-vendor food," Elisabeth said. "The stool culture came back positive. Textbook salmonella. We'll notify your C.O. you're out of commission for the next few days."

The Private nodded and clutched his stomach, ready to puke the contents of his now-empty gut into the bucket nurse Mary held for that purpose.

"Go!" Kadima glanced towards the shadow in the corner. "There's nothing going on here we can't handle."

"You'll be fine," Elisabeth reassured the young soldier. She casually scrubbed out and grabbed her coat. She did not acknowledge his presence, but knew he followed as she made her way to the first checkpoint.

"Yer not be going out and about alone, me hopes, Lieutenant Kaiser?" a British soldier asked in a lilting north-English accent that was more akin to a Scottish brogue as she passed through the first checkpoint.

"I'm not going past the second checkpoint," Elisabeth reassured him by reaching into her pocket and pulling out his calling card. "And I'm not alone."

"Ay … very good, miss," the soldier gave her a grin. "Yer just be careful, all right? Don't wanna be hunting down no missing nurses in none of them gullies."

A legend had grown up around her. Elisabeth. The nurse who could defeat Death. In the past month, three more groups of Taliban had mysteriously appeared, dead, when so-called 'local informants' led Coalition forces into remote areas where there were rumors of Taliban feeding supplies over the border from Pakistan. The details were kept tightly under wraps, but at each site the bodies were without a mark to indicate how they had died except for the ace-of-spades neatly tucked into the neckline of their shirts.

Elisabeth found her way to a semi-secluded spot, little more than a flat rock overlooking a bit of a gully out of sight of the main area of the base, and sat down, placing her cane next to her with a satisfied sigh. Barren rock. Unless it was irrigated, Afghanistan was little more than rock.

"You can come out, now."

Azrael solidified behind her. "Hello, Elisabeth."

"Come … sit with me," Elisabeth patted the rock next to her. She needed to coax the reclusive angel to get close enough to even hold a conversation. He wasn't antisocial. Just … shy.

"It's too small." Azrael moved to the rock she indicated, but did not sit down. "I don't want to bump against you."

"I'm not going to leap at you," Elisabeth said. "I trust you're not going to thwack me with one of those big chicken-wings of yours."

Azrael's stern countenance softened into a boyish smile so sweet and innocent it almost took her breath away. Chicken wings. It was a sign of the easy rapport which had begun to develop between them now that she understood who he was and why he watched her.

"I'll be careful." Azrael sat as far away as he could while still having his posterior planted on the same boulder. He carefully arranged his glossy black wings facing away from her so an inadvertent flap wouldn't brush against her and kill her.

"How go the wars in heaven?" Elisabeth asked.

"Same old same old," Azrael said. The boyish look disappeared. "Not well. We made a mistake assuming events in different nations were isolated incidents. We weren't expecting your level of technology or economic interconnectedness to jump the way it did the past twenty years."

"I still don't understand the prohibition against giving us technology!" Elisabeth groused. "Think of how many lives I could save? We're saving lives here that Nancy couldn't have dreamed of only five years ago."

"Moloch's signature was always easy to identify because he favors advanced technology," Azrael said. "He's always had the best and brightest new toys. If we found advanced technology, we could track it back to him."

"Had?" Elisabeth asked. "Past tense?"

"He's changed tactics," Azrael said. "He's learned to hide in plain sight by giving others the advanced technology and quietly manipulating things behind the scenes. It's like trying to spot somebody using sign language in a crowd full of people using bullhorns."

"So he's like a hacker or something?"

"I think so." Azrael's expression softened and a wistful look appeared on his face. "I wouldn't know. I haven't been able to touch a piece of electronic equipment for over 2,300 years."

Elisabeth stared down into the gully. The wind cut into the tiny openings in her coat and made her shiver. She should have brought her hat, but some odd impulse had made her leave it behind. She was no Abercrombie wannabe, wishing she was thin and cool enough to step foot into one of their stores without being lambasted by some tone-deaf CEO about only popular kids being welcome to shop there, but lately she wished she could dress a little nicer. Her choices were olive green. Olive drab. Khaki green. Khaki beige. Khaki drab. Black. And taupe. With a good measure of … you guessed it … army green if she had an excuse to wear her dress uniform. Even her hair had to be kept neatly tied back in a regulation army bun.

She noticed the way Azrael's interest became even more intense whenever she allowed her hair to cascade down her back. She liked the fact he noticed. Could Kadima be right? Did her ebony friend have an interest in her that was more than mere scientific curiosity?

"I'm cold," she said. Her excuse. She reached back and pulled her hair from the elastic, watching through veiled eyelashes the way his nostrils flared and chest rose as he inhaled the scent of her shampoo as she shook loose her locks. For ten years he had watched her. Now it was her turn to watch _him_.

"What was it like?" Elisabeth asked softly. "Learning to re-hold your physical form after your accident?"

Little by little, Azrael had revealed how he'd ended up in the predicament he was in now. The young friend he'd tried to save. Being shunned, even by his own kind, because he was a creature of the void. His loneliness at never being able to touch a living thing without killing it, not even a blade of grass.

"Time consuming," Azrael bent to pick up a rock and tossed it into the gully below. "It took me nearly a thousand years to hold a form you might even recognize as humanoid, and another thousand to reshape my original appearance enough that people didn't run screaming in terror whenever they saw me."

Elisabeth stared off into the February sun, closing her eyes and absorbing the weak sunlight as it warmed her skin. Needing a long time to recover from an accident was something she could understand.

"Rehabilitation," Elisabeth remembered what it had been like. "They said I would never walk again. But I did. Did you know I used to imagine you came to watch over me those first two years to help me learn to walk again?"

"I did," Azrael said. "I held my breath and prayed each painful step you took. You have no idea how much it hurt watching you fall and not being able to catch you."

"I knew you were there," Elisabeth said. "And I hated you. I hated you because I couldn't understand why you would come every day and then let me fall. I wish you had said something. Made me understand you didn't catch me because you couldn't. It would have made things easier."

"It's forbidden," Azrael picked up another rock. This time, instead of throwing it into the ditch, he simply crushed it in his hand until it dissolved into black nothingness and disappeared. "But I wish I'd disobeyed. I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You're not the one who hurt me," Elisabeth said. "A drunk driver hurt me. Why didn't you throw _him_ into hell?"

"It's not my place to interfere in the affairs of mortals." Azrael's wings involuntarily twitched in anger. He hastily got his emotions back under control and aimed the traitorous appendages as far away from her as he could, tucking them behind the rock at an angle that _had_ to be uncomfortable. "But know that I wanted to. Even before I knew you! I'm not brave like my Archangel cousins, but even _–I-_ loathe that kind of cowardice!"

Elisabeth felt the peculiar shudder of the rock beneath her. She glanced down. Earthquake? She noticed the way Azrael closed his eyes and breathed as he forced himself to relax. Not an earthquake. He said it required concentration to not dissolve whatever chair he sat down upon. His dark gift must be tied to his emotions.

"You threw yourself into a fiery pit to save a friend," Elisabeth said. "Even though you knew you had little chance of surviving. That sounds pretty brave to me."

"I …"

His words trailed off as he stared, not at the barren mountains, but events in a past so distant Elisabeth could hardly fathom it. Whenever she asked him about his young friend, he didn't want to talk about it. She could tell he still grieved her loss even after all these years. She was learning that, to get him to talk about himself, she needed to tie it to something about _her_.

"I felt like a freak," Elisabeth changed the subject back to her own rehabilitation. "All of a sudden everyone I ever cared about was gone, and the people who'd been connected to them just didn't know what to say. They avoided me like the plague because … well … I'm not sure why."

"People don't like to acknowledge bad things can happen to them," Azrael said. "I see it all the time in my work. People like Kadima. They survive. But when they tell their story, people don't want to hear it. They marginalize the victim. Blame them …even. It's why I like to check in on people I ask to bear witness."

"We don't make it easy for people to come forward and rub our noses in reality," Elisabeth sighed. "Everybody wants to live in their own perfect little world. Nobody wants to be reminded that death is around every corner. I mean …"

Azrael smiled at her slip-of-tongue.

"You know what I mean!" Elisabeth said, rolling her eyes. "I didn't mean you!"

"I'm just one person," Azrael threw his hands up into the air in a 'who me?' shrug. "I get blamed for a lot of things that I'm not there to do."

"Kind of like Santa Claus," Elisabeth laughed. "You even have a naughty list!"

Azrael reached to the pocket of his cloak and pulled out his latest scientific journal. He turned so she couldn't see as he rifled through the pages, and then flipped it open to a page full of tally marks. Doodled into one corner was scratched a remarkably good picture of an Afghani elder scolding a goat.

Elisabeth burst out laughing.

"The goat kept getting out of his enclosure and into his wife's garden," Azrael said. "The old man couldn't figure out how the goat got out of the pen because the fence was solid and the gate was always closed. The goat figured out how to jiggle the lock on the gate and open it. Because it was built out-of-plumb, gravity would make the gate shut behind him and the latch would automatically fall shut."

"And you let the poor man rip out his hair instead of just telling him what was happening?" Elisabeth asked in a mock accusatory voice.

"Shouldn't I have?" Azrael looked crushed as he misconstrued her teasing for displeasure.

"I'm sorry," Elisabeth said. "I was only teasing. How did you manage to not reveal yourself laughing your tailfeathers off as you watched?"

"He figured it out eventually," Azrael glanced at the book. "He hid around the corner of his house and watched how the goat kept getting out. He fixed the gate after that."

"And what did you learn from that little scientific study?" Elisabeth asked.

"It just reaffirmed what I already knew," Azrael said. "Your species capacity to find a way around problems is on par with some of the most advanced species in the universe. Only the ease with which your emotions can be incited to undermine your own self-interest holds you back."

Elisabeth looked down at the ground.

"That's what I used to tell Tommy," she mumbled. "We're raised to believe we want the alpha-male, and then when you get him, you realize he's a mess."

She glanced up to see the expression of jealousy dance across Azrael's face before being neatly tucked away behind a blank expression.

"Why did you choose him for a mate?" Azrael's voice was strained. "And then leave him?"

"I dunno," Elisabeth shrugged. "I was lonely, I guess. Everybody said I should be flattered the best-looking kid in school had a thing for me and … well … prom night. I was beginning to feel like a freak being the only … well … you know. I guess I just gave in. Didn't you ever have a girlfriend or anything that didn't work out? I mean … before … um …"

"No," Azrael said curtly. "Our species takes one mate. For life."

"One mate?" Elisabeth noticed the stiffness in his posture. "For life? That's … pretty romantic."

"That's the way it should be!" Azrael scolded. "Much misery in your world could be avoided if people took their interpersonal relationships more seriously."

"I wish it were that way down here," Elisabeth looked into his bottomless, black eyes that swirled with an even deeper darkness. Hurt? Had she hurt him, her immortal watcher, when she'd succumbed to her loneliness?

Elisabeth was a realist. Sex was … well … sex. You did it to scratch an itch. Or at least that was what she'd told herself after discovering Tommy had the sexual prowess of a grunting boar. Every time Tommy had fucked her, instead of seeing _him_, all could she imagine was the distraught look in her dark watchers eyes the day he'd jumped in front of a bullet to save her.

It was what had finally made her break things off…

Azrael … on the other hand? Elisabeth knew he'd be a sensitive and attentive lover. One mate. For life. What would it be like? To touch a man who'd never known intimate touch? To feel his form quiver beneath her fingers the way he sometimes did simply because she got close? Like now? He was already obsessed with the fact she'd once touched him and survived. How would he react if she bent across the rock and kissed him?

"Tell me about the Regent," Elisabeth changed the subject. "You said she is like you?"

"She was once human." The shadow of jealousy disappeared as he discussed one of his favorite people. "Your species periodically spits out an evolutionary leap that far surpasses anything in the universe. Like the Regent. She's the only person who can touch me without fearing death."

"But she can touch others?" Elisabeth asked.

"Yes," Azrael said. "She keeps her power firmly under control. But her physical form was not destroyed as mine was when she learned to harness the power of the void. It took her brother billions of years to figure out how to do it on his own from scratch."

"Oh," Elisabeth said, disappointed. "Billions of years? So … um … how long does she think it will take you to become … solid?"

"I don't know," Azrael sighed, staring off into the jagged mountains off in the distance. He bent down to pick up a pebble and threw it into the gully. "I can hear the Song of Creation. Faintly. She doesn't understand why I haven't been able to use it to recreate my physical form."

"I thought that's what the fires in hell did?" Elisabeth asked.

"The fire alters your essence so you can't directly manipulate the atomic structure of the material realm," Azrael said. "It's some sort of safety feature. To prevent Moloch and his Agents from simply using the matter here to escape. To rebuild your physical form, you have to know how to access power that transcends the material realm."

"Like … prayer … or something?" Elisabeth asked.

"You have to love somebody so deeply that you'd be willing to sacrifice your very existence just to be with them." Azrael's expression grew intense. "Only the most worthy are chosen by Ki to hear the Song of Creation."

Memory of the anguished look on Azrael's face when he'd suddenly materialized in front of her, stopping the bullet that had been coming for her, intruded into Elisabeth's mind. The memory which had haunted her dreams ever since that day. Was Kadima right?

"Nobody's ever loved me like that."

Azrael's mouth opened and closed without speaking. Platitudes? Or had he been about to profess he had feelings for her? The intense expression disappeared behind the cautious, shy one.

"Archangels have to be very careful who they become involved with," Azrael took a stick and pretended to be interested in jamming it into the rocky soil instead of making eye contact. "If their mate's love is false, it can kill us. Most have been unable to find mates because Moloch wiped out the Seraphim home world."

"How sad," Elisabeth said. "But I can't blame this Ki-goddess for being cautious. An evil bull-god who devours children can't understand what it means to truly love somebody."

"No," Azrael's dark wings drooping dejectedly. "He can't. But sometimes I feel … oh … I don't know!"

Elisabeth understood.

"You feel like maybe you're not healing because somehow you're not worthy?" Elisabeth guessed.

Azrael looked up, nostrils flared as he used his other senses to make up for his inability to touch. Beautiful. Elisabeth had never met a more breathtakingly beautiful creature than the chiseled angel who had shadowed her since she was a child. A plethora of emotions danced across his obsidian features. Angst. Remorse. Anger. Sorrow. Like a fine Grecian statue. Too beautiful to be real.

"You're not the only one who's ever had to pick yourself up off the ground and start from scratch, you know?" Elisabeth said. She reached towards him and stopped when he pulled away. She neatly laced her fingers together in her lap lest he jump up to maintain a safe distance.

"I know," Azrael said. "Watching you struggle has reminded me I'm not the only one who suffers because of somebody else's actions."

His black eyes were so full of sorrow that Elisabeth wanted to take him in her arms and give him a hug. How she longed to give him the simple reassuring hand on his shoulder like she'd given the sick Private back at the infirmary. Comfort she could never give. Elisabeth touched the scar which ran from her temple to her lips.

"I begged the General to remove that when he healed your spine," Azrael traced it in the air, a foot from her face. "He said it is a badge of honor. That you met Death and defeated it. Not a punishment."

"I hate it," Elisabeth said. "It makes me ugly."

"The one you call Saint Michael wished the world to see how special you are inside," Azrael said. "He, himself, keeps the scar over his heart healed by his mate even though it is within his power to remove it. He said he likes to look in the mirror each morning and be reminded every single day is a gift."

"He sounds very wise," Elisabeth touched the gnarled pink flesh that sank into her cheek. "I had no idea the scar had significance."

They sat there together, staring off at the distant craggy peaks, in a companionable silence. Azrael's notebook sat between them, still open to the page with the goat until an errant gust of wind blew it to another page. Elisabeth stared down at a sketch of herself staring back from the page. Scarred. But the scar had an ethereal quality about it. As though it were a beauty mark. Was this how he really saw her?

Azrael looked mortified. He silently grabbed the book and tucked it back into his cloak. Elisabeth stared off into the distance, pretending she hadn't seen. Her dark watcher was a man of deep emotion and few words. Pressing the reclusive angel about his art would cause him to recede back into the woodwork.

"Tell me about heaven?" Elisabeth asked, picking a neutral topic.

_**Readers asked me to 'tell us a story about...' and I did :-) I hope you enjoy this sample chapter and, if you like it, 'Angel of Death: A Love Story' by Anna Erishkigal is currently at Amazon in paperback and ebook and, by late-August, will be uploaded to the other e-reader platforms as well. Who says 'real' fiction can't come out of fanfiction? Readers asked for it ... I wrote it. You guys are awesome!**_


End file.
